Inscribed above the stage of Symphony Hall in Boston, one of America's great music palaces, is the name BEETHOVEN, occupying much the same position as a crucifix in a church. In several late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century concert halls, the names of the European masters appear all around the circumference of the auditorium, signifying unambiguously that the buildings are cathedrals for the worship of imported musical icons. Early in the century, any aspiring young composer who sat in one of these halls—a white male, needless to say, blacks being generally unwelcome and women generally not taken seriously—would likely have fallen prey to pessimistic thoughts. The very design of the place militated against the possibility of a native musical tradition. How could your name ever be carved alongside Beethoven's or Grieg's when all available spaces were filled?

—Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century