CLASSICAL DILEMMA : Paying for that symphony orchestra.

Astagnant U.S. economy and complex world events have cast a shadow over North America's orchestral landscape. In California, the San Jose Symphony, with a $2.5 million deficit and declining attendance after 123 years of performances, has gone out of business. The orchestra had been counting on 60 percent of its $8 million annual budget from contributions and 40 percent from ticket sales, expectations that were cruelly disappointed. The San Jose Mercury News noted mournfully that the local symphony was "older than all the other arts groups in the city, not to mention most of the buildings. It has been and should be an important part of the community's cultural life. But age and tradition alone can't guarantee its survival." The Saint Louis and Toronto symphonies are also deeply in debt, and even the mighty Chicago Symphony is in trouble, canceling its twenty-seven-year series of weekly nationally syndicated radio broadcasts--the last remaining U.S. orchestra to be heard on the radio fifty-two weeks a year. David Levin, vice president of WFMT Radio Networks, stated that the terrorist bombings only "compounded the difficulty" of securing funding for U.S. orchestras' concert broadcasts.

New York's Carnegie Hall has delayed by a year the opening of a new underground 650-seat concert space, "when it is hoped that the city's economic climate will be more receptive to it," Robert Harth, the hall's artistic director, told the New York Times. "The landscape has changed significantly since September 11," Harth said, "and the issue of ticket sales in the current economic climate is a significant consideration for all arts organizations right now."

Harth's views are backed up by other examples. In Canada, the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic, and Symphony New Brunswick have similar woes. Business Week recently headlined a story, "For the Arts, the Party Is Over." The article observed that in the best of times, orchestras must scramble for donations, but that so many valid and urgent charities are competing nowadays for dollars in a discouraging economy music must inevitably suffer.

But is the party really over? The American Symphony Orchestra League, a New York based collective that includes almost all U.S. groups, says in fact orchestral concert attendance has increased by 3 percent from 1995 to 2000, to around 32 million people. The percentage of orchestras with financial deficits declined from 49 percent in 1990-91 to 29 percent in 1999-2000.

The average age of subscribers to orchestral seasons has remained constant for many years, between fifty-two and fifty-five, belying the notion that classical music fans are an aging bunch. Indeed, as life expectancies have increased, people who start subscribing to classical series in middle age can be counted on to retain their subscriptions for longer than ever before.

The fact is, orchestras, like all arts institutions, have their ups and downs that are closely tied to the economy. At a time when even MTV is downsizing, it is hardly surprising that some orchestras are suffering. They live not just on ticket sales and donations, but also on the income from their endowments, which common wisdom states should be three to four times an orchestra's annual budget. The San Jose Symphony, with a $7.8 million budget and only a $1 million endowment, had been living on borrowed time. The Saint Louis Symphony has a current annual budget of nearly $26 million and an endowment of only $27 million. That's a recipe for trouble, if not imminent disaster. However, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has a $22.5 million budget and an endowment of more than $65 million, meaning that it will not be featured in the kind of gloom-and-doom, death-of-the-symphony articles that media mavens find so easy to write these days. Another Texan ensemble, the Fort Worth Symphony, with a $9.9 million budget, is well on the way to raising an endowment of $30 million, which is more good news generally overlooked.

As America fights a war against terrorism that will take years to resolve, we should not forget that one of the goals we are fighting for is the kind of free expression of culture that a symphony orchestra exemplifies. Time magazine called Taliban-controlled Afghanistan a "rhythmless nation," pointing out that the Taliban Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue banned people from listening to or playing music, "lest molten lead be poured into their ears on Judgment Day." America's orchestral landscape has rarely been more exciting, with the splendidly gifted conductor Christoph Eschenbach taking over at the helm of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the promising young maestro Frans Welser-Most assuming leadership of the Cleveland Orchestra, and other appointments that promise dynamic change and development. Now is certainly not the time to play into the hands of Cassandras who fill our media with the molten lead of cultural defeatism.