In 1918, when I was two, my parents smuggled me into a matinee concert of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and no misadventure occurring to dissuade them, regularly continued the contraband operation until I was old enough to have a ticket on my own account. […] While I don’t claim to remember the very first concert, a powerful recollection of the repeated experience remains with me. Seated on Imma’s knee in the gallery, I am looking over a shadowy cliff, as through a telescope the wrong way round, at the bottom of which musicians in a pool of light are miniature but distinct, their busy concentration down there producing sounds to ravish soul and sense. << less