Although I don’t have a very favorable opinion of Mayor James H. Preston, I recently became aware of one bright spot in his legacy. It seems that Preston was an ardent advocate of what was then known as “municipal music,” that is, city investment in music for the enrichment and enjoyment of Baltimore’s citizens. In modern times, our city vies for prestige by attempting to woo corporations, but the early 1900s were a more plentiful era where Preston declared: “the people of Baltimore are entitled to municipal symphony orchestras, municipal opera, municipal organizations which provide for individual aesthetic development, just as they are entitled to municipal service in educations, sanitation, and public safety.”
Baltimore came to be known as the “Cradle of Municipal Music,” and newspapers as far away as the Oakland Tribune in California wrote in 1918 of the city’s “open air and community singing” at outdoor events with up to 50,000 people in attendance.
