Posted by Doug on July 02, 2003 at 15:47:34:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: "How to Kill Orchestras" - NY Times posted by Socialist on July 02, 2003 at 15:29:58:
I personally don't agree completely with the museum analogy. A museum displays artifacts, but an orchestra has to actually perform. WHich means hiring performers, along with management and staff. I guess to make the analogy work, you'd have to find a museum that has live reenactments of the artists and their work. I don't think a wax museum is what I'm getting at here, but that is sort of the image in my head. Imagine paying a guy to sculpt the David statue over and over again, and sending each new copy to another museum. And even that isn't quite correct.
Elton John, the Beatles, and even eminem (to some extent) have never really told me anything about culture. Rather, the songs that were fun to listen to made it into my player, and the ones that hurt my ears (and head) wen't unheard. Maybe I've missed some aspect of music that some enlightened folks appreciate, but I want to be entertained, not educated. Bruckner etertains me. Mozart entertains me. John Williams entertains me. So do the Beatles, Simon and Garfukel, Frank Sinatra, Aerosmith, and several smaller bands unheard of beyond Georgia. Music, to me, serves a different purpose than museums. Which is why Rick's suggestions struck a "this would work" chord with me. For people like me, it would work.
Maybe we should have several government funded museum orchestras that play Beethoven, Mozart, etc all the time. But certainly not every orchestra needs to be modeled like this.
I've been to privately funded and publicly funded museums. Frankly, the privately funded museums are better maintained, cleaner, more interesting, and sometimes cheaper. So even though I don't totally agree witht he museum analogy, I think it actually proves my point.
I do agree with you at the end, however. Great discussion going on here.
Doug