American Orchestras Research Articles

The symphony orchestra in the time of COVID-19: will American orchestras rise from the ashes?

ABSTRACT The finances of performing arts organizations are sensitive to economic recessions. We use data from the “Great Recession” to provide a window into the problems that symphony orchestras will need to circumvent during and following the COVID-19 recession. We estimate that for every 1 percent increase in unemployment, attendance will decrease by 2.4 percent. With audiences who will be slow to return to concert halls, orchestras should expect years of diminished numbers of ticket buyers. Symphony orchestras will need to practice cost-cutting measures, while reinventing themselves through innovative programmes, including increased streaming platforms, in order to prosper post-COVID.

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the American Midwest

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the American Midwest

Innovation in Performing Arts Organizations: An Empirical Study

This study aims to expand the Operations Management field’s discourse to recognize the idiosyncrasies of not-for-profit performing arts organizations (PAOs) and how they can survive and achieve their ultimate goal, i.e. providing products/services to improve and benefit a community and the broad public interests. In doing so, we consider innovation as a strategic weapon in addressing PAOs' increasing need for improvement in their operating structures and performance outcomes. Particularly, we determine the drivers of innovation in today’s PAOs and explore how innovation in both products and services can affect their financial, artistic, and social performance. Drawing on the theory of dynamic capabilities and based on a systematic literature review, four major internal capabilities are identified that can enhance PAOs' level of product and service innovations: Environmental Intelligence, Internal Integration, Core Operational Capability, and External Partnerships and Collaborations. A survey targeting top managers from a random sample of North American orchestras is conducted to empirically validate our conceptualization of the PAO Innovation and examine the proposed conceptual model. The results indicated that every capability significantly enhanced at least two innovation dimensions. Moreover, product and delivery innovations were positively influential on artistic performance and ultimately, financial performance.

Kultúramenedzsment a digitális korban. Öt élenjáró szimfonikus nagyzenekar üzleti modellje

This research takes the initial steps of exploring a novel field and discusses the importance of the business mindset in the arts. Following a theoretical summary, the authors examine trends in the music industry and the expectations set for a 21st century symphony orchestra, and then focus on the operation of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and, later, the Dohnanyi Orchestra Budafok. The orchestras have similar missions, but they use different business models. The main difference between the orchestras traces back to their funding; the American orchestra functions solely on market-based funding, while in the case of European orchestras, significant public funds are present. The aforementioned orchestras have realised that in today’s ever-changing world no business model is forever, and they have attempted to respond to the changing demands of consumers and utilise the opportunities given by technology.

George Szell’s Reign by Marcia Hansen Kraus

Reviewed by: George Szell’s Reign by Marcia Hansen Kraus Michael J. Pfeifer Marcia Hansen Kraus, George Szell’s Reign. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. 233 pp. $23.00. In the early to mid-twentieth century, prominent orchestras arose in mid-western urban centers such as Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Detroit, driven by a “symphony craze” in which business classes funded symphonies as a way to enhance the culture and prestige of their rising metropolises. Often employing musicians who had immigrated or had been trained in Europe, especially Germany and Austria, orchestras became meaningful features of the urban (and through extensive touring) rural Midwest between the Progressive Era and the post-World War II eras. The Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra became particularly prominent in these years, joining a pantheon of American orchestras focused in the urban Northeast that included the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. Marcia Hansen Kraus’s entertaining book charts the ascendance of the Cleveland Orchestra under its brilliant, tyrannical, Budapest-born and Vienna-raised conductor George Szell, who led the orchestra to national and global prominence during his years as music director from 1946 until 1970. The Cleveland Orchestra originated in 1918 under the aegis of musician and administrator Adella Prentiss Hughes and conductor Nikolai Sokoloff; this was several decades later than the origins of orchestras in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Minneapolis. The hiring of Szell, who had served in posts before the war in Berlin and Glasgow, would take the Cleveland Orchestra to the top ranks of American and indeed international orchestras. Kraus attributes Szell’s success with the orchestra to his personal genius and insistence on musical perfection and the free reign he was given to fire and hire musicians largely unhindered by union and management interference for much of his tenure. While Szell was highly demanding and could be [End Page 197] brusque and dismissive of musicians that did not meet his high standards, in Kraus’s account he ran his orchestra paternalistically with a deep concern for the development of his orchestra and for the personal lives of his musicians. Szell took such an interest in the lives of his musicians that he did not countenance them seeking to divorce their spouses and insisted that they eat modestly before concerts, avoid facial hair, and wear galoshes in winter, all in the service of greater music-making. As Kraus notes, in 1967 Szell virtually wrote his own epitaph in his foreword to Robert Marsh’s book, The Cleveland Orchestra, “First there must be a love of music on my part, and then what is being asked of the players for the love of music must be made convincing to them. Honesty and integrity in performance are matters of artistic morality” (167). Kraus’s book is organized into short chapters focusing on Szell’s early life; the early history of the Cleveland Orchestra; Szell’s interaction with different sections of the orchestra (woodwinds, strings, percussion, etc.) and his musical interpretations; international touring; the 1967 musicians’ strike (in which many members of the orchestra finally gained greater salaries); the building and opening of the orchestra’s summer venue, the Blossom Music Center, in 1968; and Szell’s death in 1970. The book concludes with a brief epilogue discussing the ways in which the Cleveland Orchestra and the popular reception of symphonic music have changed since the death of George Szell. Kraus’s narrative draws richly on anecdotes from musicians who played in the orchestra, and here she benefits greatly from her marriage to one of the orchestra’s oboists, Felix Kraus, who played under Szell for seven years. Indeed, the musicians’ perspective is the most valuable part of the book, which while not as deeply researched as, for example, Michael Charry’s 2011 biography of George Szell (George Szell: A Life in Music; University of Illinois Press, 2011), nonetheless makes a meaningful effort to wed archival research with personal anecdotes, especially through extensively annotated endnotes. This midwestern historian would have liked a bit more discussion of the social and cultural contexts in which prominent Cleveland donors funded their city’s orchestra’s rise to...

Contesting White Australia: Black Jazz Musicians in a White Man's Country

In March 1928, a tabloid-fuelled interracial sex scandal led to the deportation of an African American jazz orchestra and the introduction of a decades-long ban on black musicians. The incident raised questions about the place of cosmopolitanism within the White Australia experiment and calls into question the widely held assumption that the policy enjoyed unquestioned popular support in this period. By tracing the links between the individuals who championed the deportation, it is possible to identify divisions over the scope and meaning of the White Australia policy.

Fiddling in a Vortex: Have American Orchestras Squandered Their Supremacy on the American Cultural Scene?

ABSTRACTIn the past half-century, American symphony orchestras (SO) have experienced widely fluctuating fortunes. We examine this period to explain the external and internal issues that have created the fluctuations and the resultant financial difficulties for many SOs. In recent years, SO deficits have continued to increase while attendance has continued to decrease. We discuss the need for SOs to address revenue issues, introduce dynamic programming, and engage in more community engagement to improve the institution's stability.

Data Envelopment Analysis in the Strategic Management of Youth Orchestras

Nonprofit arts organizations need to develop more effective mechanisms for self-regulation in response to increasing government regulation and to meet organizational expectations. In this article, I measure the management of the relative efficiency among those forty-eight youth orchestras that participated in the profile summary project of the League of American Orchestras 2009–2010. I used two steps of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in order to evaluate program service delivery and the effectiveness of these fundraising efforts. The result of this analysis enabled me to divide these groups into efficient and inefficient groups. The efficient group can use this study's results in future marketing or fundraising efforts. Inefficient groups are provided suggestions to implement that will improve their fundraising and program services.

Crowding-Out and Fundraising Efforts

The crowding-out of private donations by government grants is an integral element in designing an efficient method of financing nonprofit activity. This article looks at elements of crowd-out, both the direct impact on donors and the indirect impact caused by the response of nonprofits. We include both theoretical and empirical analyses of the reactions by donors and nonprofits to an increase in government funding based on data from the League of American Orchestras’ annual reports from 2004 to 2007. To combat indirect crowd-out, renewed emphasis should be placed on grant design; for direct crowd-out, theories of collective action are appropriate.

The Great Orchestrator: Arthur Judson and American Arts Management by James M. Doering (review)

Reviewed by: The Great Orchestrator: Arthur Judson and American Arts Management by James M. Doering Michael Mauskapf The Great Orchestrator: Arthur Judson and American Arts Management by James M. Doering. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. [304 p. ISBN 9780252037412. $55.] Illustrations, tables, charts, bibliography, index. [End Page 477] Anyone familiar with the history of the American classical music industry is likely to have encountered the name and accomplishments of Arthur Judson (1881–1975). Although most well-known for his work as an artists’ manager, Judson’s concurrent appointment as the head of two major American orchestras and the founder of a radio broadcasting company may be even more historically significant. It is not hyperbole to say that Arthur Judson stood at or near the center of American musical life for half a century, shepherding the American orchestra into its first golden age while asserting bilateral power as both a buyer and seller of musical talent. Despite his larger-than-life reputation, however, Judson’s story—including his fall from grace following public inquiries into his potentially conflicting professional interests—has received scant attention from music historians. The explanation behind the lack of scholarly treatment afforded to Judson and his career is fairly mundane: as a behind-the-scenes business manager who spent his time publicizing famous performers, conductors, and ensembles, Judson does not fit a prototypical profile ripe for musicological inquiry. Luckily for us, James Doering has put aside these disciplinary norms in a new biography of Judson that chronicles his professional life, “from musical genius to corporate villain.” Based on Doering’s dissertation, the book presents a kinder and more nuanced depiction of Judson than the limited scholarship previously published on the subject (Norman Lebrecht, Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics [New York: Birch Lane Press, 1997]; Joseph Horowitz, Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall [New York: W. W. Norton, 2005], 416–32). Doering’s treatment of Judson also extends beyond the scope of traditional biography, although there is plenty of that here. In addition to uncovering how Judson the man was shaped by certain experiences and opportunities presented early in his life, Doering traces the transformation of the orchestra field and explores the complex relationship between music and business more generally. For Doering, Judson’s story suggests that music management is about more than dollars and cents; “it is about assessing challenges, balancing egos, crafting compromises, and in the process trying not to lose sight of the musical goals that bind those things together” (p. 11). While Doering does an admirable job of contextualizing Judson’s personal history within the broader shift in American concert culture, it remains unclear whether Judson’s vision was a catalyst for, or consequence of, this development. The book is broken into three parts: “Discovering the Audience, 1900–1921,” “Cooperation and Cultivation, 1921–1942,” and “The Empire of Diminishing Returns, 1942–1956.” Although the bulk of Doering’s analysis is organized chronologically, certain sections emphasize thematic continuity, tracing Judson’s various career trajectories in artist management, orchestra administration, and radio. Before charting any of these paths, however, Doering introduces us to a different Arthur Judson—one that foreshadows a lifelong interest in and commitment to audience development. Trained as a violinist, Judson first cut his teeth as a performing musician and teacher, serving as a professor and then dean of music at Denison University in Ohio. Despite his ambitions to be a virtuoso performer, however, it quickly became clear that Judson’s true talents lay in management and organization. While at Denison, he strengthened music’s position in the general curriculum, convincing the university’s administration to recognize non-majors enrolled in music classes for credit. Judson also produced a series of concerts for the surrounding community, although he quickly realized that his vision of developing a new generation of classical music listeners was being stunted by his rural surroundings. With this in mind, Judson moved to New York City in 1907. For the rest of his life, he spent much of his time and energy exploring the tenuous relationship between concert music and its audience, first as a journalist...

Review: Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum by Daniel Cavicchi; American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century, edited by John Spitzer

Review: Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum by Daniel Cavicchi; American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century, edited by John Spitzer

Building a Representative Corpus of Classical Music

This paper presents an object lesson in the challenges and considerations involved in assembling a musical corpus for empirical research. It develops a model for the construction of a representative corpus of classical music of the “common practice period” (1700-1900), using both specific composers as well as broader historical styles and musical genres (e.g., symphony, chamber music, songs, operas) as its sampling parameters. Five sources were used in the construction of the model: (a) The Oxford History of Western Music by Richard Taruskin (2005), (b) amalgamated Orchestral Repertoire Reports for the years 2000-2007, from the League of American Orchestras, (c) a list of titles from the Naxos.com “Music in the Movies” web-based library, (d) Barlow and Morgenstern’s Dictionary of Musical Themes (1948), and (e) for the composers listed in sources (a)-(d), counts of the number of recordings each has available from Amazon.com. General considerations for these sources are discussed, and specific aspects of each source are then detailed. Intersource agreement is assessed, showing strong consensus among all sources, save for the Taruskin History. Using the Amazon.com data to determine weighting factors for each parameter, a preliminary sampling model is proposed. Including adequate genre representation leads to a corpus of ≈300 pieces, suggestive of the minimum size for an adequately representative corpus of classical music. The approaches detailed here may be applied to more specialized contexts, such as the music of a particular geographic region, historical era, or genre.

The great orchestrator: Arthur Judson and American arts management

This biography charts the career and legacy of the pioneering American music manager Arthur Judson (1881-1975), who rose to prominence in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. A violinist by training, Judson became manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1915 under the iconic conductor Leopold Stokowski. Within a few years, Judson also took on management of the New York Philharmonic, navigating a period of change and the tenures of several important conductors who included William Mengelberg, Arturo Toscanini, and John Barbirolli. Judson also began managing individual artists, including pianists Alfred Cortot and Vladimir Horowitz, violinist Jasha Heifetz, and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. He also organized the U.S. tours of several prominent composers, including Igor Stravinsky and Vincent d'Indy. At the same time, Judson began managing conductors. His first clients were Stokowski and Fritz Reiner. By the 1930s, Judson's conductor list included most of the important conductors working in America. Drawing on rich correspondence between Judson and the conductors and artists he served, James M. Doering demonstrates Judson's multifaceted roles, including involvement with programming choices, building audiences, negotiating with orchestra members and their unions, and exploring new technologies for extending the orchestras' reach. In addition to his colorful career behind the scenes at two preeminent American orchestras, Judson was important for a number of innovations in arts management. In 1922, he founded a nationwide network of local managers and later became involved in the relatively unexplored medium of radio, working first with WEAF in New York City and then later forming his own national radio network in 1927. Providing valuable insight into the workings of these orchestras and the formative years of arts management, The Great Orchestrator is a valuable portrait of one of the most powerful managers in American musical history.

League of American Orchestras

League of American Orchestras

From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions by Craig H. Russell (review)

Reviewed by: From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions by Craig H. Russell Robert R. Grimes S.J. From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions. By Craig H. Russell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 480 pp. $65.00. In a 1970s liturgical magazine an article appeared entitled "Pocahontas Never Sang Gregorian Chant," never considering the fact that she was baptized in the Church of England. Over many years of research on American Catholic church music the title has amused me as I have come across example after example of Native American Catholics employing chant, from the Mohawk and Passamaquoddy tribes of the Northeast to the missions of California. Although there have been important studies of the music of the Franciscan missions of California before, Craig Russell has produced what must be called a library of materials concerning musical life in and around the missions. The work is extensively documented. For example, chapter one contains thirty-five pages of text followed by twenty pages of footnotes. In addition, Oxford University Press maintains on their website an extensive array of additional documentation and resources collected by the author. In spite of this, the author says that he chose to write "a human narrative" rather than an encyclopedia. He has, in my opinion, actually succeeded at both. The title of this book refers to two Franciscan missionaries, Blessed Junipero Serra, the friar who founded and oversaw the Catholic missions in what is today the state of California, and Juan Bautista Sancho, in the author's estimation one of the most important musicians working in the early nineteenth century missions. The Franciscans took over the missions in Baja California after King [End Page 75] Carlos III of Spain ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768. These missions were soon handed over to the Dominicans while the Franciscans headed north to Alta California. Serra worked in the missions from the foundation of San Diego in 1769 until his death in 1784 at the Carmel Mission. Sancho arrived in Mexico from Europe in 1803 and worked in the Mission of San Antonio de Padua from shortly thereafter until his death in 1830. It is entirely possible that no one reader would be interested in every aspect of Russell's work. Conversely most everyone would find something of interest within its vast range. The introduction is a fine overview of the historiography of the California missions and would be a useful reading in American history and American Catholic Studies courses. Music theorists would find the second chapter of particular interest with its discussion of notation and modes. Historical musicologists will be fascinated by the presence of orchestral masses in early European classical style and the extensive manuscript research the author presents. Ethnomusicologists will find the discussion of dance and pageantry enlightening as well as the discussion of Native American music in the missions. Performers and choir directors will benefit from the performing editions of a number of mission-related works contained on the website. Historians will benefit from seeing life in the California missions in a new light and continuing this research with the many original documents and photographs included in both the book and website. In a work of this impressive scope it is inevitable that some errors can be found, particularly in the case of Catholic theology and practice. For example, the author speaks of a mass setting used on Good Friday (311), a day when no mass in permitted in Catholic worship. In another place the author uses "adoration" and "veneration" interchangeably in regard to the Blessed Mother (303-304) when only the latter is allowed. These are, however, small errors in a generally magnificent piece of scholarship. Average readers should not be dissuaded from reading From Serra to Sancho. They might well want to skip over some of the more technical sections of the volume, but should not overlook the photographic section of the website. Readers will encounter scenes ranging from the comic (a friar in a shed celebrating mass atop a clavichord while he accompanied himself) to the sublime (Native American orchestras at mass). Most of all, they will find the author...

The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras: Artistic Triumphs and Economic Challenges by Robert J. Flanagan (review)

MUSIC AND MARKETS The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras: Artistic Triumphs and Economic Challenges. By Robert J. Flanagan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. [vii, 224 p. ISBN 9780300171938. $50.] Illustrations, bibliography, index.During the recent global financial crisis, businesses once accustomed to hefty profits were suddenly reporting unprecedented losses. Not surprisingly, nonprofit performing arts organizations faced an even grimmer reality, facing untenable funding cuts that threatened to deplete an already fragile resource base. The challenges facing symphony orchestras are particularly acute. In the last decade nearly a dozen orchestras have filed for bankruptcy, while countless more have grappled with the day-to-day realities associated with producing and presenting symphonic concerts. Nevertheless, many of these organizations continue to exceed artistic expectations, overcoming financial constraints to create art of remarkable breadth and quality. Robert Flanagan's new book explores the paradox between these artistic triumphs and economic shortfalls, shining an analytical light on the challenges facing orchestras in the twenty-first century. His argument-that this is not a new phenomenon caused by a sputtering economy, but instead the result of an outdated organizational structure- challenges musicians, administrators, policy makers, and audiences to rethink the role orchestras play in contemporary society.Flanagan's background as an avowed amateur musician and award-winning economist orients this study, which nests a series of statistical analyses within a broader historical narrative that traces the causes and consequences of the orchestra's current structure. Although he devotes some attention to how orchestras operate in Europe, he primarily examines orchestras in their American context, drawing on data from the League of American Orchestras and other industry sources to identify and analyze trends from the fifty largest U.S. ensembles (by budget size) between 1987 and 2005. The analysis is presented in a way that is easy to understand, limiting financial jargon to a minimum and placing more indepth explanations of statistical procedures in the book's appendices. A study that could have easily become a dry research report reads more often as a compelling story with significant practical implications. Important points are reinforced with pie charts and other graphics, and results are supplemented with a rich and relatively balanced collection of quotes drawn from industry experts. As a whole, the book provides an easily digestible narrative that should be of interest to orchestra scholars, administrators, and audiences.Before reviewing the content of Flanagan's findings in more detail, it is worth asking what's new here. The economic challenges confronting orchestras today have been the subject of considerable attention and research for some time, due in part to the complex amalgam of individual philanthropy, foundation grants, government support, and ticket sales that support orchestras' operations. The present study is rooted conceptually in research undertaken by two Princeton economists, who in 1966 identified and investigated the cost disease associated with the live performing arts (William Baumol and William Bowen, Performing Arts-The Economic Dilemma [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966]). Flanagan's analysis does little to build on these findings, although his focus on the orchestra and use of updated data yield several new insights. Moreover, much of the material presented in Flanagan's book comes directly from a report prepared for the Andrew W. Mellon Founda - tion (Robert J. Flanagan, Report to Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: The Economic Environ ment of American Symphony Orchestras [New York: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, March 2008]; see http://www.gsb.stanford.edu /news/packages/pdf/Flanagan.pdf, accessed 15 September 2012). The Mellon Foundation, along with a group of industry stakeholders coined the Elephant Task Force, hired Flanagan in 2008 to assess the financial challenges facing contemporary orchestras. …

American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century. Edited by John Spitzer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

CONGEDO MUSICALE

We end up our meeting presenting two DVD which will enable to listen and see Arturo Toscanini conducting his american orchestra, the NBC Symphony, in two interesting fragments of compositions of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. Verdi will be represented by the “Hymn of the Nations”, a cantata written in the years 1861-1862 on a text by Arrigo Boito; and Wagner by the fragment “Siegfried’s Death and Funeral March” taken from the Götterdämmerung. The written text underlines the role of Maestro Toscanini in introducing Wagner’s music in our country, and in showing the art of Verdi with a critical and intellectual approach which was missing in the generic “routine” of the nineteenth century.

American orchestras in the nineteenth century

American orchestras in the nineteenth century

Ellington's Lens as Motive Mediating: Improvising Voices in the Far East Suite

Inspired by an Ellington quote about the influence of his Orchestra's 1963 tour on the composition of the Far East Suite, this article examines the inherently subjective process of translation between musical systems and between musical performances and discursive representations thereof. The two case studies—Anthony Brown's 1999 recording of a re-orchestrated Far East Suite with the Asian American Orchestra; and the “Far East Revisited Project,” an ongoing collaboration featuring the Tony Overwater Trio and the Calefax Reed Quintet—illustrate how Ellington's ideas about transcultural interaction relate not just to musical collaboration but also to the socio-cultural contexts in which musical performance is situated. Ellington's quote includes references to the binary of reflection and refraction, implying a lens metaphor through which I suggest these processes of translation can be discussed. Coupled with the instruments and media used in the case studies, this lens metaphor highlights the importance of technology in mediating both musical and discursive performance. Attention to these mediations requires a shift in research tactics, rooted in specific case studies in which the complex interrelationship between musical performances and their mediating discourses, cultures and technologies, is spun out using multiple methodological perspectives receptive to collaboration and re-interpretation. Inasmuch as Ellington's Far East Suite was composed over time and its individual movements varied and altered, this article calls for a wider scholarly acknowledgement and sensitivity to the ways in which music, musicians, and cultures develop over time and how continuing performances can map new (sometimes disjunct) associations onto the histories of individuals and their music. As such, the article closes positing this lens metaphor as a technology for jazz scholarship, which promotes and acknowledges the subjectivity of the researcher, the importance of context, and an emergent, improvisational stance that embraces the creative aspects of performing jazz studies research.