From the Critics’ Corner: Logic Blending, Discursive Change and Authenticity in a Cultural Production System* potx

From the Critics’ Corner: Logic Blending,Discursive Change and Authenticity in a Cultural Production System* Mary Ann Glynn and Michael Lounsbury Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Universit

From the Critics’ Corner: Logic Blending,

Discursive Change and Authenticity in a Cultural Production System*

Mary Ann Glynn and Michael Lounsbury

Emory University, Atlanta, GA; University of Alberta

abstract Drawing on an analysis of critics’ reviews of Atlanta Symphony

Orchestra (ASO) performances, we investigate how broader shifts in institutional

logics shape the discourse of critics and their judgment of performances We

highlight how the aesthetic logic that traditionally informs the practices of the

symphony yielded, in the face of declining orchestral resources, to a more

commercially oriented market logic As institutionalists have argued, shifts in logicsare often catalysed by exogenous shocks In the ASO, this blending of aesthetic andmarket logics became salient in the wake of a pivotal organizational event, the 1996musicians’ strike Qualitatively comparing pre- and post-strike reviews of ASO

performances, we find that the discourse of critics shifted to capture the changinglogic of the symphony: post-strike reviews were more attuned to market than

aesthetic aspects of the symphony Nonetheless, their reviews suggested that

judgments based on notions of cultural authenticity were virtually unaffected

Although our results echo existing claims that art world critics often act in a ritualisticfashion, serving as gatekeepers for the authenticity of cultural genres, we extend

scholarship by highlighting how critics’ stories are embedded in broader discursivefields that reveal how they patrol the boundaries of genres

INTRODUCTION

Over the past three decades, the development of the production of culture spective has enhanced our understanding of how cultural artefacts such as musicalbums, books, and artwork are produced in modern societies (Anand and Peter-son, 2000; Hirsch, 1972; Peterson, 1977, 2005; for a review, see Peterson and Anand,2004) Research has highlighted how the production of cultural artefacts is shaped

per-by a complex apparatus of producers, distributors, media, and critics that are

inter-0022-2380

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ ,

Address for reprints: Mary Ann Glynn, Goizueta Business School, Emory University, 1300 Clifton Road,

Atlanta, GA 30322, USA (MaryAnn_Glynn@bus.emory.edu).

posed between cultural creators and recipients Due to the ambiguity of qualityassessment, critics often play an especially crucial role as gatekeepers (Hirsch, 1972),intermediate consumers (Griswold, 1987), and mediators of audience/consumerresponse (Shrum, 1991) in many cultural industries More recently, there has beenincreasing attention paid to the role and impact of critics across a variety of sub-fields from economic sociology to the sociology of music (e.g Baumann, 2002;Holbrook, 1999; Janssen, 1997; Lounsbury and Rao, 2004; Zuckerman, 1999).

As interest in critics has grown, research has expanded beyond focusing on theinstrumental role of critics as market-makers to highlight how critics act as keymeaning-makers in fields For example, Baumann’s (2001) study of the socialhistory of films in the USA documents how critics, in their reviews, offered a legit-imating ideology that helped to valorize film as art He notes that critics acted as

‘influencers rather than as mirrors’ (p 419), thus crafting the meaning of films asaesthetic cultural products We extend this emerging perspective on critics byfocusing on how they also play an important interstitial role in connecting thelocalized meanings and interpretations of cultural products to broader institutionalmeaning systems For instance, by writing reviews, critics provide a kind of storyabout how people should understand and appreciate their experiences with cul-tural objects and performances

Stories, such as those told by critics in their reviews, make sense of an cal situation for both internal and external constituencies because they ‘selectivelydistill a complex jumble of otherwise ambiguous and contradictory activities, pro-nouncements, and impressions into a simplified and relatively coherent portrait’(Ashforth and Humphrey, 1997, p 53) The story itself, however, is endowed withinstitutional meanings that make its elements cohere in a meaningful way Storiescreate order by embedding ‘an account in a symbolic universe, and thereby endowthe account with social facticity’ (Rao, 1994, p 31) Hence, stories such as critics’reviews are not purely local constructions, but are consequentially influenced bybroader institutional dynamics and beliefs that constrain and enable the kinds ofstories that can be told (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001)

equivo-The concept of institutional logic is often used by sociologists to refer to higherorder belief systems that shape cognition and action (e.g Bourdieu, 1990; Oakes

et al., 1998; Thornton and Ocasio, 1999) Friedland and Alford (1991, p 243)describe logics as:

supraorganizational patterns of human activity by which individuals andorganizations produce and reproduce their material subsistence and organizetime and space They are also symbolic systems, ways of ordering reality, andthereby rendering experience of time and space meaningful

In the context of decision-making, it has been argued that institutional logics shapewhat issues are attended to by decision-makers (March and Olsen, 1976; Ocasio,

1997), provide the rules of appropriateness that make certain actions or solutionslegitimate (March and Olsen, 1989), and offer interpretive schemes that funda-mentally guide perception (Ranson et al., 1980) We argue that cultural industrylogics shape critics’ reviews in a similar manner by guiding how critics assess thelegitimacy of cultural performances or objects as well as how the quality of suchperformances and objects are judged However, we do not conceptualize critics ascultural dopes The dynamics of broader logics provide the context within whichcritics appreciate and judge, but similar to the French cuisine critics described

by Rao et al (2003), their actions contribute to the ongoing dynamics of logics.Hence, critics can resist changes in logics, act as carriers of new logics, or act inaccordance with dominant logics under conditions of field stability Therefore, byexplicitly examining the relationship between logics and critical reviews, we cangain insight into how critics may provide a motor for ongoing institutional dynam-ics (see also Bourdieu, 1996 on the role of critics in mediating homologous fields

of art and commerce)

We highlight the utility of our perspective through a systematic investigation ofcritical reviews of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) performances under con-ditions of logic conflict and change Over the past couple of decades, symphonyorchestras have increasingly experienced resource constraints tied to declines inpatronage, government support, and attendance In response to these pressures,orchestras have increasingly drawn on more ‘mainstream’ or ‘pop’ interpretations

of classical music, creating a cultural threat to the ‘pure’ canon of ‘highbrow’music associated with the symphony (Glynn, 2002) Like other art worlds, this hasled to a blurring of the long dominant ‘aesthetic’ logic in the symphony orches-tra field with a commercial ‘market’ logic, leading to the questioning of what constitutes authentic classical music In the context of symphonic orchestras,authenticity refers to programming that maintains consistency with the classicalcanon and genre conventions (see Peterson, 1997 for a similar perspective on therole of reproduction for the maintenance of perceived authenticity)

We expect that the tension associated with the broader blending of aestheticand market logics in the US symphony orchestra field will importantly influencethe stories told by local orchestra critics in their reviews More specifically, wepropose that the broader blending of logics will lead to the integration of moremainstream cultural influences into symphonic performances, forcing critics toreact directly to the pros and cons of competing logics and to reassess the nature

of artistic authenticity Although we focus on a particular local context, our sis of how the stories told by critics through their reviews are fundamentally shaped

analy-by the dynamics of the broader field of US symphony orchestras provides a moregeneral framework for the study of the contested and dynamic nature of authen-ticity (Peterson, 1997)

We approach this problem empirically by analysing critics’ reviews of phonic performances relative to a demarcated shift in orchestral attention to the

sym-market logic In art worlds, criticism manifests itself primarily in the form ofreviews that are published in the media This has led sociologists to focus a gooddeal of theoretical effort on the review process:

A cultural object is received by a reviewer with a particular ‘horizon of tations’ about the kind of object it represents Interpretation and framing of theperceived object form part of the reviewer’s brief, the production of a new cul-tural object (the review) for an intended audience (readers) Without sub-scribing in any way to the view that the review is a ‘surrogate performance’ forthe audience, we must recognize that there is frequently no subsequent experi-ence at all: the review itself may be the basis of opinions formed as well as inter-actions involving the object (Shrum, 1991, p 351)

expec-Our analysis of critics’ reviews responds to Shrum’s (1991, p 372) invitation toresearchers: ‘The effects of [reviewers’] judgements, and the conditions underwhich they occur, beg incorporation into sociological theories of participation inart.’ There is a need for more attention to reviews and other forms of secondarydiscourse, he contends, because ‘in the performing arts, unlike painting, television,sculpture, film, architecture, and literature, the only remnant of performance afterthe moment of production is a review’ (Shrum, 1991, p 372) We strategicallyselected the time frame of our study (1995–98) to assess how critics’ reviewschanged before and after a strike by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians

in 1996 As institutional scholars have shown, logic shifts often take concrete shape

in localized contexts as a result of some sort of exogenous shock or trigger (e.g Clemens, 1999; Fligstein, 1990; Scott et al., 2000; Schneiberg and Clemens,forthcoming)

In the case of the ASO, this pivotal event made vivid the problem of ing resource constraints and the need to more consciously engage in ideas andpractices related to the market logic at the risk of bastardizing the historicallyunderstood raison d’être of symphony orchestras Using this historically situatedcircumstance as the focal point, we map how the operating aesthetics of musiccritics’ reviews shifted in response to a post-strike organizational shift toward anincreased market logic orientation (see Bartunek, 1984 for a similar approach tochange in a complex religious order) We conduct comparative analyses of pub-lished reviews of performances in the master seasons before and after the strike.Because this design captures the ‘features of a naturally occurring experiment’(Allmendinger and Hackman, 1996, p 338), we can make rigorous comparisonsabout the role of the critic as meaning-maker and story-teller under conditions ofinstitutional change We begin by examining the role of critics and theories of criti-cism in art worlds followed by an analysis of ASO critics’ reviews as a way to shedlight on how the embeddedness of critics in institutional fields influences culturalevaluation and judgment

increas-CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS:

THE BLENDING OF LOGICS AND GENRES

The theoretical importance of criticism is particularly salient in the context ofmodern art worlds since most consumers have difficulty ascertaining the quality

of goods and services (e.g Becker, 1982; Greenfeld, 1989; Griswold 1987;Korczynski and Ott, 2004; Shrum, 1991; White and White, 1965) Critics are conventionally viewed as cultural authorities who evaluate music and artists on the basis of established aesthetic systems (DiMaggio, 1987), thus insuring their cul-tural purity and authenticity Operative aesthetics are often assumed to be fixedaccording to convention and the critic’s role is to apply these in the review of apiece, although deviations from standard repertoires may lead to changes in con-vention that provide critics with an opportunity to endorse or resist possible edits

to conventions (Becker, 1982) Thus, as part of the gatekeeping role, a critic ating through mass media is a primary ‘institutional regulator of innovation’(Shrum, 1991, p 643), legitimating extant agreed upon conventions as authenticand delegitimating radical deviations from conventions as inauthentic Hence,critics are crucial agents that help to maintain or change what is consideredauthentic in a particular cultural genre (DiMaggio, 1987)

oA cultural genre refers to sets of artworks classified together on the basis of

per-ceived similarities that represent socially constructed organizing principles, whichimbue artworks with significance beyond their thematic content In this paper, wefocus attention on the ritual potency of highbrow cultural genres that can beunderstood as ‘class-segmented cultural systems [that] are differentiated, hierar-chically ordered, and consist of components that are broadly recognized (univer-sal) and ritually potent’ and thus distinct on all these dimensions from mass culture(DiMaggio, 1987, p 442) Highbrow cultural genres are perhaps nowhere asevident as in the musical performance of the symphony orchestra (e.g chambermusic, symphonies, concertos, and sonatas are the main genres of music composed

in the classical and romantic periods that are performed in concert halls)

Symphony orchestras are ‘ensembles whose primary mission is public mance of those orchestral works generally considered to fall within the standardsymphonic repertoire and whose members are compensated nontrivially for theirservices’ (Allmendinger and Hackman, 1996, p 340) The repertoire of most sym-phony orchestras tends to be dominated by masterworks of prominent composers(e.g Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Wagner) thathave become authorized as core elements of the classical canon through processes

perfor-of historical accretion (Copland, 1963; Weber, 1992) As Weber (1984, 1992)argued, the notion of a classical music canon is a relatively recent developmentsince it did not take shape until the late 1800s in Europe It was also around thistime that experiencing live classical music was beginning to become established as

a highbrow cultural activity performed by nonprofit symphonies (DiMaggio,

1982b; Levine, 1988; for a review of the establishment and early development ofthe US symphony field see Dowd et al., 2002).

While there is some evidence of for-profit organizations performing classicalmusic in the 1800s, DiMaggio (1982b) argued that the orchestral canon and livesymphonic performances did not take root in the USA until they were organizedthrough the nonprofit form in the early 1900s Symphony orchestras had prolif-erated in most major cities in the USA by the 1930s, creating an organizationalbase and set of practices that solidified the US classical symphonic field (Dowd etal., 2002) In turn, the growth of the classical symphonic field enabled many ofthe high profile orchestras to institutionalize the classical canon and related genres(Arian, 1971; Mueller, 1951) Hart (1973) showed that from 1900 to 1970, 59 percent of the orchestral repertory of 27 major symphony orchestras consisted ofworks by only fifteen master composers

A New York Times (29 April 2001, Sect 2, p 1) headline summed up the current

state of affairs: ‘What’s new in classical music? Not much.’ The banner is more

than an attention-grabber; it has empirical support A 1992–93 Orchestra Repertoire

Report by the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL), based on a survey

of the repertoires played by one hundred of the largest orchestras in the US andCanada in their regular subscription concerts, concluded:

the League’s study does show the strong preference of this country’s tras to programme from a limited canon, and to project the sound and speakthe language of the 18th and 19th Century European repertoire In addition,

orches-it shows that major orchestra subscription programmes tend to center around

a few masterpieces (Americanizing the American Orchestra, 1993, p 19)

We believe that under conditions of stability in cultural fields such as during thedominance of the classical canon and aesthetic logic in the field of symphonyorchestras, performances will rely almost exclusively on established conventionsand will be judged by critics based on a ‘rational aesthetic focus’ that emphasizesvirtuosity and musical interpretation (Gilmore, 1993) Gilmore describes the ratio-nal aesthetic focus in contrast to an innovative aesthetic focus that emphasizes risktaking in aesthetic expression such as symphonic performances of new composersoutside the canon While there always exists an underlying tension between a ratio-nal and innovative aesthetic focus, field stability will tend to favour the dominance

of the rational aesthetic focus Hence:

Proposition 1: In a stable cultural field, critics’ reviews of performances in the

field will rely on the conventions associated with the existing canon, genres andthe dominant logic Given canon and genre conformity, critics will tend to focus

on the aesthetic quality of performances (e.g virtuosity and musical tion) and judge authentic performances positively

interpreta-Despite the enduring nature of the classical canon, its taken-for-grantedness aswell as the unique status of high culture more generally has begun to be chal-lenged (e.g Gilmore, 1993; Peterson and Kern, 1996) This has partly occurred as

a result of evolutionary processes such as those related to shifts in the ness of urban elites who no longer enforce the boundaries of high culture as theydid a century ago More proximately, nonprofit organizations including those inthe arts are not as insulated from market forces as they once were as a result ofrecent declines in governmental funding and concomitant pressures for revenuegeneration and accountability As a result, marketing techniques and managerial-ism associated with the commercial market logic have crept into the arts, therebythreatening the purity and longstanding dominance of the aesthetic logic (seeOakes et al., 1998 for a related example of how business planning techniquestransformed provincial museums in Canada)

cohesive-Market and aesthetic logics are akin to Weber’s two types of rationality: formal

and substantive Formal rationality is ‘the extent of quantitative calculation or

accounting which is technically possible and which is actually applied’ (Weber,

1978, p 85) It invokes an imagery of independent agents who consciously uate choices and make decisions that optimize the agent’s cost-benefit tabulations.Weber used the technology of capital accounting in commodity-producing cor-porations as an illustration of the kind of knowledge and process that facilitatesformal rationality by enabling accurate profit calculations In essence, formal ratio-nality is a set of ideas and orientations that guide market behaviour in moderncapitalism

eval-In sharp contrast to formal rationality, which focuses on simple means-ends

cal-culations, substantive rationality draws attention to how social action is shaped by

ultimate values (Weber, 1978) The tension between substantive and formal nality becomes especially apparent when aspects of society that are consideredsacred are profaned by equating their purported value to the price that these ‘prod-ucts’ can bring in the course of commercial exchange (Douglas and Isherwood,1979; Espeland and Stevens, 1998) Such tensions have been identified in the creation of labour markets (Polanyi, 1944), the development of money (Simmel,1978), efforts to establish commercialized blood banks (Titmuss, 1971), the pricing

ratio-of children (Zelizer, 1994), and attempts to purchase tribal land (Espeland,1998)

In the context of symphony orchestras, we use the notion of market logic torefer to broader notions of self-interest and profit-motive that animate commer-cially driven action in Western capitalistic economies and are predicated on formalrationality By aesthetic logic, we refer to notions of artistry that animate andinform the integrity of the classical canon and its musical genres, consistent withsubstantive rationality Our general argument is that recent trends in the US sym-phony orchestra field have led to a blending of the sacred aesthetic logic with themore profane market logic Weber (1978, pp 1121–2) believed that this kind of

blending of formal and substantive rationality occurred quite regularly in what hedescribed as the ‘routinization of charisma’:

The charismatic following of a war leader may be transformed into a state, thecharismatic community of a prophet, artist, philosopher, ethical or scientificinnovator may become a church, sect, academy or school, and the charismaticgroup which espouses certain cultural ideals may develop into a party or merelythe staff of newspapers and periodicals In every case charisma is henceforthexposed to the conditions of everyday life and to the powers dominating it, espe-cially to the economic interests

The need to accommodate the market logic in the symphony orchestra field was

documented in a research report, The Financial Condition of Symphony Orchestras, that

noted how ‘sustaining the economic vitality of orchestras has become a growing

and difficult problem for the field’ (Americanizing the American Orchestra, 1993, pp.

4–5) The challenge has resulted in calls for balancing the symphonic repertoire

to attract a broader audience base; in turn, this has led to some innovative gramming More generally,

pro-orchestra leaders fret about the sensibilities of the hypothetical ‘core ence’, assuming almost a universal antipathy among subscribers to music that

audi-is outside of the ‘core repertoire’ Two generations ago, subscribers of thewell-established orchestras committed for a full season of subscription pro-grammes, often without even knowing what the repertoire would be Pres-sure did not exist, as it does today, to make every concert appealing as a single

event (Americanizing the American Orchestra, 1993, p 21)

Today, orchestral programmes increasingly feature new composers, ‘modern’ 20thcentury talent, as well as some from other arenas such as lowbrow pop culture(Dowd et al., 2002) Hence, the blending of market and aesthetic logics has facil-itated a mixing of musical genres; in turn, this blending dilutes the highbrowculture category, thus challenging the very definition of what is considered authen-tic classical music As DiMaggio explains:

commercial processes erode ritual classifications Commercial producersseek large markets and economies of scale By contrast, status groups try tomonopolize symbolic goods for use in rituals of inclusion and differentiation The discrepancy between commercial and symbolic value creates an oppo-sition between ritual and commercial principles of classification and competition between markets and status cultures (DiMaggio, 1982a, p 450)Becker (1974) makes a similar argument in his discussion on major change in artis-tic traditions

Any major change necessarily attacks some of the existing conventions of theart directly Every convention carries with it an aesthetic, according to whichwhat is conventional becomes the standard by which artistic beauty and effec-tiveness is judged An attack on sacred aesthetic beliefs as embodied in par-ticular conventions is, finally, an attack on an existing arrangement of rankedstatuses, a stratification system the resistance to the new expresses the anger

of those who will lose materially by the change, in the form of aesthetic outrage.(Becker, 1974, pp 773–4)

And, in fact, the social differentiation which bred elitism and exclusivity, both ofthe critics and the audience, seems to have succeeded all too well:

for the larger public, classical music has long been culturally marginal the repertory of most companies is still embedded in the past Declining atten-dance remains a major problem for established symphonic orchestras Though there are probably several reasons for the apathy of the larger Amer-ican public, the main one is the imbalance between the old and new in classi-cal-music programming Mainstream music lovers are said to be indifferent oropenly hostile to contemporary music As long as classical music is in the preser-vation business, it should come as no surprise that potential new audiences, whoare instinctively drawn to new works in other fields, dismiss classical music asdated and irrelevant (Tommasini, 2001, pp 1, 32)

Given these trends, we investigate how symphony orchestra critics have reacted tothese broader transformations in their role as an institutional regulator of inno-vation (Shrum, 1991, p 643) and thus the acknowledged voice for musical authen-ticity As illustration, consider how the dilution of cultural genre boundaries wasreceived by one observer – ‘The orchestra’s warm embrace of Hollywood may be

a deceptive sign of a thaw in the longstanding cold war between the musical tures’ (Schiff, 2001, p 1) – but panned by a critic for exhibiting a ‘pretentious andpernicious tonal tripe scored in the usual sodden and overripe Hollywoodmanner’ scolding the symphony for commissioning ‘a well-remunerated Hollywood hack’ (Schiff, 2001, pp 1, 36) As DiMaggio (1982a, p 452) observes:

cul-‘much of the Western world has entered a period of cultural declassification – theunravelling and weakening of ritual classifications critics in as disparate fields

as pop music, painting, and literature bemoan aesthetic malaise and rampanteclecticism.’

Nonetheless, how critics react to the encroachment of commercialism is anempirical question – do they act as defenders of the status quo or as agents whostrategically accommodate aspects of logic blending? Much research suggests thatart critics will adamantly defend the boundaries of high culture since they havebeen shown to evidence a strong elitist bias (Blau et al., 1985) Hence, when orches-

tras develop mixed programmes to boost audience attendance to meet economicneeds by blending high and popular genres, extant research suggests that resis-tance by critics is likely Hence, despite broader shifts in logics, it is reasonable toposit that the conduct of critics will be substantially similar to that under the pre-viously stable institutional order.

Proposition 2: In a changing cultural field where competing logics interact, critics

will praise performances that feature the traditional canon and genres and willtend to be dismissive of performances that feature more popular works or blendhighbrow and lowbrow genres; performances that evidence musical authentic-ity will receive more favourable reviews

Alternatively, instead of emphasizing the inertia of critics, it is also plausible tosuggest that critics will be more pragmatic about broader institutional shifts andact in more strategic ways to accept some elements of change while rejecting others(DiMaggio, 1987) This view conceptualizes critics as astute agents who play a keyrole in the redrawing of genre boundaries, arguably allowing themselves to remainrelevant as cultural authorities to broader publics Given the ascending marketlogic in our case, critics may expand the scope of their commentary and evalua-tion to include aspects of orchestral marketing, audience instruction, use ofmetaphor and analogy from other genres, and non-aesthetic economic concerns.This leads to our third and final proposition:

Proposition 3: In a changing cultural field where competing logics interact, critics

will change the focus of their reviews by incorporating more elements tent with the newly emerging logic

consis-RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODOLOGY

The Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

The ASO, founded in 1947, has grown from a regional orchestra to a national oneand, today, is considered one of the top ten American Orchestras At the time ofthe study, the orchestra consisted of 95 full-time musicians and a Conductor/Artis-tic Director; the size and composition of the ASO is comparable to that of majorsymphonies in the United States (Allmendinger and Hackman, 1996, p 343).Along with this growth trajectory has been change, both in the organization andits cultural products These changes that have ushered in ideas and practices asso-ciated with the market logic were importantly highlighted by orchestral musicianswho charged the ASO board and management with treating the orchestra ‘like itwas a potato chip factory’ (Kindred, 1996, p C3) In her study of the musician’sclaims on the organizational identity, Glynn (2000) observed that the shift wasevident in the composition of the board:

Twenty or 30 years ago, the ASO board consisted largely of an ‘old guard’ ofdoctors and lawyers who were not necessarily ‘big money’ but were ‘lovers ofmusic’ More recently, the board shifted to embody a ‘corporate mentality’,seemingly driven by increasing numbers of business people who becamemembers As a result, musicians claimed that there was an increasing focus onbottom-line expenditures with a fondness for what musicians described, inderogatory tones, as ‘McKinsey-like’ presentations, briefings, reports and ‘indoc-trination’ (Glynn, 2000, p 289)

The broader blending of market and aesthetic logics vividly came to the foreduring the 10-week ASO musicians’ strike, from 22 September to 4 December

1996 The focus of the strike was on musicians’ salary and working conditions andwas precipitated by management’s decision not to tenure six probationary ASO musicians, although they had satisfied tenure standards of musical quality.Management rationalized their decision as one of resource constraint and finan-cial scarcity; their explanation reflected the primacy of market logic at the expense

of the aesthetic Although management later recanted their decision and tenuredthe six musicians, partly in response to an infusion of resources and vocal community outrage, the ASO musicians still voted to strike when their contractexpired

During this period, a series of offers and counteroffers were tendered; ultimately,

a new contract was negotiated with provisions for fixing the size of the orchestra

at 95 tenured positions and for increasing wages over the next four years TheASO Musical Director, Yoel Levi, negotiated an extension on his contract to thesummer of 2000 and later announced he would resign at the conclusion of hiscontract Subsequently, however, he asked to withdraw his resignation; this wasrefused by the board, citing artistic differences Levi left as Musical Director inMay 2000 Analysing critics’ reviews of performances before and after the strike,

we conceptualize the strike as an event that made the broader blending of marketand aesthetic logics in the field of US symphony orchestras salient in the ASOcontext

The Music Critics and their Newspaper

In our study, the music critics wrote their reviews for the local commercial

news-paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) This paper provided the only complete

and regular coverage of ASO performances; hence, it was the best source for thecritical reviews that comprised our data set However, because we draw from justone newspaper source and a set of reviews authored by just two critics, we exam-ined how the cultural authority of the critics or the constraints of their journalis-tic setting, could affect the logic-blurring as well as perceptions and judgments ofauthenticity

The sociology of news production literature, as well as the general news duction literature, suggests that the market logic is increasingly eclipsing the sub-stantive logics that once dominated newspapers and television news Schudson(1999, p 998) notes that most journalists in news institutions confront ‘the con-straints of deadlines and the need to please a mass audience’ which may com-promise their accuracy and fairness Bagdikian (2000) similarly notes howcommercial news corporations are increasingly influenced by the corporations thatown them, advertise in them, or indirectly influence them We investigated howthese kinds of concerns could potentially bleed into the reviews at the AJC, thusraising an alternative explanation for our results.

pro-We returned to interviews conducted at the time of the ASO strike, in 1996, toascertain if there was any evidence of an encroaching market logic in the news-paper that could affect critics’ perceptions or judgments of musical authenticity

We used interviews from the time that the reviews were written, in order to deflectany threats of bias from recall or hindsight; the interview data are from Glynn(2000) This evidence suggests that AJC was seen as supportive of the musiciansrather than the business concerns represented by many on the ASO Board ofDirectors This noted by a faculty member at a local university who was not affil-iated with either the AJC or the ASO, as well as some board members and musi-cians One board member described the AJC coverage as ‘pro-musician’, asopposed to a ‘pro-management’ stance that was evident in newspaper accountscovering other symphony strikes, such as the one in Philadelphia In an interviewconducted in December 1996 with an ASO board member, the interviewee com-mented on the AJC music critic and his newspaper, acknowledging the expertise

of the former and his opinion of the biases inherent in the latter:

[The music critic] who(m) I think probably has a reasonable grip on the classicmusic criticism, not fantastic, but certainly reasonable, is far too close to themusicians to try to describe what’s going on in terms of context the board we don’t understand why, in a community in which the newspaper is thebully pulpit, and in which its support of the arts is so important they are soshort-sighted about what they are doing

The two critics who wrote the reviews that are the subject of this study, displayed

a deep understanding of the operative aesthetics of classical music, signalling thatthey were knowledgeable and credible musical authorities One critic, DerrickHenry, was himself a musician and member of the musician’s union In announc-ing his arrival at the AJC in April of 1985, the newspaper detailed his backgroundand expertise in classical music:

Henry, 35, comes to Atlanta from Boston, where for the past two years he hasserved as a music critic for the Boston Globe Henry also serves as a contribut-