April 2008 Archives

I've been meaning to link to Molly Sheridan's new ArtsJournal blog...there, I've done it. I've known Molly for years, always enjoyed her, always learned from her. And now she's flying. I hate to limit her, by quoting something that doesn't give you her nuance or range, or her flavor, something so merely factual...so follow the link above and read the full Molly...but still here's something she knows more about than I do, something that fits right in with the conversation we've been having here about the new audience, and the blend of new classical music and alternative rock they're so easy with. (Here and here.) It's from Molly's first post, "I'll Take One of Everything, Please":

...a funny thing happened during a panel discussion over at Peabody a few weeks ago: Someone asked me where new music was going and for the first time since I started covering the field in 2001, I realized a big change that I had personally witnessed had finally come to pass.

Picture it: The year is 1999. Where I am living in Brooklyn, many bands are rehearsing in cheap studio spaces. Many of them come from indie rock backgrounds and liberal arts educations, but they are seeking to put their own experimental twist on the genre.

Meanwhile...

Across the river and quite a few blocks uptown--or okay, fine, just as likely right next door--other musicians in other studios are finishing up pieces for their composition degrees at the city's prestigious conservatories. They've got a piece scored for Pierrot ensemble, but they are seeking to put their own experimental twist on the genre.

Sadly, except for the occasional happy anomaly, in 1999 Camp A and Camp B seemed to exist in largely separate worlds, sharing neither common dive bars nor common practices. And this always seemed a shame, because to me it felt like each side had information the other side needed and wanted. I'm not speaking in terms of music (though some wanted to travel that way, too) but more in terms of trading recording technique for orchestration technique. But that was then. These days when I look out, it's striking to see how close these two camps have come, and it looks and sounds great...

Ellipses at the end, not because I cut off in the middle of a sentence, but because I cut off in the middle of a thought. By which I mean that Molly's thoughts are worth reading (and that it's hard to fit their full flavor into any one headline). It's great to have her here.

[Digressions away from music, But there's a musical payoff at the end.]

I had a meeting in Boston. When it ended, I had some time before my train back to NY. The ride is dead time -- restful if I want to rest, but dead if I need to work. So much of my work takes me online (this blog, for instance). I can hack away at my computer, at writing I can do offline, but that takes concentration, and my normal rhythm keeps my online all the time while I work.

And now for the geek paragraph. I'd decided to get a broadband modem for my laptop, so I could go online anywhere, anytime. Why not get it now, and use it on the train? I was walking on Mass Ave in Boston, in Back Bay. The modem I wanted worked on Verizon's network. Back Bay is an upscale neighborhood; there had to be a Verizon Wireless store.

I took out my iPhone, went to Google Maps. One touch on the screen, and the software found me, displayed exactly where I was. I asked it to search for Verizon Wireless. Stores popped up on the map, one just three blocks away. Half an hour later, I had my modem and my data contract. On the train, the software hiccuped before it settled down, but soon I was online. I caught up on e-mail, posted blog comments. Life seemed normal, and relaxed (and I wouldn't have to do the e-mail or the comments later on, when I'd be home, and would want to wind down).

Now for music. When I got tired of working, I looked at the books I'd taken on my trip. Liszt: My Traveling Circus Life is a revealing, funny book about Liszt's tours of England in the 1840s. When he bragged that he'd made more money than Thalberg, endorsed a brand of piano to make still more (but in fact lost money on the tour). But that felt too much like work. I had an absorbing novel, A Journey to the End of the Millennium (that's the first one, in 1000 AD) by A. B. Yehoshua, a novelist I'm reading my way through. But that seemed too serious.

So I took out my iPhone again, and watched some of Martin Scorcese's knockout film -- brilliant, vivid, even profound -- about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. I've been watching it in odd moments, on planes, or in bed before I go to sleep (when I'm alone because I'm in NY, and Anne's in Washington). I'd gotten up to the time when Dylan went electric, and blasted folkies into frightened opposition because he'd injected shots of rock & roll into his sound. In retrospect, he couldn't not have done it. His music was too big to be contained in the acoustic folk world -- he couldn't have been the spokesman for the time, as the film shows he was -- while rock burst out at the crest of the cultural wave, while the people he was speaking for were expressed and energized by the sound of rock.

This was the second musical turning point in the film. The first is when Dylan sang "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and emerged as a spokesman (unplanned) for his generation. But this one was bigger. The emblamatic song is "Like a Rolling Stone," and the sound just explodes. When Dylan himself, reminiscing now, says he'd never heard a song like this before he wrote it, of course he's right, and I'm not sure there's ever been another one like it.

So the jump from his previous songs to this one is a huge jump. And that reminded me of something. Years ago, living alone, obsessively digging into music, I listened to all of Verdi's operas in chronological order, over the course of what must have been just short of a month (unless I listened to two on some days, which I don't think I'd have done even then).

And the revelation was how good -- how explosively good -- Rigoletto is compared to anything that went before. That really amazed me, because I was (and still am) an affectionate fan of Verdi's early works, Il Corsaro, I Due Foscari and the rest, to say nothing of Ernani, Luisa Miller, and Macbeth, which are strong operas even for people who can't quite swallow La Battaglia di Lengano. But Rigoletto (officially, for scholars, the start of Verdi's middle period) is a fiery leap ahead -- just as "Like a Rolling Stone" was for Dylan. The parallel hit me right between the eyes. This isn't Greg the scholar talking. It's Greg the gobsmacked, completely carried away by something he'd never thought about, which completely delighted him.

A day in my life, or part of one...

[Footnote: Technology. Consumerism. I couldn't have my life -- my work life -- without them. The sea is much more wonderful than scuba gear, but you use scuba gear to immerse yourself in the sea. Verdi, of course, I listened to on LP records.

[Footnote for Verdi geeks: In my Verdi binge, I didn't do the correct, scholarly thing. I didn't listen to the original versions of Macbeth, Simon Boccanegra, and La Forza del Destino, and then slot the revisions (aka the versions of these operas we normally hear today) in later on, when they appeared. So technically I didn't hear the music completely in chronological order. And I left out the revision of I Lombardi (an opera whose first version is the one that survives), and honestly can't remember if I listened to both Stiffelio and Aroldo (the second being a revision of the first, but completely reshaped, with a different plot). Nor did I listen separately to the five-act French Don Carlos and the four-act Italian Don Carlo. So sue me. And there may be other scholarly niceties I ignored then, and am forgetting now.

The Metropolitan Opera premiered this season's run of "Daughter of the Regiment" two nights ago, featuring many high C's from Juan Diego Florez. And to go along with the review -- which appeared today -- the New York Times features live audio of Florez singing the C's, followed by an ovation and his tradition-smashing encore. (Well, obviously encores are an opera tradition, but the Met long banned them, so this smashes a Met tradition, while returning to an older and better one.)

I think this is wonderful. And even more so, because the Times plugs the audio, links and all, in its teasers at the bottom of the front page. I got up, bought the paper, scanned the front page -- and went to my computer to hear Florez.

And fine, this isn't the highest artistic achievement in classical music. But it's fun, it's a part of opera (which traditionally is in some ways like sports), and best of all it makes something in classical music a genuine event. Why does someone go to "Daughter of the Regiment"? To hear Florez's high C's. Which is a more vivid, tangible attraction than most nights at the Met (or the Philharmonic, or Carnegie Hall) can boast. Good for the Met, for understanding what they get from this, and for making the audio available. Good for the Times, for running with it.

And for those in classical music who might not care what Florez sings -- the most artistic things will (in classical music, in pop music, in literature, in film, you name it) often, maybe most of the time, get less audience than the spectacles. But you need the large market to keep the small market healthy. You need the large market to generate funding, some of which seeps down to the small markets. (That's certainly true of government funding, as I've seen at first hand. Nobody creates the Opera/Musical Theater program at the NEA to fund Meredith Monk. But once the program exists, to fund the Met, the Houston Grand Opera, and non-profit musicals, Meredith can say, "I'm music theater, too," and she gets funded.)

So we should all be happy to see live audio from the Met, hyped on the front page of the Times. Alert use of the Internet, too, by both parties. Bravo to both.

(My own reaction to Florez? I wasn't at the performance, but the audio sounds fine. Certainly he aces the C's, so easily, in fact, that I'd like to hear him transpose the aria up. Joke. But there's also something a little abstract about the exercise, something uninvolving, at least for me, and maybe a lack of real fun, real verve, real showmanship. So by the middle of the encore, I was bored. Some people, I know, think Florez brings back some golden age of singing, and that's not entirely crazy. Certainly it's not as crazy as thinking Robert Alagna does, or Natalie Dessay, who on her current bel canto aria CD sounds like a careful singer without much verve, passion, or pathos, and whose voice, heard live, can often turn acrid. Her strength is her acting, which doesn't exactly fit the profile of a "golden age" singer -- though, going back many ages, the baritone who premiered the title role in "Rigoletto" was described by a British critic of the time as having a useful range of only one octave, for which he compensated by being a great actor. Getting back to Florez, he sounds too careful and too self-conscious, at least for me, to bring back a golden age, which -- again for me -- would be partly defined by the electricity in the hall, the communion between stage and audience, the sense that something exciting might happen at any moment, the understanding that if the Met did "Tosca," during any given season, with five sopranos singing the title role, all of them would be worth hearing, because all would really connect with the music, and all would do that differently. Thanks to Herbert Breslin, for making that point some time ago to me and my wife. Since we don't have these conditions now, restoring a golden age is tricky. But restoring encores -- and with them, a sense of genuine event at an opera performance -- might help! Along with media publicity for the encores.

(And were the "golden age" performances really that good? Yes. We have audio, and even video, to show what they were like. Just one example -- a "Turandot" at the Met in the '60s, with Stokowski conducting, and Nilsson, Corelli, and Anna Moffo -- who's just as good as her costars -- in the leading roles. Hold a steak near the speakers when you play this performance, and you'll fry it.)

Problem: You're involved with a classical music organization, maybe a big one. And even though you might describe your institution as "a vital community cultural resource" (to quote one orchestra's website), you know that once you get beyond the "cultural" part of that -- which basically means the contribution that you make to the community with your music -- you don't have all that much to offer. You sense that you're not a vital part of the community when other issues -- non-musical issues -- might arise.

Solution: Do something for the environment.

I'm writing this on Earth Day. The main news section of the New York Times has three full-page environmental ads, from Macy's, Starbuck's, and the BBC. Macy's website, on its home page, suggests you ride your bike or walk to work, and offers a link to a Macy's Earth Week celebration, where you can get environmental tips, and learn what Macy's is doing for the cause. The IBM home page prominently asks if you've recycled all your old computers, offering a link to an environmental page that tells you how to do so, with further links to pages like this one, which offers an entire green campaign, with the slogan "Good for business. Good for the planet."

And of course there's more. The New York Mets are building a new stadium. It's going to be green, says the team, built almost completely from recycled steel, and with a green roof over the administrative offices, plus other green initiatives. Major League Baseball has its own green initiative, the Team Greening Program. The Pittsburgh Pirates have an environmental program; the San Francisco Giants generate electricity with solar panels.

And what do classical music institutions do? Nothing I've ever heard of. Which doesn't mean that nobody is doing anything -- that would just about defy belief -- but certainly we don't hear a lot about this. Have any of the new concert halls boasted that they're green? Not that I've heard of. The Nashville Symphony's page for their new Schermerhorn Symphony Center says not a word about anything environmental. The LA Philharmonic's site says nothing green about Disney Hall.

And sure, some -- a lot? -- of the corporate environmental stuff is hype. A computer newsletter I get, "PC World Daily Tech News," asks "Are Big High-Tech Companies Green Hypocrites?" The baseball initiatives have been questioned, as the articles I linked to show. (They generate huge amounts of carbon playing night games.) Back in January, the New York Times reported that the FTC was asking whether corporations really did offset their carbon footprints, after saying that they'd done so.

But classical music organizations don't even take phony stands (if that's what the corporations are really doing). I've blogged about this before, and asked the American Symphony Orchestra League (as it was called back then) if any major orchestras had ever tried to offset the carbon dioxide they generate when they tour. I never got an answer.

So that's my solution to a community relations problem -- take a stand on the environment, and do something about it. It's just about expected, these days, and it's almost shocking (when you think about it for a while) that classical music organizations don't seem to know this.

Footnote: Maybe this is related to something else, the way people who aren't classical music initiates (especially if they're young) can be surprised that big classical music institutions don't do anything for charity. Pop stars do, after all. The almost indignant answer from the institutions is that, hey, they're charities!

But this doesn't wash. From the outside, big classical music institutions look like they're rolling in money. From the inside, they often enough can barely pay their bills, but still their whole presentation (I'm talking about major orchestras, big opera companies, and major concert halls) is lavish.

So they ought to do something for charity. I once privately advised an orchestra about this, suggesting that, since they wanted to raise more money from subscribers, it would help to work for charity themselves, so they'd create an atmosphere of giving. I've heard they've done this, with some success. One way, it seemed to me, would be to stress the charitable work of individual musicians, and also to join in community-wide fundraising efforts.

But each institution can figure this out individually. Just so they do something!

In my last post, I didn't t mean to imply that old music -- Beethoven, Verdi,  you name the composer -- won't be part of the new classical music world I'm dreaming of, when Steve Reich, Bang on a Can, and eighth blackbird are at the heart of the musical mainstream. Anyone who wants to play old music -- aka the masterworks of western musical history (and I mean that very seriously) with conviction will surely do it, and no doubt find an audience. But we probably don't know exactly how that will work, and exactly what place those masterworks -- formerly the classical music mainstream -- will have. They'll have to find their place, an evolution that will be fascinating to watch.

Though once they find it, I'd imagine they'll be loved, even if -- or maybe especially if -- they're played less often than before.

As I've thought more about my last post, and as I've absorbed the very interesting comments, something else occurred to me. This is very radical, I admit, but I think it follows from everything I've said.

Suppose classical concerts were -- as a general rule -- more or less like this eighth blackbird event? Then I think there'd be no gap between classical music and the rest of our culture, and no worries about classical music's future.

Though of course that opens further questions. How large could the audience for a concert like this be? Could it ever be as large as the classical audience is now? Or would a concert like this become the alternative wing of a transformed classical music world, the way alternative rock and dance music are the alternative wing of pop, or art-house films are the alternative wing of movies?

And if this were the case, what would the classical mainstream -- now closely linked to the rest of our current culture, and not separated from it -- be like?

Thursday night I heard a wonderful concert by eighth blackbird, in Zankel Hall. There was a new Steve Reich piece, Double Sextet, and then an extravaganza -- music plus exuberant staging --  from the three Bang on a Can composers, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon. Among much else, this was a real New York event, highlighting music by two generations of composers whose sound just about screams "New York." Steve Reich was New York in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Bang on a Can -- not that they don't have other influences -- come in a direct line from him. That was especially clear at the start of their piece, with a rippling pattern of repeated things that wouldn't have been possible without Reich showing the path.

This was a happy concert, too -- pulsing music, music full of ideas and surprises, exuberant music (though it could be quiet and lyrical, too). One great (repeated moment) -- big happy chords, bright major triads, in the Bang on a Can piece, played on percussion and accordion, with eighth blackbird's enthusiastically grinning pianist handling the accordion.

But the audience could have been much bigger. Thousands of people in New York would have loved this concert, and might well have turned out for them, if they'd only known. I've seen those people, at the Bang on a Can marathon a year ago, at the Wordless music orchestra concert, at Sufjan Stevens's show at BAM, and maybe at the Red Buill orchestra concert a couple of years ago, who filled Carnegie Hall, though that crowd was more club-glamorous than the people at the other three events. This also is at least in part the audience the new "Evening Music" show on WNYC means to attract.

And of course these people weren't at Zankel because nobody tried to attract them. This wonderful concert took place under the old classical paradigm, in which new music concerts have a minority place, and get presented in small, restricted circumstances, on the assumption that not many people will come. Zankel is a terrific, stylish space, but still it's part of that old paradigm and the audience for eighth blackbird was to some extent the familiar new-music in crowd.

So what could be done? Get the Wordless Music e-mail list, and promote the concert to everyone on it. That's a start. But then you have to get viral marketing started. I think you have to start working early, to get consciousness of this event circulating. One place to start would be music schools, not just because students who want to play new music would love working with eighth blackbird, but because even students -- a lot of them, anyway -- who don't take much interest in new music would have loved this event. So get eighth blackbird a residency at one of New York's music schools, have them work there over the course of a year, have students play these two pieces.

That last would be natural. The Reich involves two sextets, which at this concert were both eighth blackbird twice, live and on tape. So have students be the other sextet. And singing in the dead of night is modular, divided into sections that could easily be alternated by various ensembles. Or, since the piece is so exuberantly staged, players could even replace each other in the middle of a section.

Get this into music schools, get students talking about it, and hordes of them might show up for the concert.

Today I got e-mail from a major orchestra, advertising a photo exhibit. The photos sound very interesting. But none were included in the e-mail! Dumb. They had my attention. Why not do something with it?

They gave me a link to click, if I wanted to read a full press release about the photo show. No photos in the press release, either. Come on, people -- don't you know how the Internet works? And yes, you'd have to make separate versions of the press release, one for print, the other for downloading. But how hard would that be? Though why not just include the photos in the print release -- not as separate 8 x 10s, but printed on the paper with the text --  as well?

And speaking of the press release -- why do I have to click to download it? Other orchestras (and non-orchestral institutions, too) include the entire release, complete with formatting, in their press e-mail. Why shouldn't this one do it? Why make it hard for people to read your releases?

While I'm at it, here are some other things that publicists shouldn't do. I offer these thoughts in a constructive spirit, hoping that publicists will see how they can be more effective.

• Don't put "Press Release" -- and nothing more than that -- in the subject line of your e-mail. If I'm pressed for time (no pun intended), your release is this one I won't click on. Use the subject line to tell me something that might interest me.
• Don't send CDs tightly bound in tape-sealed bubble wrap, inside a protective envelope. My wife and I might get a dozen (or even more) CDs a day. None of them arrive damaged. So why an extra layer of protection? It's annoying -- first I have to open the protective envelope, and then get through the bubble wrap.
• Don't put the urgent flag on e-mail, unless you know for sure the content of your message really will be urgent to most people getting it. Often I get e-mail from large institutions, telling me (with great excitement I don't share) that the pianist who's supposed to play a concerto Saturday night has cancelled, and that someone else will be playing instead. I'm sure this is urgent for the institution -- i know the kind of backstage flurry these cancellations cause. But for a critic who gets the e-mail? Maybe not so important. Save the urgent flag for when you're doing business with me, and something has changed that I really, really have to know about.
• Don't use messengers or overnight delivery or even UPS unless you really have to. We get packages from UPS and other carriers, sometimes four times a day. Typically they're new releases from major record lables -- CDs which, to be honest, we might not listen to for weeks, if ever. So why the rush? Why not send the CDs by regular mail? And the point isn't just to save you money. You save me some annoyance. Here I am, sitting home, trying to get my work done, and four times during the day I have to stop my work to buzz the UPS guy through the downstairs door, and then wait for him to get to my apartment so I can sign for the CDs -- which, remember, I haven't any urgent need for (though I'm not saying I'm not glad to get them).
  

Here's something I'm very happy to announce: I'll be giving the commencement address at the Eastman School of Music next month. This warms my heart, because I've had a very happy time teaching at Eastman for the past three years (I teach a quick course in the future of classical music, taught in January, February, and March). And I've bonded each year with my students.

But I'm also  honored to get such recognition from a major mainstream music school. And not just honored -- I'm thrilled to see my ideas taken so seriously.

Some of the links in my Flanagan post didn't work. Apologies. They're now fixed.

And Flanagan himself has offered some clarifications of things I summarized in his work, which I'll put up here shortly. Remember that I'm in the same position as people I criticized in my post. I'm not a social scientist, and I might well get things wrong when I venture into the kind of territory that's usually patrolled by experts.

Which leads to my most important clarification. A social scientist friend told me that I'm wrong to say Baumol's theorizing hasn't been significantly challenged. If you read a standard text on the economics of the arts --  The Economics of Art and Culture, by James Heilbrun and Charles M. Gray -- you'll find an argument against Baumol. I'm not going to summarize their argument, or debate it; I've ordered the book, and when I get it, maybe I'll have something to say. There are economists who disagree, of course.

Certainly I wish I'd known this before I wrote my post. Still, I don't mind serving as an example of the point I made in the last paragraph. If you're not an expert, you venture into expert territory at your peril.

I met Bob Flanagan, by the way, at a conference this past weekend on research about orchestras. And I liked him quite a bit.

...or rather these lines from one of his poems, quoted today in the New York Times Book Review:

I was dismayed at the response to Robert J. Flanagan's very long, very serious, though very academic report on orchestra finances. (Unavoidably academic, however, because Flanagan is an academic.) Could be that I'll sound impatient in what follows, for which I either apologize or not. I'm not sure.

But here's the background. For many years, the Andrew W. Mellon foundation funded more than a dozen orchestras through a program designed to encourage innovation, called the Orchestra Forum. The strengths and weaknesses of that endeavor aren't something I'm going to discuss here, but I was involved for some of its run, as a "fellow" of the program, going to its biannual retreats and participating in all discussions.

And it was from one of those discussions that the Flanagan report was born. The executive director of one of the Big Five was worried about orchestra finances, and convened a meeting attended by representatives of several orchestras, including at least two other high-powered executive directors, but also musicians, and members of various orchestras' boards and staffs. I was at this meeting. The subject of discussion were what the people there called "structural deficits" - what they saw as a long-term pattern of orchestras' expenses growing faster than their income.

Obviously this problem - if real - was serious. So out of this meeting grew something called the Elephant Task Force, a group of board members, musicians, and staff members from a variety of orchestras, who met under Mellon's auspices to study the problem. The name, of course, comes from the notion of the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, in this case the serious financial problems that - at least as Task Force members saw it - weren't being faced.

Eventually the Task Force made its report, which was delivered at one of the Orchestra Forum retreats by the board chairman of the orchestra whose executive director had started all this rolling. His report was dramatic. I'm not going to go into any detail about what was said, but it was dire, including projections that showed how a major orchestra (unnamed) could easily go out of business not many years in the future. I don't know that I've ever had such a shock in all my years in this business.

But where should the Task Force - and its dire predictions - go from there? One thought was to have its work repeated by an economist. Enter Flanagan, commissioned by Mellon to study what the Elephant Task force had studied, to see if its conclusions were correct.

What he came up with is milder than the Task Force's presentation - no predictions of demise. But certainly he supported the idea that orchestras have structural deficits, and, though he didn't use the term, that notion was a central part of his report.

Which I why I'm going to seem impatient. One big reaction to the report was people not even remotely understanding what Flanagan said, and thinking instead that he'd only reported something obvious, that orchestras have deficits, that their income from ticket sales can't alone support them. "Duh!" said many people, with scathing derision, most famously here, but also echoed here and here (and probably other places). This stupid guy works all this time, we're told, backed by a major foundation, and all he comes up with is something everybody knows. Orchestras can't earn all the money it takes to run them. Duh!

But that's a complete misunderstanding of what the report actually says. I'll grant that report isn't lively to read, and that Flanagan does repeat, maybe more than he needs to, the statement that orchestras can't pay their expenses with earned income alone. Maybe he does this because he's an outsider to the field, and maybe to the entire non-profit world, so the fact of deficits is more notable to him than it is to people - who'd certainly include everyone making fun of him - who live with this information every day. But then William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen also keep repeating this very basic fact in their seminal 1966 study, Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma --which was an important starting point for Flanagan, as it should be for anyone looking at performing arts financial issues - and nobody made fun of them.

But what did Flanagan really say? Now we're back to those structural deficits, strongly sensed by people directly involved with them - orchestra people, musicians, board members, and staff members - and strongly stressed in the Elephant Task Force report. Flanagan (though, as I said, without using the term) said that they exist, that for orchestras, the gap between earned income and expenses is constantly increasing. Here's where he summarizes that, on page 28 of his report:

For most orchestras the trend increase in real performance expenses is two to four times as large as the trend increase in real performance income....[T]he majority of orchestras have continued to experience a long-term worsening of the performance income gap, even after controlling for the perturbations introduced by changes in general economic conditions that are beyond the control of the symphony community. Even if orchestras adjust successfully to the cyclical "weather," the long-run economic "climate" of the industry produces ever-increasing performance deficits. [Those are his italics.]

And just to make everything clear: When Flanagan talks about "performance deficits" he doesn't mean bottom-line deficits, the kind that leave orchestras in the red at the end of a fiscal year, and therefore in debt, because they spent more money than they take in. He knows perfectly well that orchestras raise money far beyond what they earn in ticket sales, and that overall their budgets are in balance. A "performance deficit" simply means the difference between the amount of income earned through ticket sales and the amount of income needed. This constantly is growing, and while it doesn't leave orchestras floundering in helpless debt, it certainly puts pressure on them.

Or, to put this differently: As time goes on, a smaller portion of orchestras' budget comes from ticket sales, and therefore a larger portion of their budget has to be raised from private and institutional donors. So, as the decades pass, orchestras have to work harder and harder to raise the money they need.

Did the people who laughed at Flanagan know that he was saying this? Do they themselves know that, over time, the gap between earned income and expenses has constantly grown larger?

And about what Flanagan concluded:

First, Baumol and Bowen came to exactly the same conclusion in 1966, after a similarly serious academic study.

Second, the conclusion is supported by data. As Flanagan points out (and as I wrote long ago right here in my blog), orchestras used to get much more of their income from ticket sales than they do now. In fact, there's been a constant decline in this for 70 years (and maybe even longer, if we only had earlier data to show us what was happening). In the 1930s, orchestras earned, on the average, 85% of their budgets from ticket sales. In 1962 the figure was 58% and in 1972 it had fallen to 47%. It's a lot lower now. So it's hard to dispute Flanagan's conclusion. What he did was put the data on firmer ground, adjusting it to eliminate bumps and dips created by the economic ups and downs, so we can see the data in its purest form.

Third, there's an economic principle that predicts that this will happen, called, variously, "Baumol's dilemma" or "Baumol's disease" or "Baumol's curse." Baumol, who's been called the most distinguished economist who's never won the Nobel Prize, came up with this principle in his 1960s study. Basically it says that enterprises not engaged in manufacturing - and especially service industries - don't show gains in productivity equal to the productivity gains in the rest of the economy. Thus they're always lagging behind financially, always looking for more and more cash to pay the rising expenses that everybody has, but which they have trouble meeting, because their productivity doesn't rise.

Or, more specifically: If I run a car company, over the long run I spend less and less money to make more and more cars. This is because, thanks to productivity increases, I can make more cars with the same number of employees. (Or, unfortunately, even fewer, which is one reason why Michigan is a wasteland of unemployment.) Thanks to this , I can pay my employees more, and I have money to set aside for research and innovation.

But if I'm an orchestra, I'm playing masterworks with the same number of musicians I used in 1937. And my staff is bigger - I'm now paying many people to raise money for the orchestra, while in 1937 I had no fundraising staff at all. (And no marketing staff, either - both funding and ticket sales more or less took care of themselves, or at least were vastly easier than they are today.) So, roughly speaking, putting on concerts costs me the same amount it did in 1937. Purely in fiscal terms, I haven't gotten more productive. But meanwhile salaries have risen, across the board, throughout the economy, and I have to pay those salaries. So I'm in an economic bind. I'm always squeezed - I always have to find more money than I needed a decade ago.

Or, more simply, my ticket sales just don't pay as large a part of my expenses as they used to - which is exactly what in fact has happened.

So there's no doubt that Flanagan is right. And if anything, he understates how serious the situation is. Yes, orchestras have found ways to raise the money that they need. But there's always the potential for a serious crisis, and one in fact arose late in the 1960s, when the largest orchestras expanded their seasons and raised musicians' salaries - and when the costs of that collided with the long-term trend of getting less and less income from ticket sales.

And so the largest orchestras, back in 1969, really thought that they were going out of business. I have to laugh a little here (however grimly), because classical music optimists keep saying, "Oh, all this talk of gloom and doom is ridiculous. People are always saying classical music will die!" And, then, often enough, they'll cite newspaper stories from the late '60s and early '70s, predicting orchestras' demise. Ha! they say. It never happened! See how silly these predictions are?

But what really happened? The crisis was very real. And so the Big Five hired McKinsey, the big consulting firm, to study what was going on. McKinsey did a preliminary study, and then a bigger one in 1972, working now for a consortium of 28 large orchestras. (See my blog posts about this, here and here.) The conclusions? Orchestras were in really big trouble, and the only solution was for the federal government to fund 25% of every orchestra's budget.

We know that didn't happen. So how did orchestras survive? It's simple - they developed the funding structure we take for granted now, in which they work feverishly to get donations from individuals, corporations, and foundations. And they staff large development departments to do that work. This all evolved during the 1970s, in response to the late '60s financial crisis that orchestras quite genuinely had.

Which shows that the funding pressure, growing over time, can get quite serious. It can lead orchestras to completely reinvent the way they fund themselves. So what happens if they have another crisis like the one in 1969? What happens if the percentage of income from ticket sales keeps falling - which we have no reason to believe won't happen - and other funding, under stronger pressure now, falls short? (Which could happen, for many reasons, one of which is the decline in concert attendance that Flanagan cites, and which I've noted in my blog before, here, for instance. One important source of donors, for orchestras, is the people who go to concerts. So if the number of people going to concerts falls, the number of donors ought to fall, too, at least in the future. Flanagan doesn't note this danger, and also doesn't mention the late-'60s crisis.)

There's more to say about Flanagan, of course. The study has its flaws, and some details of it have been strongly challenged, privately, to me, by a consultant who's worked with major orchestras. He thinks, for instance, that Flanagan is wrong in one of his other notable conclusions, which is that money spent on marketing and fund-raising may not do much good. (He also thinks orchestras will have a major financial crisis in the next few years.)

And I can understand, at least a little, the anger of the musicians in ICSOM. Flanagan does say that musicians' salaries, during the period he studied, rose faster than the consumer price index. I find his other comments on salaries very mild - he's hardly saying that salaries should be cut back. But musicians are sensitive. And - as Flanagan, for whatever reason, doesn't note - some orchestras have negotiated pay cuts in recent years, sometimes temporary ones, sometimes longer lasting. So no wonder musicians fly up in anger when the subject seems to come up, as maybe it seemed to in Flanagan's report. (The consultant I mentioned says, by the way, that musicians' pay hasn't risen any faster than the pay of other highly trained professions, a comparison that Flanagan might have made, but didn't.)

But what I can't understand - or at least don't have much sympathy for - is the hysteria (there's no other word) in the musicians' response. When they start talking about "our great art form," as they do toward the end of their statement, it's clear that their emotions have surged way beyond overdrive. It's as if they're afraid of bad news. "Bankruptcy used as a fund raising tool," they scream. "Ridiculous." But Flanagan never talks about bankruptcy. Nor does he think that orchestras are going bankrupt.

And if the financial news is bad, should orchestras hide it? Are they even able to hide it? This actually is a subject discussed behind the scenes in the orchestra world, and with my own ears I've heard at least one powerful orchestra manager say the public should never be told how bad things are, because that would scare off donors. The answer of course would be that donors would be more than scared if they find out they've been lied to. They'll be furious.

But there's an additional problem with hiding bad news - you might go into denial, and hide the bad news (or at least the extent of its badness) even from yourself. At least if you admit your problems it publicly, you're forced to do something about them. (Or at least to say you are.) The ICSOM musicians, I fear, sound like they're in the denial zone, since one reading of their statement might be something like this: Bad news is bad for us! So there isn't any!

And one final point. Some critics of the report seem to have anointed themselves as economists, and go around disputing any economic analysis that they decide they don't like. I found this happening when I e-mailed privately with one published critic of the report, someone I'm friendly with, and I'll admit I called him on it. There's also a notable music blogger whom I won't name, someone I otherwise greatly respect, who - though he probably wouldn't tell physicists what's wrong with the theory of relativity - runs out to tell the world why Baumol was wrong, why Baumol's dilemma shouldn't be taken seriously.

Which isn't to say that economists, even distinguished ones, can't be wrong. (And Baumol, often cited as a top candidate for the Nobel Prize, is certainly distinguished. I won't offer any single link here. Just Google "Baumol Nobel Prize" and see what you get.) And of course economists can disagree with each other. But I had a cognitive psychologist pester me, via e-mail, with total nonsense about Pierre Boulez. And at one of the Mellon meetings, an arrogant consultant told some of us that professional conductors aren't needed, that orchestral musicians should just take turns conducting their orchestras. When we tried to tell him why he was wrong, he smugly told us that we were standing in the way of innovation.

So how would an impartial panel of economists react to this blogger's post? Choose one:

This man is right. And he's taught us something! None of us ever thought of anything he said.

Or:

Yes, he has a point. We've disputed these things among ourselves, and some of us say pretty much what he does.

Or:

Sorry. Some of us might disagree with Baumol, but this man doesn't understand the principles involved. What he says doesn't make sense to any of us, even those who come to the same conclusion he does.

Though from what I've gathered - and I, as a non-economist, could of course be wrong - there's no serious disagreement with Baumol's theory. Well, at least I covered myself by saying that I could be wrong. I am wrong. Some economists do argue with Baumol, and you can find these arguments in a standard text, The Economics of Art and Culture, by James Heilbrun and Charles M. Gray. I've ordered that book, and will find out what sense I can make of the debate. But I'd urge you take this as en example not only of me making a mistake, but of how tricky it can be for non-experts to venture into expert territory.

To paraphrase the old quote about the Nazis: "They came for the comic books, but I didn't read comic books..."

An inspired book...

Seismic recording.