Barrett Kalellis
Saturday, Jan. 10, 2004

Whether the ideas of music critics, orchestra members, administrative staffs or the concert-going audiences are being considered, it is abundantly clear that the state of serious art music, as represented by the fate of our professional symphony orchestras, is inevitably facing a day of reckoning.

Slews of orchestras across the country have either declared bankruptcy or are in reorganization proceedings. More than half of the nation’s orchestras, including big city orchestras, are running unsustainable deficits, according to the American Symphony Orchestra League.

Before Christmas, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra announced an operating deficit of over $2 million and the departure of its latest executive director. In addition to seeking a new management team, the inevitable crisis discussions about renegotiating musicians’ existing contracts and more corporate bailouts have already begun.

A myriad of reasons are given for the parlous financial condition of these institutions, and all of them are undoubtedly contributory: a sour economy, poor management planning and spending, the effects of 9/11, a shrinking audience base, poor music education, and a reduced number of donors coupled with the high fixed costs of running symphony orchestras in general.

The fundamental cause of the demise of the symphony orchestra, however, is rarely addressed. This is because there is no simple cure for the problem. Instead, arts management types try to make orchestras relevant to younger, modern-day audiences with smoke and mirrors: music festivals, new concert halls, gala balls, concerts featuring music by African-American composers or performance competitions (in Detroit), or trendy theme programming of film music, music by women composers, educational concerts, etc.

The root cause of symphonic distress, however, is that the art form that orchestras represent is no longer the dominant musical language of the culture, which happens to be commercial popular music. The bulk of the orchestra repertoire is from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, written predominantly by European composers. Appreciation of this music has become ever more an elitist passion, requiring either some musical training or exposure at an early age.

Even the businessmen who support the symphony generally have no training or breadth of musical understanding. Rather, they support it for social and civic reasons. In the big picture, there simply is not enough demand for this art music to sustain these organizations on their own as viable businesses. In their own way, they have really become “performance museums.”

Like a perverse Gresham’s Law, listeners have discovered that the “bad” music in the culture has driven out the “good.” Unless you happen to live by a college or university, or near a very large city that broadcasts classical music, you won’t find it on the radio dial.

Detroit’s last and now-defunct classical station, WQRS, flailed about during its dying days, desperately dumbing down its programs by simply broadcasting selected movements from larger symphonies instead of the complete pieces. This, they thought, would attract younger listeners, who they deemed to have short attention spans.

Detroit’s Harmony House Classical store, like Ann Arbor’s SK Classical, have gone out of business for want of enough customers. Classical music lovers now have to buy their CDs over the Internet.

There is a lot of blame to go around. Once a plaything of the rich and educated, orchestras now come begging at the doors of foundations and corporations for their operating funds. As foundations become more interested in medical research and social reform, and corporations become financially strapped, increased giving to the local orchestra becomes even more tenuous, particularly if orchestra managements are not good stewards of their budgets.

Corporate and even private donors to symphony orchestras are becoming increasingly resistant to calls of yet another bailout. They now expect these institutions to be run on a sound fiscal basis like any other business, before they open their wallets.

Ironically, the quality and caliber of orchestra musicians has never been higher, thanks to our schools of music. But the outlets for all this talent are exceedingly restricted. Other than joining amateur (unpaid) orchestras, professionals will find that, one by one, positions with major orchestras will inevitably shrink as these groups wither on the vine.

We will see fewer and fewer orchestras serving wider areas. As the media seem content to champion blockbuster films and other popular ephemera, serious music is pushed to the periphery of discourse. I lament the fact that, as long as serious music is not at or near the center of discussion about art and society, its role will continue to diminish, along with the ensembles that bring it to life.

Barrett Kalellis is a Michigan-based columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications. He was the founder and director of the Detroit Contemporary Chamber Ensemble in the 1980s. He can be reached at kalellis@newsmax.com

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