The Way The Music Died

Culture is a funny thing—everybody has it, nobody defines it the same way, and it seems that increasingly we tend to take it for granted. Within the past few months the tale of the Philadelphia Orchestra—at one point one of the greatest in the world—has unfolded and we've seen it fall from soaring heights to Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to protect itself.

I should mention that I realize classical music isn't everyone's cup of tea. And rather than asking you to insert your favorite Philadelphia institution into the scenario to empathize, I'm going to make a controversial argument—The Philadelphia Orchestra is as Philadelphian as cheesesteaks, the Phillies, and Quizzo, and we should take ownership of it and defend it just as fiercely as any of those things.

In 1912, Leopold Stokowski took the helm of the orchestra and conducted until 1941. If you've seen Fantasia, you've seen Stokowski. He brought the orchestra to prominence, both here in the United States and around the world and helped revive classical music as a genre.

In 1938, Eugene Ormandy took over as conductor. He conducted many of the most popular classical music recordings with the orchestra and took them to the People's Republic of China in 1973, the first Western orchestra to do so in decades. In 1973 we had Ricardo Muti take over. We've also seen Wolfgang Sawallisch, Cristoph Eschenbach and Charles Dutoit at the conductor's helm since.

Your Philadelphia Orchestra was the first symphony to make electrical recordings, the first to broadcast on radio, and the first to appear on TV. In more recent days, it was the first to make a cybercast.

It is true, this information is easily searchable on Wikipedia, but I write it here to give a sense of what this orchestra is. It's groundbreaking. It's always been at the forefront, and now we see it falling short on its operating budget. Principal musicians, such as Ricardo Morales (principal clarinetist and a favorite of mine), are leaving as the organization undergoes Chapter 11—yet another first, the first national orchestra to do so.

As a child, I sat in the seats of the Academy of Music watching the orchestra and reading the program. I wondered how important these people on the Board of Directors had to be. They must be the most affluent people in Philadelphia, just as the most important of the realm supported Beethoven in Germany while he composed—patrons of the art of classical music.

The fact is: They don't sell the seats like they used to. Stokowski was a god. He stood on that podium and you knew who he was like you know Roy Halladay when he stands on the mound. You listened on the radio or bought an LP and you sought out The Philadelphia Orchestra. This is the kind of respect that built laurels that we've relied on since Muti's leaving. But I've been to see them, every year of my life for at least one concert.

There's nothing like the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra, whether they're playing the classics before fireworks under the summer sky at the Mann Center or they're in the engineering marvel that is the Kimmel Center. They ARE great. Don't let this be the way that a Philadelphia institution passes away! Buy a ticket, upper deck—it doesn't matter where you sit. Take your family. They need it, and Philadelphia needs it. If you go, you might just find that you need them as well.