{"id":4159,"date":"2026-08-16T22:34:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T02:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=4159"},"modified":"2026-08-16T22:35:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T02:35:00","slug":"american-classical-music-at-250-take-six-the-ford-foundations-misguided-philanthropy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/08\/american-classical-music-at-250-take-six-the-ford-foundations-misguided-philanthropy.html","title":{"rendered":"American Classical Music at 250, Take Six — The Ford Foundation’s Misguided Philanthropy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Since filing a New York Times<\/em> piece<\/a><\/strong> on the perilous state of American classical music 250 years since the nation\u2019s founding, I\u2019ve written five follow-up blogs and participated in a podcast<\/a><\/strong> with the conductor Kenneth Woods. The response has been voluminous and informative. The most telling responses have come from conductors and orchestral musicians. Practically without exception, they don\u2019t buy the mantra \u201corchestras are better than ever.\u201d Rather, they ponder and regret that something has gone wrong. The malaise in question takes many forms, including (I have written<\/a><\/strong>) \u201ca disposition of diminished motivation afflicting our most prominent orchestras, as if the music fails to impel a commanding physical and emotional response.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weekends’s emails included one from a notable American conductor, now in his seventies, arguing: \u201cDon\u2019t blame the conductors for <\/em>the attitude of tenured players who are over-worked and no longer love music.\u201d In fact, all of us \u2013 conductors, players, audiences \u2013 are victims in common of the Zeitgeist: a growing erasure of the arts is a function of the times in which we live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day I stumbled upon a youtube link<\/a><\/strong> to a live Detroit Symphony performance of Mahler\u2019s Fifth from 1959, when this big symphony still seemed new. The conductor was Paul Paray. I listened to the finale. It is the fastest version I\u2019ve ever encountered \u2013 and also the most memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For readers for whom Paray\/Detroit (1952-1963) may be unknown \u2013 this was an orchestra considered by many the supreme \u201cFrench orchestra\u201d of its time with a style all its own: tactile diction, lean sonorities, limpid textures, brisk tempos, gunshot attacks. In frothy corners of the French repertoire, it was unapproachable. A prime sample of Paray\/Detroit at full throttle is this<\/a> <\/strong>blistering 1958 rendition of Berlioz\u2019s Corsair<\/em> Overture. In Germanic repertoire, Paray\/Detroit is more an acquired taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A glance at the finale of Mahler\u2019s Fifth explains why Paul Paray, of all people, would have thought to undertake this five-movement behemoth at a moment when few others were playing it. The music teems with cuckoo cries and childish gambols, with madcap fugatos and darting melodic feints, with prickly staccatisimos and vertiginous ascents \u2013 stacked atop one another. Its exuberance is partly a function of sustained foreground hyperactivity. In Paray\u2019s performance, it\u2019s all spectacularly articulate at breakneck speed.. And I might add that the famous Adagietto, coming right before, is remarkably impassioned. (Mischa Mischakoff, presiding over Paray\u2019s strings, was previously concertmaster of Stokowski\u2019s Philadelphia Orchestra and of Toscanini\u2019s NBC Symphony, )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the many things that could be said about Paray’s feat, one crowning observation is that a style deeply acquired will prove applicable, and activating, even in music far afield. A supreme example is Yevgeny Mravinsky\u2019s Leningrad Philharmonic (\u201cThe World\u2019s Greatest Orchestra<\/a><\/strong>\u201d), whose style and sonority were based in Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich \u2013 and yet proved irresistible in the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. But what clinches Paray\u2019s achievement is the hunger of his musicians. They are at all times going for broke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It occurred to me to ask AI how many concerts the Detroit Symphony typically played under Paul Paray. Answer: the season comprised multiple weekly performances of a given subscription program over a period of 24 to 30 weeks. During the 1970s, a 52-week contract was negotiated. That is one reason the Detroit Symphony under Paul Paray sounds hungrier than what we typically hear today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings me to the main topic of this essay: the Ford Foundation, which in 1966 initiated an $80.2 million infusion (about $830 million today) for orchestras. A central goal was to insure a \u201cliving wage\u201d for orchestral musicians by assuring fulltime employment. The outcome was lengthened symphonic seasons, with contracts for 40 weeks and more. Certainly the musicians deserved the pay raise. They were accustomed to supplementing their salaried income with jobs of various kinds to the side. In retrospect, the Ford money should have been spent to pay musicians more per service. The unintended outcome was a crisis of concert supply outstripping demand. Ever since, orchestras have mainly engaged in fundraising and marketing. And musicians \u2013 to again cite the conductor who wrote to me the other day \u2013 have become \u201cover-worked.\u201d They \u201cno longer love music.\u201d The broadcasts of the 1930s and forties about which I redundantly write \u2013 from New York, from Boston, from Philadelphia, from Minneapolis \u2013 document a condition of hyper-engagement once a norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is some of what I wrote about the Ford Foundation grants in Classical Music in<\/strong> America<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn combination with pressure from the ranks, the new money steeply increased the number of concerts. In 1960, full-time, twelve-month employment was unknown. By 1970-71, six orchestras had agreed to fifty-two-week contracts, and another five had contracts of forty-five weeks or more. This new frequency of performance was not audience-driven. It may be safely assumed that neither Beethoven nor Brahms, in music-obsessed Vienna, remotely envisioned a diet of three and four symphonic performances per orchestra per week \u2013 or up to 171 per year (the New York Philharmonic in 2000-2001) . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany who played in American orchestras now attained a respectable living wage for the first time. Whether they knew or admitted it, the victory was Pyrrhic. Scrambling to manufacture new \u201cservices\u201d promised by new agreements, orchestras created new concerts that could not adequately be planned, prepared, sold, or assimilated. Many were underrehearsed summer programs, children\u2019s programs, or pops programs, or exhausting \u2018run-outs\u2019 to high school auditoriums. Boredom and resentment were rife . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBetween 1960 and 2000, the New York Philharmonic\u2019s budget grew from $2 million to $34 million, the Boston Symphony\u2019s from $2 million to $55 million. In combination with precipitously rising costs, excess concerts dictated a new orchestral function: marketing . . . a dense scaffold of merchandising activity behind which many an orchestra plotted to standardize its produce. Burdened with an expanding gap between income and expenses, orchestras found themselves thick in the business of fund-raising; the Boston Symphony\u2019s development staff grew from seventeen to twenty -nine in the final decades of the twentieth century. . . . \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, today\u2019s big American orchestras give too many concerts. Supply outstrips demand. Compared to previous generations, symphonic musicians are run down. Their union representatives typically resist reducing the season. But that\u2019s not the same as reducing the number of \u201cservices\u201d an orchestra member performs. As I\u2019ve many times written, the happiest musicians I\u2019ve ever encountered in a professional American orchestra are the nine salaried members of the South Dakota Symphony<\/a>, <\/strong>comprising a string quartet and woodwind quintet. They furnish 150 services annually, most of which are not symphonic concerts. Among other things, they travel to Indian reservations to teach and make music. And they are largely self-governing \u2013 another topic for another time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blogs in this series enumerate challenges large and small. The big picture, as drawn by the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa<\/a>, is \u201csocial acceleration.\u201d Every parameter of human existence is changing ever more rapidly. We\u2019re increasingly condemned to live in the moment. We ever more rapidly forget the past. But symphonic performance thrives on style, lineage, and tradition. When the New York Philharmonic, in its program book, profiles a young violinist and asks: \u201cWhat is your favorite music?\u201d, when she replies: \u201cWhatever I am playing at the moment,\u201d that\u2019s a red flag. The contributing factors, all highlighted in my podcast<\/a><\/strong> with Ken Woods, include the audition process, conservatory education, an ageing repertoire, and a failure to promote an American canon sufficient to generate an American style of performance. As Ken points out: when an actor prepares a role, they read about the play and the playwright. If the play is based in history, they read some history. Can today\u2019s young musicians even play a Viennese waltz? Tscho Theissing<\/a><\/strong> says: no, not even in Vienna. A faceless \u201cinternational style\u201d reigns in the conservatory studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A story I\u2019ve told before: Decades ago, I briefly taught at the Manhattan School of Music. My course, which proved abortive, was mandatory for graduate students in a two-year \u201cOrchestral Performance\u201d sequence. I shared historic recordings. I lectured on the institutional history of the orchestra. I assigned reading and writing. One day Larry Tamburri visited the class. At the time, he was Executive Director of the New Jersey Symphony. Larry drew two circles on the blackboard, one large and the other small. The small circle, he said, represented the traditional role of the orchestral musician. The big circle represented the enlarged role he wanted his musicians to undertake as full stakeholders in a cultural institution. He wanted them to do more than rehearse and perform. The class responded with a prolonged silence. I said: He\u2019s telling you what I\u2019ve been preaching for the last two months \u2013 what do you think? A bassoonist answered: \u201cWe are here to hone our instrumental skills and to learn how to win an audition. Everything else can wait.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it can\u2019t. One way or another, orchestral musicians need to re-acquire a sense of agency. They need to \u201cfeel it.\u201d They need to matter.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on the Ford Foundation orchestra grants and what went wrong, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Since filing a New York Times piece on the perilous state of American classical music 250 years since the nation\u2019s founding, I\u2019ve written five follow-up blogs and participated in a podcast with the conductor Kenneth Woods. The response has been voluminous and informative. The most telling responses have come from conductors and orchestral musicians. Practically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-155","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4159"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4173,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions\/4173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}