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Madison Symphony Orchestra Historical Pages

A Century of the Madison Symphony Orchestra
Description and purchasing information for my book on the history of the orchestra, published in October, 2025.

Note that my site used to host extended versions of four historical chapters I wrote back in the summer of 2000 in celebration of the orchestra 75th anniversary season. Since those have been superseded by the much more extensive book, I have taken them down.

The Madison Symphony Orchestra: A Timeline

In December 2025, I  revised a concise two-page timeline of the orchestra's history I had written for the MSO Board. You can download that here.

A Video Lecture on Sigfrid Prager
In October 2020, I put together a lecture on Prager's work in Madison, based upon the chapter on him in the forthcoming book.  It is titled "Madison's First Maestro: Dr. Sigfrid Prager."

Historical Images
I collected many images in my research. You can view a selection of them here.

Madison Symphony Orchestra: Chronicle 1926-2001
As an outgrowth of my research for the 2001 history, I complied a comprehensive database listing nearly every performance by the orchestra and chorus in the first 75 seasons.  The results, 75 Years of the Madison Symphony Orchestra 1926-2001: Chronicle, Repertoire, and Soloists, is available here. While this listing is almost complete, there are a few programs of the 1930s-1970s that were missing. These have since been reconstructed from contemporaneous news reports, or were discovered in Orchestra Librarian Kathy Taylor's thorough 2021 reorganization of the orchestra's program collection. A copy of an annotated version of the chronicle, including these missing programs is held in the MSO Archives.  If you are interested in knowing whether a given piece has been played by the MSO since 2001, nearly all of the repertoire we've played on subscription programs is noted on my complete list of program notes. Be aware, however, that this does not include operas, nor does it list repertoire for MSO programs for which I did not write notes (youth concerts, pops programs, outdoor concerts, etc.).  It also lists repertoire for other orchestras for whom I've written notes.  MSO repertoire is listed by season, without the prefixes I've used to designate non-MSO repertoire.  Note that the comprehensive and complete list of repertoire, from 1926 to the present, is currently maintained on an OPAS database (proprietary software) by the MSO Staff. This listing is not available to the public.  If you have questions you can direct them to the MSO's orchestra librarian, Jennifer Goldberg (jgoldbergmadisonsymphony.org).
 
Early Madison Civic Music Recordings
I have provided streaming versions of several early (1941-1955) recordings of the orchestra and chorus here.

 Feature Articles for the Wisconsin State Journal
I have also included a couple of extended versions of feature articles written for the Wisconsin State Journal,

last update: 8/15/2022