The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras
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Artistic Triumphs and Economic Challenges
Robert J. Flanagan
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Format: ClothPrice: $55.00
This book analyzes the economic challenges facing symphony orchestras and contrasts the experience of orchestras in the United States (where there is little direct government support) and abroad (where governments typically provide large direct subsidies). Robert J. Flanagan explains the tension between artistic excellence and financial jeopardy that confronts most symphony orchestras. He analyzes three complementary strategies for addressing orchestras’ economic challenges—raising performance revenues, slowing the growth of performance expenses, and increasing nonperformance income—and demonstrates that none of the three strategies alone is likely to provide economic security for orchestras.
“This important and readable volume demonstrates the underlying disconnect between artistic achievement and economic reality facing the professional symphony orchestra. Its careful analysis, based on extensive data, lays out the ground, including relentlessly rising costs and ageing audiences, for concern for the future of this vital cultural activity in the U.S. and elsewhere. It is a volume not to be missed by anyone concerned with tomorrow’s state of the arts.”—William Baumol, The Cost Disease
—Jesse Rosen, Symphony Magazine
Publication Date: January 24, 2012
14 b/w illus.
