“They Love Us…They Love Us Not Part 1”

I once thought that I would have safely retired from my career before the orchestra business, as we know it, went belly up. Now, I’m not so sure.

In 1987, Alan Bloom wrote in The Closing of the American Mind that, “…classical music is dead among the young,” that it has become a “specialized taste,” like “Greek language or pre-Columbian architecture.” From my own observations of“winner” concerts with numerous empty seats to media commentators who declared the business not just dying but already dead, it seemed to me that if our art form was dead among the young it wasn’t particularly healthy in other age groups as well. My hunch was that our culture was “done” with us and that the picture of the symphony orchestra sulking away like a jilted lover, thrown over by our culture for art forms with more youthful appeal and sleeker lines to die broken hearted, seemed like our unavoidable fate.

But I have come to frame the problem in a different way, a way in which there are possibilities for a reconstitution of our business, or, at least, a way to have a fighting chance. Rather than thinking of our art form as the victim of a societal change of heart, I wonder if we are more like a business that finds itself in an environment where the number of competitors has increased and the competition for customers has over time become much more heated.

The biggest problem, though, might be our failure to realize that we are competing for our lives and, because we have come to rely on faulty assumptions and questionable attitudes rooted in our collective past, we are loosing ground and valuable time. To use a familiar aphorism, we are “fiddling while Rome burns.”

I floated my initial idea at one of the first Mellon Foundation “Orchestra Forum”[1] retreats a few years ago. One of the evenings of the retreat was dedicated to “breakout sessions” for those attending (musicians, staff, and board members of the orchestras receiving Mellon grants at the time). These breakout sessions would be based on topics generated by the participants, and I was the first to suggest one. When asked to announce the topic, I said, “My topic is, ‘Our Culture’s interest in our Art Form is on the Wane.'”

The breakout session was well attended by several high profile people in the business including Tom Morris, Executive Director of the Cleveland Orchestra (now retired). Many said our demise was exaggerated, and among the most ardent of those voices was Morris, who said “We are selling more tickets than ever.”

In spite of Mr. Bloom’s impressions of the health of classical music, there are many reasons that times should never be better. For example, we should be enjoying the kismet of the agreement between demographic trends in the US and the traditional portrait of our concert attendees. The picture of those who attend symphony orchestra concerts has been fairly constant: they are typically age 55 or older, middle to upper middle class (not disproportionately wealthy), have few if any children at home, and are overwhelmingly college educated[2].

Coincidentally, the Baby Boomers, the numerically largest generation in American History, is entering that demographic by the thousands every day. It is one of the most affluent and certainly the best-educated generation to enter that demographic in the past century. In 2000, 28% of Americans had Bachelor’s degrees, an all time high[3]. Another positive demographic element is that there are many older women than men. In 2000, three out of five symphony orchestra tickets are purchased by women[4].

However, not everyone at the breakout session was convinced, and it wasn’t long before stories about the symphony’s diminished place in our cultural landscape came to my attention. Shortly after the Mellon retreat, I heard a news story that Tower Records, the nation’s largest retailer of recorded music, had decided to make a new deal with classical labels, negotiating to keep classical CDs “on hold” for 360 days before paying for them. A recording label executive compared this to selling classical music on consignment. In other words, they would stock the product but no longer had confidence in selling it[5].

Not long after that, I saw a newspaper story about Internet retailers of used CDs. When the reporter asked these burgeoning Internet-based businesses if they sold used classical music CDs, they all answered in the negative. Apparently, the demand was so low that CDs of Beethoven and Mozart didn’t even merit the cost of storage. CDs are not ticket sales, but it seemed to me that they were like what biologists call “indicator species” in troubled habitats; when those species start to diminish, scientific observers know that the ecosystem is in jeopardy[6].

Then, in late 2003, one of the Knight Foundation’s Issues Briefs married anecdote to data. In “Bridging the Gap: Innovations to Save our Orchestras,” the authors acknowledged that, industry wide, subscription sales were down. Though some orchestras were experiencing some success in single ticket sales, these did not make up for the downturn in subscription sales, and the net trend was indeed downward.[7]

The reasons often used to explain the flagging interest in our art form seemed plausible enough: the decline of music/arts education in the schools, the perceived aging of our audience, etc. But these reasons began to lack resonance with me. Yes, perhaps music education in the form of “general music appreciation” has declined, but high school bands still play at football games, then play at contests during the rest of the year; and many of the pieces those groups play are transcriptions from our repertoire. This means that a large number of our present and potential customers have had at least some secondhand exposure to our music and art form while in high school.

The demographics should help us as well. The most educated population of Americans is entering the symphony orchestra’s target demographic in a rising tide, and the percentage of Americans with advanced degrees is higher than ever. The fact that one has heard of Mozart ought to make one more predisposed to attend a concert of his music. In my estimation, the average integrity level for the artistic product of professional orchestras in this country has never been higher.

In short, while things have never been tougher, they should be better than ever. But I eventually came up with a narrative to describe the symphony orchestra business that reframed our situation by comparing it to an industry we all know well as consumers. I found this narrative served as an analogy which better defined what I feel are the real competitive issues facing our immediate and long-term future. I’ll begin the second installment in this series with that narrative.

[1] Supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Orchestra forum endeavors to “…the convening of musicians, trustees, and executives of these organizations in creatively addressing four primary themes: strengthening the work of artistic leadership, developing the artistic and institutional roles of musicians, building collaborative cultures within orchestra organizations, and expanding the relationship of orchestras to their communities (www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?relyear=2006&itemno=68).

[2] I first saw these demographics in a marketing study done by the Maritz Corporation for the St. Louis Symphony in the mid ‘90s; they were corroborated by “Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study” done by the Knight Foundation in 2002; see tables 5C, 5D, 5E, 5K-1, and 5M

[3] US Census Bureau

[4] Innovations to Save Our Orchestras: Agonizing but Successful Change, table 5M

[5] Classical Troubles at Tower

[6] Since that time, the situation has changed somewhat. A recent search of used CD sites showed that some do carry classical music, though “classical music” was not an option on their provided search engines. When “Classical Music” was put into the search engine, the results included mostly products like Charlotte Church CDs and even a “classical” CD of the Rolling Stones. I attribute this change to the exponential expansion of internet-based commerce rather than any positive change in the public’s interest in classical music.

[7] Innovations to Save Our Orchestras: Agonizing but Successful Change“