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Yes, MartinH, you said precisely what I wasn't able to find the words to say: LA is a money mecca and by just sheer numbers the LA Phil can find enough subscribers/patrons out of roughly 20 million people in the Southland to support them. It has to do with climate, the cosmopolitan, demographic--its location relative to Asia where most of the money comes in--and other things that draw so many people with money who want a cultural symbol for their families/children, etc With that kind of population here $250 a head is chump change to them, but the little guy gets priced out. More of us vs "them". If you're willing to drop a few hundred dollars you too can rub shoulders with the rich but not mingle with them. It's an exclusive club.

Even in the 70's when I was going to Cal State we had a bass player that was in a 2-year wait for his name to rise to the top of the list. As other base players died off he finally got that audition call and was hired. He stayed with them for decades. I only remember his first name, John. It's a job for life doing what you love to do. I'd sell my soul to do it all over. I'd drop piano like a hot potato and take up violin. If I could have achieved the virtuosity on violin I did on piano I'd still be working there, married one of the members, had kids---the whole nine yards.

There is that--he politics of keeping a bad player in because he's the brother-in=-law of a board member and needs a paycheck, no matter how meager. Another aspect is the flood of musicians graduating higher learning institutions who have to find jobs. Watch some YouTube videos. These freelance players are excellent; they'd give most professional members of orchestras a run for their money and would be thrilled to work for half the salary. Here is where the unions become poison; someone sitting there with a stopwatch is about the craziest thing I've ever heard. Only 300K for a (b) ass-oon player is crazier. And the funny thing is if the LA Phil is fully funded then that means they get their money from wealthy patrons and as long as there are enough wealthy patrons to fill 3000 seats or whatever Disney Hall holds LA Phil will never have to worry. Like Pharmaceuticals, Health Care Ins. and oil co's all orchestras will be whittled down to a few survivors who can charge whatever they want and hire the cream and all these other musicians graduating will be flipping burgers and just picking up sporadic gigs wherever they can. There'll be no coherent pattern of employment to all this; each musician will have to jimmy-rig their work schedules as best they can with whatever scraps are lying around.

I haven't been to the LA Phil in 30 years but the seats at Dorothy Chandler were only half filled then after intermission because the tickets were so high. Wonder what it's like now.

Yes, a few are good but most are bad. It's the luck of the draw depending on if you're fortunate to be in an area where a good amateur orchestra is.

Fortunately top orchestras just don't work like that - they aren't simply guns for hire who will do anything if the price is right. In practice, if you're a composer with no track record who wants to sponsor a vanity project you could offer it to a decent amateur orchestra who might put it on (provided it isn't complete rubbish) for a donation of 5 grand. As for the players each devoting 9 days of work to it, dream on!

I've gotten dozens of very nice comments on it on YouTube so I think it's appealing. But amateur orchestras have miserable brass sections that can't even play a simple brass triad flush (together). This piece is brass-heavy. Plus sour strings. Here's  the best I could hope for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHsnVXMGn2I 

I wanted to chime in on MartinH's post of December 30th, specifically on the issue he raises of greed. If I may here is a response to a question I posted elsewhere: "What is the going rate to give a premiere of a half-hour-long major work for piano and orchestra with a top pianist and top orchestra?" I asked in reference to my piano concerto no 2 in c minor which I have commented on in earlier posts. It is a half hour, for full Romantic period orchestra and here is a reply from someone who plays in an orchestra:

You're going to be looking at a big number.

To start with, it's a premiere... nobody in the orchestra has played it before.  If you wanted to hire an orchestra to do a "warhorse" like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, you have the advantage of familiarity: because the musicians will all have played the piece, they can get by with just a few rehearsals.  For a new work of significant length, you're probably looking at a minimum of 2-3 rehearsals with the soloist, and maybe another 2-3 with the orchestra and a rehearsal pianist.  On top of that, you'll have some sectional rehearsals.  So each orchestra member will have maybe 9 days of work prior to the performance, plus the performance itself.

Orchestra cost

Since you're talking about hiring the orchestra, this will be an "extra" performance, not part of their regular season.  That may mean your orchestra might not be the one you think you're hiring - because top orchestra members often have commitments for teaching, master classes, or solo work of their own, you'll end up with some substitutes.  Because of that, let's say you get the musicians at "scale", the union rate.  Union rates vary by the union local; I'm going to use the local 802 (New York) rates.

Each rehearsal will cost you a fixed rate for the first 2-1/2 hours, and an hourly rate after that.  Since your piece is a half hour, let's say it's rehearsed in the minimum.  Remember, it's six rehearsals plus three sectionals per musician - each one is going to cost you $137.50.  But the principal in each section gets more... they get $165.  You've got principals in each section - four for strings, four for brass, four for woodwinds, and one in percussion.  (If your orchestration isn't standard, you might end up with more in woodwinds and/or percussion).

Oh, and the concertmaster (usually the principal violinist) will get double scale - that's $275.

Orchestra sizes vary.  Your orchestration will determine the number of players needed; on the low end, let's say it's 70, and on the high end, 100.  So your per rehearsal cost is 1 concertmaster ($275), 12 other principals ($165 each), and 57-87 others at $137.50.  This gives you a per rehearsal musician cost of $10,092.50 to $14,217.50. 

Times six rehearsals and three sectionals each.  Assuming none of your rehearsals run into overtime, you're now in the $91-85K range, and you haven't counted the performance.  Scale for the performance is higher: $274 for each musician, $328.80 for each principal, and $548 for the concertmaster.  So the performance itself adds another $20,111.60 to $28,311.60.

So you've got the orchestra payroll covered with your first $111-156K or so.  Let's move on to

The soloist

I'll assume you're not looking to engage Lang Lang, and you'll settle for any old pianist who has won an international competition or two.  The ones I know get a performance fee of $5-10K, plus expenses.  You'll probably be flying them in, and you'll be putting them up in a hotel, feeding them, and getting them from airport to hotel to rehearsals.  Another 2-5 thousand should cover that stuff.

But it's a premiere.  So they're going to spend significant time learning the piece - you don't see soloists with sheet music in front of them.  That's going to cost you.  If they love the work, the premium for that might be a few thousand - or it might be tens of thousands.  With so many variables, let's budget between 30 and 50 thousand for the soloist, and we're now up to $141-206K.  But let's not forget

The conductor

Top conductors command about $2 million a year in salaries, give or take a million.  And that's for a season of about a hundred performances.  So you could say it's $20K.

But it won't be.

Because it's a new work, it demands a lot more of the conductor's time.  First is the score study, with marking up how they envision the work will be performed.  Then there's the rehearsals - remember all those sectionals?  The conductor will lead all of them.  The percussion section might not need any (it depends on your score), but another section might take up the slack.  So four sections (strings, brass, winds, percussion) times three each is twelve sectionals, plus six rehearsals, plus the performance.

The conductor is probably going to want 100-250K, maybe more.  Now you're up to $241-456K.

But we're not done yet.  Because you need a place for the musicians to rehearse.

Space costs

You could rehearse the orchestra in any space that can hold them, but they're going to be more comfortable in their usual environment.  And that environment has a small advantage to you too, because you won't be paying cartage for the tympani and piano, or needing extra piano tunings because it's being moved.

The cost will vary with the venue, but $6K per day is typical.  Twelve sectionals, plus six rehearsals and the performance means 19 days, or another $114K.

Now we're up to $355,000 on the low end, and $570,000 plus on the other.  And I haven't even considered the other costs, because they're quite low in comparison.  For just one example, you'll need an orchestra librarian - that's the person who takes direction from the concertmaster and conductor for the bowing in the strings, and marks the bowing instructions on each player's copy of the score.  (Haven't you ever wondered how they all know how to bow in the same direction at the same time?) 

I'd say this is in keeping with what others have told me, but never to this detail. It's no wonder very few works for larger ensembles get premiered these days. 600K for a half-hour work is bonkers and needless to say I will not be paying this amount anytime soon. But I think this points to the issue of greed in a major way. Funny enough, nobody addresses the revenue from ticket sales, concessions and alcohol to offset part of this cost. I doubt I would see a dime of that revenue if I actually paid the 600K to premiere my concerto.

Many good opinions voiced. Here's my take:

All professional musicians have a right to be compensated adequately for their talent and hard work. Getting a PhD in music is similar to a physician putting in 10 years for an MD, but like music physicians can charge only so much and people stop going to see them. Same with dentists. One dentist quoted me $1500 for a porcelain crown. I simply cannot afford it. An average concert goer cannot afford $50 for a back-row seat at the Disney Hall. To make matters worse there are so many live performances of all the major works on YouTube (some multiple--Bernstein and von Karajan for Tchaikovsky 5th for example) that most people can blow it up on their big screen and listen in HDef for free. Quite simply, we just don't need big concert halls anymore with media technology.

Another problem: it's the same repertoire over and over with an occasional post-modern extremely dissonant premiere thrown in and tepid applause afterwards, almost vanity premieres. Only the rich bigwigs and friends of the composer and high-society types turn out for these.

Not meaning to derail, but I was reading about Colburn School downton LA. They are privately endowed by somebody(ies) with deep pockets. They don't charge a dime for their classes. All free. They are going after the best teachers they can get their hands on. Symphony orchestras are gong to need private endowments to stay afloat. The money will never come from ticket sales or small donations. Failing that, I see orchestras falling one by one with only a few surviving and even then eventually they will fail to as training in music begins a serious decline. In the end all classical music entertainment will come from media sources like YouTube, deMedici, Arhaus, and other distributors. Lang Lang will give more recitals and orchestras will cut back until they are chamber ensembles.

A pro musician in the LA Phil makes about 100K and then they give private lessons on top of that and maybe teach PT at university. They make a darn good living, but when the orchestras begin to fail their standard of living will fall too. I read in the article that the Philadelphia came out of bankruptcy only because they players were willing to take a 10% cut in pay, I think it was. That will become the norm for dealing with this crisis: pay cuts or go out of business.

Serious times for musicians. Something to think about whether to go into music as a career, especially as an avant-garde composer.

The days of live performances of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand are gone forever. Maybe "Symphony of a Hundred".

Stumbled across this interesting article in New Republic:

https://newrepublic.com/article/114221/orchestras-crisis-outreach-ruining-them

I never would have guessed the stalwart Philadelphia Orchestra once helmed by Ormandy would be filing for bankruptcy. They emerged by the skin of their teeth, but I fear this portends a dismal future for classical organizations that manage middle-tier semi-professional orchestras which make up the backbone of American classical music life. More and more are shuttering for lack of financial support. Everything below the "Big Five" might be considered semi-pro or 2nd tier and these orchestras are the ones that are in trouble. Community orchestras affiliated with universities, jr. colleges and other institutions might survive in some form, maybe as chamber orchestras as players demand higher salaries to keep up with the cost of living but the pot to draw on is dry for most of these smaller-city orchestras like the Nashville Symphony (mentioned in the article) which also narrowly avoided closing its doors:

In recent years, the Nashville Symphony has been running deficits of $10 to $20 million a year, and a contract with the musicians is about to expire. If recent history is any guide, negotiations will be complex and rancorous. 

We rely on these institutions (2nd/middle tier) to bring us works by unsung composers we'd never hear otherwise. The Big Five rarely touch them. 95% of their repertoire are the standards with a premiere thrown in every season or so if the donation is generous enough.

Any thoughts on where American orchestras will be 50 years from now?   

And good on him that he didn't!

You are a Concord Sonata Fan? 

George Templeton Strong used to warn other composers, by saying that modern dissonance should be used "like cayenne pepper in culinary art". 

Something Charles Ives obviously never took to heart.    Concord Sonata, anybody?   

I've offended and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I probably didn't explain myself well. I realize that the two tone poems were early efforts of MacDowell and one I believe immediately preceded his Piano Concerto No 2 which of course put him on the map. I was in part recognizing the dichotomy of an immediate hit not managing to lift earlier efforts out of the "to be forgotten" file tray. Even Hamlet by Tchaikovsky or his Piano Concerto No 3 manages an occasional hearing by virtue of his name, but MacDowell's Lancelot  and Hamlet doesn't get beyond a single recording which puzzles me. When I said totally forgettable I was commenting from a POV outside myself, maybe the way an occasional listener of classical music might react. I found the tone poems lovely, tuneful and well-crafted with that hallmark MacDowell European/American sound. But listeners who savor the "hits" might find these totally forgettable in that they carry no memorable tunes even though the atmosphere they create is beautiful, if anticlimactic. The one, Lancelot is almost like a Siegfried Idyll in that it rarely rises above a pianissimo.   

[not]

I frankly detest it and I think deep down any serious musician would agree with you that it is a failed attempt to get at anything by Rachmaninoff that can be passed off to the public as "a NEW piano concerto by Rachmaninoff". Such is the public's appetite for Romantic music and there we have this strange dichotomy of the industry "apparatchik" running classical music these days that absolutely will NOT allow a Romantic tonal composition to be premiered under its auspices but WILL allow and even encourage "noise" that is forgotten the day after its splashy London Phil premiere. I frankly don't get it. I mean I get the politics---"never look back; always advance forward" but we've advanced about as far as we can go and Mr. John Q Public has made it plain and clear that he does not like what gets cranked out by serious composers these days. I often use this lovely intelligent young lady as a perfect example. How many times would you want to hear any of this after the first go-round? Click link and then choose anything, but I recommend "Fissured Words". I don't criticize Ashley, I just use her music as a representation of what's being premiered today: a long pause after the last notes have died because the public doesn't know if the piece is over and  when the musicians have to make exaggerated gestures like smiles to one another and drop their instruments to let the audience know the piece is indeed over then comes the tepid applause

http://www.ashleywang.com/5.html 

My question is "Where will classical music be in 100 years?" The public at large will still be going to hear Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky in droves at the Berlin Phil while postmodern music will be relegated to tiny pockets of audiences of 50-75 people who maybe enjoy eclectic music in even tinier coffee houses or small college auditoriums if they're lucky. Orchestras will be replaced by tiny ensembles of 3-4 players, maybe friends of the composer. Does this look like the future of classical music or am I mistaken? Alan mentioned a few composers like John Williams but I have never seen anything serious by Williams performed after its premiere. Even Leonard Bernstein's larger works have been largely forgotten.

And I realize I got off topic. This subject should be a separate thread because I really despair for classical music's future.   

I think that's probably it. What we saw yesteryear cannot be duplicated. And it's arguable whether it should be. 

I dearly love the Rach 2 as well, but now the 3rd has supplanted it, it seems and what's more astonishing people were so desperate for Rachmaninoff that someone arranged his Symphony No 2 as a piano concerto. Even more astonishing there are now about 5 videos of it on YouTube, four of them live performances.

People don't seem to be able to get enough of Rachmaninoff and YouTube has about 200 live performances of the Rach 2nd by orchestras/pianists of every stripe and level. Medtner, maybe about one, the Berezovsky. There are several recordings, however.

I think the Rachmaninoff concertos will stay on top because there's never been anybody who can best him since his Rhapsody and that's going on 80 years now. 

Well, I've discussed this with musicians and many have their own favorite neo-Romantic composer but with a few notable exceptions like Lowell Lieberman nobody has advanced to the front of a very large pack. It's interesting that when the population was a 10th of what it is today (Romantic period) we produced a Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Listz, Grieg, and about 50 other genius composers who became famous all over the world, most in their lifetimes.

Today, we have advanced communications and 7 billion people and have yet to produce another Tchaikovsky--I mean someone who could knock the world on its butt with their superior melodic music comparable to Tchaikovsky. I can only think that the more we advance technologically the further we regress original music-wise. As you say, Alan, the best music sadly is to be found in films. For example here's a masterpiece of orchestration and mood by a film composer name Harry Gregson-Williams that I think could compete with the short tone poems of Liadov like Baba Yaga and it's from a cartoon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujAfhLLVM7E&list=PLMaHaORjlMMzUMFnpAcW6m1lwmtXz0oUB&index=11

I have listened to his Lancelot & Elaine and Hamlet and Ophelia and Tchaikovsky they are not. For example Krueger's recording of the former has garnered only 42 hits on YouTube since 2013. I don't mean to be hard on MacDowell but I don't think he could have advanced as a symphonist. The tone poems are attractive, competently orchestrated and totally forgettable.

I truly wonder if Romantic music has seen its day and could never make a comeback even if another MacDowell were to emerge on the scene. So where is classical music to go? The contemporary music being written today, with few exceptions, is unlistenable.