Whither the orchestra?
In a previous post, I wrote about a few of the most significant challenges facing me as a music professor and conductor at a small science and engineering university located in a remote area. But I don’t think the issues are specific to my location. Instead, looking at the folding of major orchestras in this country and many other factors such as educational trends and funding models, I believe this is a widespread, multifaceted cultural phenomenon. Now, given these challenges, what can/should be done?
In product design, it’s common to talk about a product’s life cycle. There are plenty of empirical and model-based theories about life cycles, most of which talk about growth, maturity, and decline phases. What would happen if we were to talk about the orchestra as a product, a designed system that has a relatively well-defined functionality? Into which phase of the product life cycle would you put the orchestra?
Going further…. If you were the product manager of this particular product, the orchestra, how would you evaluate the market situation, and what would you suggest?
November 11th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Since my husband is a process/product engineer, I feel I can speak to this. I think it is almost impossible to speak of the orchestra as a product simply because of the human element. In fact, as a performer, I have oft been irritated with conductors who treat their ensembles as product, rather than community. In my opinion, the orchestra should constantly be “growth” or there is no point.
November 12th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
People joining together to experience performing is itself a worthy end, and when performing together is a way to experience art, art that doesn’t exist in the absence of people, this is also purely positive. What is concerning me is what I perceive as the “museum-ification” of this art. I think the orchestra, with its roots in the nurturing aristocratic patronage system, and with the intense fertilization (and cross-fertilization) of the 19th century and its integral relationship with the then-rising middle class, is now smack in the middle of cultural global climate change.
In this country, almost all the operas performed are from the short list of the 50 most popular operas. Symphony orchestra programming is bifurcated: there are the old standards and the “new popular” works designed to draw larger audiences and pay the bills. As an example, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra recently had a concert of “the best music of the original Star Trek series,” complete with appearances by two of the actors from the series.
Kids still learn to sing and play instruments, but compare the density of group performance opportunities for kids to the the density of AYSO soccer teams. In schools, football gets money and music gets cut.
After WWI, with so many limitations imposed on composers and performing organizations by the losses of the war and the flu epidemic, some composers and performers retooled to keep active and relevant. Stravinsky composed L’Histoire du Soldat for an orchestra of seven, for example. I think the adjustments that are being attempted today are insufficiently radical to promote the health and growth of the institution known as “the orchestra,” whose function, in very large part, is to facilitate the growth of the participants (including participants who are listeners).