Market Correction

In a long and informative essay review in an October issue of TNR , Richard Taruskin explains the apparent crisis of classical music as a market correction. Between the early 1960s and 1987, lots of foundation and federal money flowed to composers and performers, inflating the numbers beyond what the market could support. Audiences dwindled, but “as long as this gravy train lasted, the attrition of the audience could be overlooked.” Recent “cutbacks that seemed to imply the sudden cruel rejection of classical music were really more in the nature of a market correction, reflecting the presence scarcity of patronage and a long-deferred confrontation with the changed realities of demand.” Only in academia are classical musicians protected from the hard demands of finding a paying audience.