Classic Collapse

[Geee]

American Spectator:

The music industry has been charting the decline of classical market in the United States for at least a decade, attributing it to aging audiences, crashing CD sales and shrinking private subsidies. Music lovers beware: there are signs now of an accelerating downward trend.
The root of the problem, musicians tell me, is a plague of pirated Internet downloads and a spreading anti-intellectual climate in the U.S. music world, especially among the young. Further pressure, as if any were needed, comes from the current economic squeeze.

Several of the nation's leading symphonies are wholly dependent on private donations. As the recession has taken hold, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Pittsburgh orchestras are in dire financial difficulty, and Louisville last month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Honolulu Symphony, the oldest orchestra west of the Rockies, went broke and shut down in December. In music-mad New York, many second-tier orchestras, including the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Long Island Philharmonic have stopped performing and others are downsizing, curtailing their season and asking players to take salary cuts.

Highly trained instrumentalists complain that the demand for their services is eroding year by year as job opportunities evaporate. Moreover, the arrival of Chinese, Korean and Japanese virtuosos from the top U.S. conservatories has heated up the competition both for permanent and freelance work.