In Tanglewood Shed

Although summer music in the U. S.

has increased in quantity and quality in recent years, until last week no U. S. orchestra has had both a dignified summer home of its own and a socialite summer audience. Then, in the Berkshire hills near Stockbridge, Mass., into a large, new pavilion, nearly 6,000 people trooped for the opening of the fifth annual Berkshire Symphonic Festival. Seated, the audience beamed at the Boston Symphony. The Boston Symphony, pleased with its new summer home--called, with Brahmin deprecation, a Music Shed--beamed back.

Speeches were made by Conductor Sergei Koussevitzky, the orchestra's President Bentley Wirt Warren, Festival President Gertrude Robinson Smith. The audience, accompanied by the orchestra, sang the Luther-Bach chorale, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott. Thus was dedicated the permanent home of the latest candidate for an "American Salzburg." Tanglewood, a large Stockbridge estate where Author Nathaniel Hawthorne used to live, was deeded by its owners to the Boston Symphony two years ago. After a concert was spectacularly rained out of a large tent last summer, energetic President Smith started a drive to raise $100,000 for permanent quarters. Glad to get $80,000, the Festival committee commissioned Finnish Architect Eliel Saarinen to design the Shed--a fan-shaped, open-sided building covering an acre and a half, its roof supported by three interior pillars and a colonnade. The Shed's acoustics are so excellent that an orchestral pianissimo can be heard by an overflow audience outside the colonnade. Last week, during the first of this season's six concerts, Miss Smith launched a campaign for $58,000 to curtain the sides of the Shed with iron (for storms), to complete the stage, etc. Future Tanglewood projects : opera, a music school.

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