What Responsibility Do Orchestras have for Democracy?

My father was chief executive of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and Carnegie Hall. He loved everything about orchestras and was a ferocious advocate for their importance, while pushing equally hard against their stubborn resistance to change. He was a fighter, and I always suspected that his three purple hearts and a year in a Nazi POW camp had something to do with his temperament. He was only 18 after all when captured in the Battle of the Bulge.

As I think about today’s banning of books, the use of state power to punish dissenters, the suppression of voting rights, the winner-take-all politics, the erosion of belief in the public good, and the ascent of demagoguery, I’m reminded of my father and the tens of thousands of others like him who put their lives on the line to defend democracy against one of the most heinous manifestations of authoritarianism and racism.

A future that celebrates and supports creativity and expression—to say nothing of our democratic values of freedom, equality, and representative government is seriously at risk.  And just to be clear, although American democracy remains deeply flawed, without it, the promise of a just government, by and for the people, will die.

In today’s climate and as a life-long orchestra professional myself, I feel challenged to ask what practices and policies can orchestras undertake that promote a healthy, just, pluralistic society–one that values diversity, tolerance, freedom of expression, and the human capacity for collectively resolving differences without killing one another or destroying the planet? In other words, small-d democracy.

Playing great music, with all its power, is not sufficient. Many important and eloquent words have been spoken and penned about the humanizing impact of music and the arts: the stimulation of the mind, the opening of the heart, the thrill of virtuosity, the ability to touch our inner lives in ways that words alone cannot. Music brings joy, beauty, shared remembrance, and hope. Empirically, we know of the remarkable instrumental benefits of the arts for society, ranging from economic impact to improving learning and health outcomes. These cannot be discounted.

But if orchestras and other arts organizations operate in a closed system that excludes many and avoids encounters with difference of all kinds, as too many of them do, the values of the arts are easily and quickly subverted. It’s not enough to merely assert these values or cite the longstanding commitments to educational programs, if the deeper work of orchestras is to play a role in sustaining American democracy.

The Berlin Philharmonic of the 1930s helps to sharpen this question of what role orchestras should play in their society. In the Weimar years (roughly 1918–1933), the orchestra was near collapse. Its music director, the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, tried desperately to get a meeting with Hitler to seek help. But Hitler had a spy in the orchestra who reported to him that he had overheard Furtwängler bemoaning the high taxes in Germany. That was enough to turn Hitler against him.

Nevertheless, Furtwängler persisted and finally got his meeting with Hitler. There are varying reports about what took place in this meeting, but the upshot was that Hitler, a big fan of German music, agreed to help the orchestra. He classified the musicians as civil servants, compensated them well, and placed them under the supervision of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda.

The orchestra became an official ambassador of the Third Reich. This was a horrific time for art and artists in Germany, but not for the Berlin Philharmonic; the Faustian bargain had been struck. It’s reported that in 1938, Furtwängler was in New York and ran into the conductor Arturo Toscanini, a fervent anti-fascist, who was incredulous that Furtwängler could countenance remaining in Germany under the Nazi regime. Furtwängler’s justification to Toscanini was, “Human beings are free wherever Wagner and Beethoven are played.” So much for the humanizing impact of the arts and the power of the orchestra experience.

In a social context, the value of the arts is not absolute; it’s contingent upon the purposes to which they are deployed. This doesn’t reduce or nullify our individual experience with any particular artist or art form. But in society, powerful people make choices about what kinds of art get to thrive, who gets to participate, the nature of art and the artist’s engagement with the public, and the economic, cultural, and political projects art is marshaled to serve.

In authoritarian regimes, there are a few arts winners and lots of losers. From Afghanistan to Hungary, from Russia to China, and on to Florida, this has been and continues to be borne out. PEN America reports that 1,600 books have been banned in Escambia County, Florida—including five dictionaries and biographies of Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj, and Thurgood Marshall.

An orchestra colleague tells me that some orchestras in Florida must now submit their in-school program material for approval by county school officials. The Chechen Ministry of Culture just issued this decree: “From now on, all musical, vocal and choreographic works must correspond to the tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute.” The Minster added, “Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible. We must bring to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people.” Authoritarianism destroys art—unless you’re one of the lucky few like the Berlin Philharmonic of the 1930s, or the opera and ballet in Hungary today, favorites of Victor Orban, the country’s authoritarian leader.

What is our work, our role, and responsibility in this climate? First and foremost, we need to get the question on the table. It merits discussion in boardrooms, managements, and among musicians and all stakeholders in classical music. I’d like to think that orchestras today are ready for the discussion. In the summer of 2020 during the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, as much of the United States tried to grapple with racism and its impact on all walks of life, many orchestras for the first time acknowledged that they were not neutral institutions.

Maintaining their status quo meant a tacit acceptance of a history of discrimination, a present that remained stubbornly white and Eurocentric, and a long-running association, even entanglement, with great concentrations of wealth. Orchestras began to ask themselves what role they played in creating this situation, and what kinds of changes could be made to align their activity with principles of equity that are central to our democracy—and arguably equally central to realizing the promise of a thriving classical music community. Just a few short years later, still grappling with these questions around racial justice, we should ask ourselves today, as we observe threats to essential freedoms that are necessary for the arts to flourish, what is our role? What should we do?

One response is programming. For example, the centerpiece of Carnegie Hall’s 2023/24 concert season is called Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, a “journey through artistic movements in classical music, jazz, cabaret, opera, art song, and more as we investigate the forces that led to the fall of the Weimar Republic—and the many lessons about the fragility of democracy that can be gleaned from its extraordinary collapse.”

In one of the events that make up the program, “cultural historians compare current conditions with those accompanying the new music and art styles of the ‘anything-goes’ society of the 1920s that, by 1933, led to the demise of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. Is it alarmist or realistic to see our communities as being at risk today of repeating Weimar’s past?” Great question!

Programming is also about the choice of artists, repertoire, and the nature of engagement with the public. There is a stunning example from 2019 that I will never forget. Billed as the Ode To Understanding, the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra offered a program featuring Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, a setting of the last words spoken by seven Black men who were shot and killed by police or other authority figures. The Orchestra was joined by the Florida A&M Concert Choir and the Atlanta-based Morehouse College Glee Club, two Historically Black Colleges. The second half of the concert featured Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

During the intermission, Walt McNeil, the sheriff of Leon County, Florida, led a gripping conversation with the composer and two orchestra board members exploring the composer’s motivation and intent, issues of law enforcement and race, and the deliberation within the board about whether to program the work at all. It took two years for them to grapple with this piece and what it would mean for the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra to perform it. They leaned into the question of engaging in a highly controversial issue, and thoroughly considered different perspectives about the nature of the work itself and what it did or didn’t say about law enforcement.

The Orchestra also partnered with Village Square, a local organization devoted to raising the quality of civic discourse. Immediately following the performance, Village Square facilitated small informal discussions in the lobby intended to prompt further reflection and dialogue about the experience the audience had just been through. This combination of artists, repertoire, and engagement, along with the transparent confrontation of divergent points of view, is democracy at work, carried out by a symphony orchestra.

Another response concerns advocacy. Orchestras have been ardent and effective advocates for policies that are essential for supporting their missions and operations, like maintaining tax incentives for charitable giving. They have also worked to fend off unintended yet harmful consequences of various legislative and executive actions, like the ban on elephant ivory imports and exports. The ban would have effectively eliminated international travel and resales for many older instruments, since trace amounts of ivory were historically used in stringed instruments and bows. Orchestras, through the League of American Orchestras, successfully secured exemptions to the regulations.

This should be the moment however to consider a broader policy agenda: one that addresses issues that bear on the health of democracy itself, not just the economics of the arts sector and funding for cultural endeavors. This need not be a stretch. How could any arts organization premised on the fundamental belief in the free play of creativity and expression, as well as public access and engagement, not perceive authoritarianism as a threat to its core mission and values?

That said, exploring what a proactive, pro-democracy stance would look like would certainly be controversial within many orchestra boardrooms. Having that conversation is also democracy at work.

Protecting voting rights and actively promoting voting belong on the advocacy agenda of orchestras; they are already important causes for many performing artists and some arts organizations. Indeed, it’s time for nonprofit arts advocacy to extend its coalition platform and build on its partnership with the commercial arts sector.

During the pandemic, nonprofit arts organizations were eligible for what amounted to $1.1 billion in low-interest, forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, part of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. But when the nonprofit arts community and the National Independent Venue Association (the live entertainment association representing clubs, festivals, promoters, and commercial venues) worked in partnership, they secured an additional $16.5 billion in federal relief for commercial and nonprofit venues alike, the largest federal arts investment in U.S. history.  

There is power in looking beyond the nonprofit sector for allies. In 2022, pro-democracy advocates in Brazil partnered with BTS, the Korean K-pop band with 90 million followers, to encourage voting among 16- to 18-year-olds. They aligned their messaging with the name of the tour, Speak Yourself, as part of their effort. The 2022 election saw a 47% increase in the 16- to 18-year-old voter turnout, as compared to the previous presidential election in 2018.

It is certainly true that nonprofit arts organizations have different constraints and accountabilities than individual artists acting alone, and those must be navigated. But the point is that the threat to democracy is understood across many arts genres, commercial and nonprofit alike, and it is important to find as many coalition opportunities as possible.

The proper role of arts institutions in combating threats to democracy is not an easy question, and there are certainly no easy answers. But orchestras, along with the rest of the nonprofit arts community, are lagging behind. Illusions of neutrality and universality have fostered an aversion to “taking sides.”

It’s noteworthy that a 2024 article in the Harvard Business Review, “Corporate Advocacy in a Time of Social Outrage,” offers a framework for corporations to explore if, when, and how to engage with politically controversial issues, starting with the conflict between Israel and Gaza. The arts sector should have a framework like this; I know of at least one association currently working on one. Perhaps there are others? The HBR article also reminds me of the 150 corporate CEOs who wrote to the North Carolina legislature condemning HB2, the notorious 2016 “bathroom bill” that took aim at the LGBTQ+ community.

While maybe a few of those corporations could claim they were simply pursuing their fundamental purpose of increasing shareholder value through their public opposition, I suspect most were also putting a stake in the ground about the kind of country in which they and their employees want to live and do business. North Carolina’s legislature received pushback from many different sectors and ultimately repealed the bill. Taking action and stepping beyond normal boundaries can work. We do not live in a normal time.

I recently asked a young colleague what it felt like growing up in this historical moment, in this country. Her answer surprised me. She said that since her early childhood, so much of what she experienced in the arts and entertainment told her that dystopia was just around the bend, if not already here.

She’d already been through the trauma of widespread and endless wars, extinction of the planet’s ecosystems and species, and the dehumanizing impact of the collapse of societal stability.  Nothing about this moment, in early 2024, seemed new or unusual. I took this as a wake-up call. We are so easily numbed when we should be shocked by what our own eyes and ears perceive.

Music and art enjoy prominent platforms that convey powerful messages and arouse deep feelings about society. In the world of pop music, Taylor Swift and Beyonce have both recently leveraged their considerable cultural cachet to make deliberate political interventions. Encouraging youth voting and piercing the “whites only” world of country music are overtly political and artistic stances taken by these artists. Orchestras also convey powerful messages about society and their place in it, whether they intend to or not. For decades, American orchestras projected a “whites only” message through their choices of artists and repertoire.

Classical music can be wielded strategically to give support to many kinds of political projects: Leonard Bernstein’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Berlin Wall as it fell was a political act, just as the Third Reich’s command to the Berlin Philharmonic to broadcast an all-Beethoven program in September 1939 to accompany the Nazi troops’ march into Poland, marking the start of the Second World War, was a political act.

Orchestras have choices; they are not neutral. Maintaining the status quo is just as much a political act as addressing the pressing political issues of the day. Orchestras are part of the larger arts and entertainment community and have a historic opportunity now—a responsibility, I would argue—to join forces across the sector to advance democracy and to protect their missions of safeguarding creativity and free expression.

This essay is an adaptation of a chapter written last winter from the forthcoming book Sound Systems, which will be published in 2025 by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, with support from the Sphinx Organization and the Flinn Foundation.