Does Every City Need an Orchestra? by Thomas Wolf

When I was in high school in Philadelphia, I used to enjoy visiting musician friends at the Curtis Institute of Music and I loved hearing their latest jokes.  One I still remember was in the form of a riddle:

 QUESTION: What does every city in America have?

ANSWER: A fire house, an orchestra, and a student of Nadia Boulanger.

Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), the esteemed French musical pedagogue.  Musicians who wanted to burnish their resumés would often claim her as their teacher.

For those who may not immediately get the joke, the influential French musician and pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger, was at that time enjoying an immense vogue in the United States.  She had taught many leading musicians and the resumés of others could be significantly burnished by saying they had studied with her.  It seemed that anyone who had even sat in the back of a crowded hall observing one of her masterclasses was claiming her as a teacher.

One clever wag, who had heard the riddle and knew the answer, provided a more complete response.

ANSWER: Every American city has a fire house, an orchestra, and a student of Nadia Boulanger…and most only need the firehouse.

Setting aside the possible slight toward Boulanger (with whom this student perhaps wished he had studied), the quip about cities not needing orchestras is provocative and worth exploring. For more than a century, it seemed that having an orchestra was an essential component of a city’s high culture.  And for most cities, what that meant was having an orchestra founded on the nineteenth-century European model in terms of structure, personnel, repertoire, and reputation.  In much of the first half of the twentieth century, many of these orchestras were literally European with the bulk of the musicians being foreign-born (my recollection of backstage conversations among violinists in Philadelphia sixty years ago was that many of those conversations were in Russian).  A European conductor, one who spoke with an accent and disdained the low musical knowledge of Americans, was thought to be a sign that an orchestra was led by someone of true “quality.”  I spent much of my youth among these individuals – my grandmother, a great aunt, and two uncles (all foreign born) soloed with numerous American orchestras and in many of these institutions European musicians and conductors were their friends.  Stories I would hear backstage or around the dinner table castigated lowbrow American audiences and patrons – though this was done sotto voce and only among friends since livelihoods depended on the largesse of those “ignorant” Americans.

One story I remember to this day.  Polish-born Alexander Hilsberg, conductor of the New Orleans Symphony, told about a patron who had come up to him after a performance of the Brahms fourth symphony and said, “Well, Maestro, I liked that symphony you conducted tonight, but I really prefer Brahms’ fifth symphony.”

Polish-born Alexander Hilsberg, conductor of the New Orleans Symphony (right), recounting a story to my European musical relatives who had just played the Mozart triple piano concerto with his orchestra.  The story Hilsberg told captured what he considered the musical ignorance of so many in American audiences. (from left: Nella Hilsberg, my uncle Boris Goldovsky, uncle Pierre Luboshutz, aunt Genia Nemenoff, and Hilsberg.)

Hilsberg, without missing a beat, answered. “Madame, I quite agree with you.  Had Brahms written a fifth symphony it would have been his best.” Hilsberg told this story to my European relatives at a dinner after they soloed with his orchestra and the event was memorialized in a photo that I still possess. They all found the story tremendously funny. But everyone also acknowledged that but for these “ignorant” Americans, they might not have a job. Thank goodness many Americans with means in those days believed their city needed an orchestra.

We have come a long way since those days.  The United States is the preeminent producer of top-flight classical orchestral musicians in the world and has arguably some of its finest orchestras.  But one thing has not changed. Though the hunger for high culture has waned to a large extent, there are almost always at least some influential civic leaders in most cities – even cities of very modest size – that claim that their community needs an orchestra to be considered complete and top-flight. But for many of the rest of us who think about these issues, the comment of the Curtis student more than a half century ago still resonates—should all of these cities have one?

Recently I read news of the continuing struggles of an orchestra in a medium-sized southwestern city. It was hardly a surprise. The orchestra has suffered economic challenges, bankruptcy, and reorganizations over many decades.  When the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation created its “Magic of Music” grant program[1] thirty years ago to fund innovation among symphony orchestras, this orchestra was already in trouble.  The Knight Foundation’s program director, Penny McPhee, questioned whether it was wise to select this orchestra for a grant when it had clearly been struggling financially. Would the institution be in a position to carry out its innovation project?  The panel responsible for the decision decided to take a chance and went ahead and awarded significant dollars to the orchestra anyway only to find later that the grant money had been used not for an innovative project that might have transformed the orchestra into something more relevant to its community but simply to meet payroll. The dollars staved off bankruptcy for a few years but in the end, there was not enough local support to keep the institution going.  Today, the orchestra is attempting to reorganize once again.

Is there any way to determine in which cities orchestras are likely to be successful artistically and financially?  As I have written elsewhere,[2] there are certain indicators of community capacity that have been reliable predictors in the past of which cities are likely to have a healthy orchestra (and sometimes more than one) while others struggle to keep a single orchestra afloat:

  • An international city with major corporations that do business throughout the world where public and private leaders recognize the importance of an orchestra as part of the city’s reputation and profile.

  • A large audience base that includes many highly educated, high-income individuals.  The local population can be augmented by visitors with a similar profile.

  • Age and tradition. Older cities that created cultural institutions early have the advantage of multiple generations of attendance, support, civic pride, and often, a higher percentage of people whose ancestors came from Western Europe where symphony orchestras were “invented.”

  • A musical infrastructure. Successful orchestras do not operate in a vacuum.  They are often at the top of a musical food chain replete with other high-quality musical institutions and music schools/ conservatories.

  • Inherited wealth. One of the great misconceptions in determining financial capacity of a community to support an orchestra is to look at median income.  But a stronger predictor of philanthropy to cultural organizations is the level of inherited wealth.

  • Venue. Strong and vibrant orchestras depend on high-quality venues. Great orchestras and great halls often go hand in hand.  Architecture, acoustics, location, amenities, comfort, and safety are important elements.

  • Patterns of nonprofit institutionalization. Strong orchestras often operate in communities where nonprofit institutions of all types are characterized by strong boards, skilled management, prudent financial oversight, and ample cash reserves.

Most people who know about orchestras are familiar with the sterling reputation of Boston’s Symphony Hall. What they may not know is that Boston’s healthy orchestra scene (which supports multiple orchestras) depends on other venue jewels like Jordon Hall pictured above.

Does this mean that a city that does not have these attributes cannot have a successful symphony orchestra?  Not at all.  But it does mean that the orchestra in a particular city may not be the internationally recognized mega-institution that some people believe every orchestra should be. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, community relevance and public value may well be more important than some of the traditional indicators in the past that I mentioned above. The successful orchestra might well be a relatively small-scale entity that plays fewer classical concerts in large halls and offers more performances of popular programming while its musicians do additional work in the community and in schools.  It may include some highly talented amateur players (in fact, some very good orchestras with strong community support are made up entirely of non-professionals). 

The orchestra may need frequently to break up its musicians into smaller ensembles in order to provide additional services or it may play as the back-up ensemble for other musical organizations and events.  Such an orchestra may not be able to offer year-round employment to its professional musicians and it may require that its size in terms of number of employed musicians is smaller than major orchestras in big cities.  When large works require more musicians, such orchestras can augment their core with guest players who come in for individual performances.

An educational program of the Orlando Philharmonic. The ratio of such programs to formal classical concerts often needs to be significantly higher for orchestras in smaller cities.

The problem, of course, is that to many, such orchestras as I have just described are considered “lesser institutions” and often cannot command the respect of industry peers, musicians, and many in its community.  The community is told that unless more musicians are employed for longer periods of time, the musical excellence of the ensemble will be sub-par.  Some patrons will hanker for a more traditional model while orchestra musicians will bargain for longer employment periods that many of these institutions can ill afford and music directors will want to enhance their reputations with traditional markers – an international tour, a performance at Carnegie Hall, or the appearances of superstar soloists with astronomical fees. 

And there are other challenges.  Many musicians are conservatory-trained to play in a symphony orchestra whose primary activity is offering high-quality classical concerts.  They do not get preparation in community engagement or educational work—activities that most people do not realize require specialized training and practice.  And in many cases, the musicians’ collective bargaining agreements in numerous orchestras limit the flexibility of such offerings or assign them based on musician seniority rather than musician proficiency.  In addition, the lack of flexibility of media agreements as set nationally by the American Federation of Musicians means that possible lucrative opportunities in this realm go to orchestras in other countries.

So should every American city have an orchestra?  In an ideal world, the answer would be yes.  But that is only if the mission of each orchestra aligns with local needs and capacity, its business model is manageable, and its leadership and supporters can put aside unrealistic aspirations in favor of an operating and artistic model for which the broadest number of local community members, including those that never set foot in a concert hall, can be justly proud.

Thanks to Joe Kluger and Dennie Wolf for their advice on this blog. The opinions expressed are my own.

Alexander Hilsberg, History of orchestras, Successful orchestras, Community engagementClaire Purgus