November 13, 1996
Editor
Arts and Entertainment
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York NY 10036-3959
To the Editor:
Bernard Holland's column on "The Decline and Fall of the Classical
Empire" (New York Times, November 10) reminded me of nothing so much
as my favorite headline from a career spent in the music business. "25
orchestras doomed to die!" prefaced an article by the United Press
International predicting the imminent demise of (among others) the Atlanta,
Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Seattle orchestras.
The article was published in 1969, showing that mistaking a rain shower
for the Flood has a long history in the music business.
Mr. Holland, while getting a few of his facts wrong (the musicians of the
Philadelphia are not on strike in order to get paid for recordings
they don't do), does point out some serious problems facing the orchestra
business, but frames them in neither historical perspective nor a balanced
picture of the current orchestral scene. While the current negotiations
in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and San Francisco are indeed proving difficult,
they are certainly no harder than those that many orchestras (including
Philadelphia and San Francisco) have survived in the past. Moreover, many
more orchestras have had negotiations in the past year or so that have been
concluded very amicably, including Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee,
and perhaps most notably in terms of its recent history, Buffalo. The negotiations
in San Francisco and Atlanta arguably are more difficult because
those institutions have been extremely successful in terms of raising money
and selling tickets, not because they've been failing at those core jobs.
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There are a lot of other success stories in the orchestra world, some of
which are due to the efforts of people, relatively new to the field, who
Mr. Holland unfairly derides as of "startlingly low" quality.
Good administrators, of orchestras or any other organizations, have always
been hard to find; the ones he properly singles out for praise (while missing
a few other outstanding managers who are neither leaving the field nor in
poor health) are stand-outs in a field that has always been dominated by
mediocrity.
Mr. Holland also complains about the state of boards (ignorant), the state
of orchestra marketing (salacious), and the state of concert programming
(dumb and getting dumber). None of these problems are new. Boards are quite
properly committed to "keeping their institutions in business,"
as Mr. Holland accuses them of being; what else would he have them do? That's
their job. It's the job of orchestra staff and music directors to provide
programming that's innovative, artistically challenging, and attractive
to audiences; the good ones do and the bad ones don't, as has always been
the case. And orchestra marketing, like marketing everywhere, is entirely
driven by pragmatism. His memory is poorer than mine if he thinks that cleavage
is a new sight in classical music marketing.
What Mr. Holland forgets is that the American orchestra scene is a story
of amazing success. We have in this country most of the world's great orchestras.
Even second- and third-tier American orchestras play as well or better than
any of the great orchestras of fifty years ago. Equally important, American
orchestras sell more tickets, and perform for more schoolchildren, than
orchestras elsewhere or in the past. And all of this was done with a bare
minimum of government support. It has not come easily or without conflict,
and future success will no doubt require more of the same. But the simplest
and most plausible explanation for the problems Mr. Holland cites is that
the orchestra industry is transitioning from growth to maturity; a painful
process for the participants, perhaps, but hardly a reason for him to call
for the demolition of the orchestral temple.
Sincerely,
Robert Levine
Chair
International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians
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