T. Teachout WSJ - Two American
orchestras, in Fort Worth, Texas, and Pittsburgh, are currently on strike, and
a third, the Philadelphia Orchestra, recently settled an opening-night strike.
Such conflicts are becoming more common, and as usual, money is to blame. It’s
the old, old story: Management says there’s no more cash in the till and
proposes to cut salaries. The players reply that there are better ways to trim
the budget. Result: stalemate, followed by picket lines.
I don’t have nearly enough space in this
column to describe each orchestra’s individual situation. Suffice it to say
that the annual base salary is $107,000 in Pittsburgh and $128,000 in
Philadelphia. (At the New York Philharmonic, it’s $146,848.) In Fort Worth, the
average salary is $61,000. The music directors of those orchestras may make 10
to 20 times what players do, and managerial salaries are also higher. Allison
Vulgamore, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra, is said to be paid
roughly $725,000 a year. Is it any wonder that the players are angry?
Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering—yet
hardly ever mentioned in news reports—that most orchestral musicians in the
U.S. make a lot more money than they did only a couple of generations ago. To
provide some perspective on the current crises, I’ve looked into the history of
the Cleveland Orchestra. You may be surprised by what I learned.
My quest for perspective began with
“Tales From the Locker Room,” an oral history of the Cleveland Orchestra
published in 2015. Lawrence Angell and Bernette Jaffe, the authors, interviewed
Arnold Steinhardt, who played under George Szell in Cleveland before becoming
the first violinist of the Guarneri Quartet in 1964. When he joined the
orchestra in 1959, Mr. Steinhardt recalled, “Most of the orchestra, with families
to feed, did what they could to make a living. . . . Sam Salkin, first violin,
tried to sell me a watch; Ed Matey, second violin, offered me mutual funds; Irv
Nathanson, double bass, wondered if I needed instrument insurance; and Angie
Angelucci,French horn, tried to sell me a Plymouth.”
Mr. Steinhardt wasn’t exaggerating.
Prior to 1968, membership in the Cleveland Orchestra was a part-time job. When
he joined the orchestra, the regular season was just 30 weeks long, with lower
pay for summer concerts. In 1952, the base salary was $3,240—$29,231 in today’s
dollars. By 1967, it had only gone up to $11,700. (The current base salary is
$120,000.) The U.S. median household income in 1967, by contrast, was $7,970.
According to a 1952 survey, 60% of the players moonlighted in nonmusical jobs,
and many of them did so until 1968, when Cleveland, in keeping with other
top-tier American orchestras, finally lengthened its season to 52 weeks.
Yes, the Cleveland Orchestra was a
regional ensemble notorious in the music business for its stingy salaries—but
George Szell, who became its music director in 1946, somehow managed to turn it
into one of the world’s finest orchestras anyway. By 1967, when his band of
moonlighters performed at the Edinburgh Festival, the critics were staggered by
what they heard. Peter Heyworth, one of England’s toughest music critics,
hailed it in the London Observer as “a great orchestra . . . unique in both
Europe and America.”
Should the members of the Cleveland
Orchestra have been paid far more in Szell’s day? Obviously. Do they, and their
colleagues in other American orchestras, deserve to be paid salaries in accord
with their artistry, as well as with the years of painstaking effort that went
into mastering their craft? Of course. I used to be a bass player, and nobody
needs to tell me how hard orchestral musicians work. But lots of other people
think they “deserve” to make higher salaries, too, often with good reason. The
reason why they don’t is that in a market economy, the price of labor is
determined by the interaction of supply and demand. You get what someone else
is willing to pay you—and nothing more.
“Demand” is the key word here. In 1967,
classical music still occupied a central position in our high culture. Now it
doesn’t. Most Americans don’t care about classical music and don’t go to
orchestral concerts. I think they should, but it doesn’t matter what I think.
They’ll do what they want to do—and one thing they don’t want to do is go out
of their way to hike the salary of a violinist in Philadelphia who already
makes over $2,400 a week, especially when the median weekly household income in
the U.S. is $1,073 (which is roughly what the average London orchestra player
earns per week).
That’s why orchestra players would do
well to remember how far they’ve come. Six decades ago, the members of one of
the world’s greatest symphony orchestras sold cars and wristwatches to make
ends meet. They didn’t deserve it then and they don’t deserve it now—but that’s
the kind of thing that can end up happening in a world that doesn’t value your
services as highly as you do.
Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama
critic, writes “Sightings,” a column about the arts, every other Thursday.
Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com. For original
article see http://www.wsj.com/articles/
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