The Detroit Symphony and the 'top-down' community

By Barry Johnson

The symphony orchestra world is rightly following and thinking about the striking Detroit Symphony musicians, who are fighting a 30 percent reduction in their salaries as well as substantial changes to the rules that govern how and when they work. A story by Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press Sunday adds considerably to the discussion, mostly by giving it a different frame from the usual labor-management dispute. 

Unfortunately, he doesn't take his thinking about the symphony quite far enough. Or maybe symphony management itself (from whose viewpoint most of the story was written) hasn't done enough thinking.  An orchestra as a "community of musicians," in the construction of the late Ernest Fleischmann quoted by Stryker, may sound like a good idea, but an undemocratic, top-down management system that imposes duties and obligations on the musicians without their central participation in the process is not.