In many societies, professional orchestras
serve cultural, educational, entertaining, and economic
functions, and they aim high: they aim to be artistically
excellent. Pursuing partly cultural, social and economic
goals, orchestras are exposed simultaneously to respective
institutional logics. These logics provide a framework
for relevant actors (state, benefactors, audiences) to
support orchestras. Changing logics coupled with drastic
changes in audiences afford to classical orchestras the
challenge of developing strategies in order to survive.
While Germany with its high number of orchestras per
habitants experiences particularly high pressure to
walk new paths, strategic development will become a
more urgent topic in other countries as well since each
performance begs for recognition in the big and increasing
panoply of culture, education, and entertainment.
Based on historical developments and an empirical
study of German audiences we discuss two directions for
strategic development, here for orchestras in Germany: a)
the combination of elements from different logics, and b)
the development of audiences.