Music: Fair Music

Last winter, when the New York and San Francisco World's Fairs were in the lath-&-scaffold stage, New Yorkers and San Franciscans were already discussing tall plans for the music Fairgoers were to hear. Tallest planning was in Manhattan, where pudgy, music-loving Mayor LaGuardia had inaugurated a campaign to raise $1,200,000 to finance a World's Fair music festival. With this money, portly Olin Downes, New York Times music critic and Fair music director, proposed to buy Manhattan a festival she would never forget. Two months later news leaked out that the campaign had flopped,...

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