Positive / Visible / Social (Organized): orchestras and the question of “public goods”
Show NotesWe talk about orchestras, ask whether financial viability is a guide to the health or importance of particular institutions (hint: Betteridge’s Law), and look at how orchestras and other such institutions can be real markers of cultural health even for the people they don’t directly affect.
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An article in The New York Times, in 1903, referenced in The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras, by Robert J. Flanagan:
The permanent orchestra season has, as usual, been financially a bad one all over the country. With the end of April… come the bills for those who pay the piper…. There is always a deficit, which public-spirited guarantors are called upon to pay year after year. A permanent orchestra, it seems pretty welle stablished by American experience, is not at present a paying institution, and is not likely immediately to become so…. [Neverthless,] the prevailing note of the guarantors of the America Orchestras is one of hopefulness. Things are coming on; the public is being educated; it will support the orchestras in larger and larger numbers till they are finally… self-supporting.Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:
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