Anand Krishnan, Stanford University
The quality of American orchestras is in rapid decline. Many professional orchestras have been forced into semi-professional status, with over 80% of the roughly 2,000 orchestras in the US now having an operating budget of under $300,000. The latest example of this phenomenon was seen in San Antonio, the nation’s 7th largest city, where an orchestra that regularly welcomed the great violinist Jascha Heifetz was forced to ask its musicians to accept wages under the national poverty line. The federal government must use the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to better support American orchestras—only then will they be able to replicate the parity that they held with their European counterparts in the late 20th century.
Orchestras have never survived off the proceeds from their performances alone—even in the 18th and 19th centuries, the most common employment for a classical musician or composer was in the court of a European royal. The status quo is hardly different, with donations from arts patrons making up roughly half of the average American orchestra’s revenue. However, the revenue generated by the sale of concert tickets still plays a key role in keeping orchestras afloat. Unfortunately, the lack of government support for American orchestras results in prohibitively high ticket prices that discourage many from attending classical concerts—many symphony halls charge an average of nearly $80 a ticket.
The story is different across the Atlantic, where government funding sometimes accounts for more than 50% of an orchestra’s annual operating budget. This has had tangible effects, as seen in a 2010 poll in which conductors and musicians ranked the best orchestras in the world and placed only three American orchestras in the top ten. Even Canadian orchestras, which enjoy less federal funding than European groups, receive 49% of their budget from the government on average, compared to a measly 13% for American orchestras, per a Journal of Cultural Economics study.
Established groups in the American orchestra scene are not harmed by rising ticket prices and poor government funding; rather, local orchestras bear the brunt of the burden. While orchestras like the New York Philharmonic can offer a wide array of community programming to spread classical music, smaller community orchestras have neither the resources nor the expertise to host such events. As a result, the areas they serve receive less exposure to classical music. Thus, a question arises: Should the American government be obligated to fund such arts organizations that cannot survive on a purely commercial basis?
Perhaps the most poignant argument in favor of this funding comes from instrumentalist political philosophy. Authors like John Rawls contend that cultural infrastructure should be treated in a similar manner to capital and “primary” goods. Rawls views the preservation of a “robust culture” as necessary for the economic function of a state, therefore making arts organizations viable candidates for state funding. Though our perception of “cultural heritage” is often limited to physical monuments and artifacts, the fact is that there are many non-tangible ways in which culture can be transmitted as well—it remains the duty of any government to preserve them.
The most feasible way for the American government to make music accessible to all of its citizens is by increasing funding through NEA. With this additional support, orchestras will stop relying as much on ticket sales to bolster their income, giving them greater flexibility to decrease ticket prices.
Forget about growth, however: The NEA is under constant threat of being defunded. A House vote in November 2023 defeated an amendment to entirely defund the program, but the program’s budget was still reduced by 10%. Furthermore, out of the NEA’s $207 million budget in FY 2022, a mere $4.82 million was given directly to American orchestras, whereas the lion’s share of funding was taken by generalized state arts agencies. Given that American orchestras generate over $1.8 billion for the country’s GDP, the trivial amount of federal funding they receive is almost unfathomable.
Given the vital role that symphonies play in communities across the US, imagine what they could do with a greater amount of earmarked NEA funding. By making programming more accessible and cost effective, orchestras could truly fulfill their task of cultural preservation. Thus, it is imperative that the federal government prevent the NEA from being defunded while also increasing the share of its funding that American symphony orchestras receive.