Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? by Henry Fogel

HarmonyTM FORUM OF THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INSTITUTE NUMBER 10 • APRIL 2000 Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? by Henry Fogel To subscribe to Harmony or provide support to the Institute, contact: Symphony Orchestra Institute 1618 Orrington Avenue, Suite 318 Evanston, IL 60201 Tel: 847.475.5001 Fax: 847.475.2460 e-mail: [email protected] www.soi.org ©2000 by the Symphony Orchestra Institute. All rights reserved. Harmony: FORUM OF THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INSTITUTE 9 EDITOR’S DIGEST Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? or more than a century, the organizational model for American symphony F orchestra leadership has been the “three-legged stool.” This model places responsibility in the hands of the music director, the executive director, and the board chairman—theoretically as equals. Author Henry Fogel opens the essay that follows by tracing the genesis and evolution of the “three-legged stool.” He then poses a series of critical questions about this traditional arrangement. Roles for Musicians First among these is the role of musicians (or lack thereof) in the overall direction of their orchestras. Fogel suggests that both the insularity of boards and the authority demanded by conductors have been sources of adversarial relationships. He notes that the emergence, in the 1960s, of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM) gave a negotiating voice to the musicians, a voice often at loggerheads with “management.” Using several specific examples, Fogel details the relationship dynamic that exists in many orchestras, and pleads that “hostility and mistrust” cannot be healthy ways to run orchestral institutions. Toward Healthy Institutions Arguing that guarding “turfs” and not inviting musicians into serious roles in governance are major barriers to healthy orchestral organizations, Fogel particularly explores artistic direction as an area needing major revision in roles and responsibilities, and suggests that orchestra players could and should be significantly more involved. Overall, no one escapes Fogel’s scrutiny, and his concern for his subject is palpable. In addition to being a knowledgeable and passionate participant in the orchestral scene, the author is quite a raconteur. His essay is laced with interesting sidebars that illustrate his points. This essay is meaty and thought provoking; we encourage your consumption. 10 Harmony: FORUM OF THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INSTITUTE Henry Fogel Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? hree-legged stool” is a term often applied to the authority structure of the modern American symphony orchestra. The “legs” are the “T music director, the volunteer board leader (sometimes called chairman, sometimes president), and the executive director (sometimes called president, sometimes managing director). Although an organization chart would, in most instances, show the music director and the executive director reporting “ One needs to ask: to the board, or implicitly to its chairman, the idea is Is this the best way that the three manage the operation in some kind of partnership. If one carries this line of thought further, to organize the I suppose that the musicians report to the music leadership of a director, the staff to the executive director, and the volunteers to the chairman. In one form or another, symphony orchestra?” American orchestras have run on this model, with only minor variations, for more than a century and with only a few exceptions. It is worth examining the history of this structure and its structural soundness. One needs to ask: Is this the best way to organize the leadership of a symphony orchestra? Are other approaches possible? Would they make a difference? If so, would it be a positive difference? And I would note right up front that an essay such as this one, by definition, will deal in generalizations. Philip Hart’s wonderful study of the American orchestra and its history, Orpheus in the New World, is essential reading for understanding how the structure developed, and I have relied on it considerably.1 From the beginning, enlightened community leaders recognized that it was not possible to compensate an orchestra’s musicians solely from the box office. As early as 1881, Henry Higginson, founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, proposed a guideline that, astonishingly enough, we still use today: 50 percent of the orchestra’s income would come from ticket sales; the rest would have to be contributed in some form. Higginson, in fact, proposed the first orchestra endowment fund, $1 million, which, at a 5-percent draw (the ideal for most of today’s endowments), would pay out $50,000, which was the deficit he was projecting at that time. Chicago, which had been the beneficiary of Theodore Thomas’s traveling orchestras beginning in 1870, became interested in having its own orchestra, Harmony: FORUM OF THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INSTITUTE 11 Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? Higginson’s orchestra in Boston was something of a one-man show. There is much documentation of tension between Higginson and conductors, and it is clear from the evidence that the Boston Symphony was Higginson’s orchestra. In fact, he actually managed the BSO for a while, and then assigned one of his corporate staff members to manage it (thus assuring his continuing control, although professional observers have noted that this staffer—Charles Ellis—was not only America’s first professional orchestra manager, but a good one as well). Higginson did not actually turn the BSO over to a board of trustees until 1918.2 and lured Thomas to the city to form one in 1891. Chicago, in some ways, served as the model for today’s orchestral structure. A group of Chicago businessmen under the leadership of Dr. Charles Fay formed an orchestral association that, according to Hart, “would not be dependent on the support of any one man or offer its backers any prospect of profit.”3 Recognizing that there would be losses at startup, Fay secured 10 pledges of $5,000 per year for three years. He branched out “ The Chicago to take smaller pledges as well, but probably did not realize at the time that the idea of a self-supporting Symphony was orchestra was not realistic. There were few models to be the first in 1891. The New York Philharmonic and the New York Symphony were both in existence, but both were orchestral ‘association’ functioning more as cooperatives with relatively put together by the unpredictable work and compensation than as organizations offering anything approximating community, and steady, reasonably salaried employment for to have a board musicians. Only the Boston Symphony was doing that, and it was still being subsidized and run by that would make Higginson. The Chicago Symphony was to be the important decisions.” first orchestral “association” put together by the community, and to have a board that would make important decisions. Through the first part of the 20th century, as more and more orchestras were formed, a few facts began to crystallize for orchestra supporters everywhere. The most significant was that the box office would never be able to support a symphony orchestra. As one looks at the financial statements of American orchestras for the first quarter of the century, and reads board-meeting minutes (where one senses a decrease in the tone of surprise that accompanies discussions of deficits as the realization sinks in), one sees the careful construction of the board undertaken in community after community. It is clear that the formation of these boards was at least in part a matter of self-interest. The people who were providing or guaranteeing funds to fill the earned-income gap wished, rationally enough, to have a reasonable degree of control over the size of that gap. The gap could be widened by either out-of- 12 Harmony: FORUM OF THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INSTITUTE Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? control expenses or income shortfalls due to unpopular programming, and one sees these issues popping up in discussions between board chairs and music directors throughout the first years of the century. The balance between “popular” and “serious” programming was constantly a source of discussion, and occasionally tension, between Theodore Thomas and Chicago Symphony board leaders. On the other hand, the trustees responded to Thomas’s urging to build the CSO its own home, just as Higginson responded to a similar need in Boston, and Chicago’s business leaders rallied around the cause to build Orchestra Hall in 1904.4 It can and should be said here that Henry Higginson, who held deeply the belief that citizens must give back to their communities and that successful citizens must give back more, really established the community-based concept that underlies the structure of orchestras today. Even though he initially ran a one-man operation, he eventually saw the need to broaden the base and formed a board similar to the one already in existence in Chicago. The board in Chicago, in turn, was based to some degree on the principles that Higginson had established in Boston, except that the Chicago Symphony decided to share the burden and responsibility among many from the beginning. It was surely these two orchestras that established the model of a community-based board that “owned” the organization. In these orchestras, board members set broad policies, hired the conductors, and, later on, began hiring the managers. In 1915, the Philadelphia Orchestra engaged Arthur Judson, who was to become a seminal figure in orchestra administration, and whose career spanned 54 years of managing two of America’s great orchestras, Philadelphia and New York—for a good deal of time simultaneously. While Judson publicly spoke about the clear separation of the three “branches” of the orchestra (conductor, manager, board), and how that separation of authority was “sacrosanct,” the truth is that a look at Judson’s own career reveals the lack of clarity in that separation.

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