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The orchestra has been a part of Charleston culture for the past 340 years.

The first sign of barbarism is not the creeping rise of crime, nor is it the callousness with which society treats the old, infirm, or poor. No. The foremost symptom of a civilized society degrading toward disorder is when a once great people sacrifice their cultivated nature on the altar of economic expediency.

When Charleston was an adjunct of London, we were enriched with the finest of 18th century traditions -- from Georgian architecture and the love of the English garden, from the chamber music of Handel and Bach to prayer books and kneeling benches at worship. Charlestonians were Englishmen. Gilbert and Sullivan, if they'd been alive in the 1700s, could have written of our forebears their jaunty lyrics, "He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman!"

Long gone Charlestonians record that from 2nd floor piazzas on East Bay to the ball rooms on Legare, madeira wine flowed as the motets wafted on harbor-moist night air. Charlestonians carry on the traditions of their bloodline today, even if the Handel and Bach are digital recordings emitted through Bose speakers.

There's never been time in Charleston's 340 years when this refined city did not cultivate the arts and revere its musicians . . . that is, until this month.

What a shame if our lives have become so cluttered with the symptoms of selfimportance that we can't afford an evening a month attending the symphony. From McCrady's Longroom to Society Hall, from the Hibernian to the Gailliard Auditorium, Charlestonians of every generation have stepped gaily into the night air with melodies from the greatest composers soothing their souls.

"And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal away." When Longfellow penned these lines, it's a safe bet that he didn't have to choose between an evening with Mozart or the madness of multi-channel cable vision.

Neither did Longfellow's iPod, iPad, and iPhone distract him from the idea that, "Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself," a quote from Longfellow's friend, Henry Ward Beecher.

Even if the music hasn't always been of the best quality, it's always been of the best composition. Josiah Quincy records in his diary of his 1773 visit here that he attended a dancing recital "where the music was bad, but the dancing good." Quincy, a recent Harvard graduate and descendant of a prominent merchant family in Boston, was feted by the genteel element of the Carolina Lowcountry on the eve of the Revolution.

A Saint Cecilia Ball was held during his stay here, and the urbane visitor complimented the first violinist, a Frenchman, as performing the "best solo I ever heard." Amateur as well as professional musicians played together in the "large and inelegant building withdrawn from the street."

Fine classical music recitals continued through antebellum times and Jockey Club Balls, cotillions, and Race Week concerts kept the highbrow notes from disappearing beneath the rising tide of martial spirit that culminated in the Rebellion of 1861.

However, even the long climb back from 1865 did not dissuade Charlestonians from dressing for dinner, kneeling for prayer, and affording the arts. The Charleston Library Society, the oldest continuing cultural organization in the City (1747), and perhaps the nation, kept alive the tradition of literature, lecture, art, and chamber music.

In 1900, James Shoolbred Gibbes, Sr., bequeathed $100, 000 to the City for the purpose of erecting an art gallery. That amount today would equal about $2.4 million. Just as Charleston businessmen were making a grand comeback financially from the financial collapse of the Confederacy, they were slammed right back into hard times by the Great Depression.

Yet, with a stiff upper lip that must be a holdover from our British ancestry, the Great Depression was the catalyst for a nucleus of cultural diehards to make a grand statement about our city and its people -- for during the dark days of the Depression two dedicated ladies, Maude Winthrop Gibbon and Martha Laurens Patterson founded the Charleston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Tony Hadgi, the husband of Maude Gibbon. This full-fledged symphony was actually a recreation of The Charleston String Symphony and The Charleston Philharmonic, both being amateur groups of musicians playing regularly here in the 1918-1919 time frame.

When the Charleston Symphony Orchestra (CSO) launched its first concert on December 28, 1936, the national unemployment rate was right at 17%, the maximum tax rate was 79 percent, and the average family income was $750 annually, just under $12,000 in today's calculation. However, these men and women valued fine music and were willing to sacrifice so that this grand old Capital City of the South could maintain its rightful place amongst the refined cities of western civilization.

Appropriately, the musical score of that first grand concert included music that was composed for the 18th century play, "The Recruiting Officer," the first theatrical performance produced in the 1736 opening season of the Dock Street Theater.

A November 22, 1995 Letter to the Editor of the Post and Courier by retired Porter-Gaud Headmaster, Berkeley Grimball, recounts that High School of Charleston music instructor, Theodore Wichmann, had much to do with the founding of the Charleston Symphony. Grimball also disputed that Tony Hadgi conducted on the first night's performance.

He says that Wichmann conducted the musicians that evening in Hibernian Hall, and that he, Berkeley Grimball, was sitting in the woodwind section playing the clarinet. Grimball was a student at the High School of Charleston and took music instruction from Wichmann.

Another musician that Grimball recalled from that evening long ago included Bernard Olasov, the featured cellist. Miss Ann Howe, Charleston native and Cincinatti Conservatory-trained violinist, was the featured violinist. Howe played "Air on G" by Bach with encores from Schubert's "Monument Musicale."

The Charleston Symphony has lasted all of these years only to come up short on our watch. Admittedly, times are tough and earnings are down on our investments, but are we, too, not made of stern stuff?

Are we willing to allow historians to record that 2010 was the year that Charlestonians made the break with their centuries-old custom of saluting the classical composers? Of course not! Get out your checkbook and let's save the CSO!

Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant.