"Citizen Musician at Work": Neoliberalism and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

This dissertation studies the material, ethical, and aesthetic impacts of big philanthropy on the neoliberalization of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) to understand the myth of constant crisis facing the American orchestral institution. Chapter One traces the origins of Chicago’s Orchestra Hall as it contends that the Gilded Age industrialist-philanthropists’s prioritization of the built environment as the primary site of value-making inextricably links the American orchestral institution to a politics of property. Chapter Two critically examines how the 1993 Symphony Center renovation project precipitated the process of capital switching as investment capital replaced musical laboring as the orchestra’s primary revenue source. The $150 million symphony Center renovation project was a lynchpin in the plan to transform Chicago into a capitol for investment and real estate capital and restructured the financial underpinnings of the CSO to mirror the values of its new business class bourgeoisie donors. Chapter Three unpacks the material impact of siloing justice-oriented community outreach work within training orchestras such as the CSO’s Civic Fellows program. The fourth chapter critically reflects upon ethnographic encounters with the Notes for Peace Initiative, in which Civic Fellows participate in workshops with parents from a local support group to compose songs honoring loved ones lost to gun violence. By reframing the pre-professional orchestra as part of the care industry, this chapter unpacks the ethical and methodological considerations that musicians and musicologists must account for when participating in high-stakes, emotionally-impactful environments. Chapter Five contends that strategic cultivation of a technically and conceptually “challenging” program during performances during the CSO’s 2019 work stoppage highlights a critical juncture at which the aestheticization of mass labor serves both as an act of resistance and an act of continued musical imperialism.