Less subsidy means better music

One of the unlooked-for side effects of the financial crisis has been what might be called the desocialising of music funding. Whereas once many arts organisations could expect to survive solely on public money, just recently there has been an almost unseemly rush to tap private sources of cash. The time lag between the original catastrophe and the realisation that oblivion may be just round the corner is probably explained by the disinclination of politicians to dump high-profile organisations overnight. But now, finally, there is no escape. Philanthropists the world over are besieged.

This would make such a lovely subject for a university student in the US, on one of those privately endowed humanities research programs, assuming he or she could get their heads around the concept of taxpayers being obliged to support élitist endeavours. For it is a very European phenomenon. Not that I would recommend that our students start in Britain – unless they were very fluent in the peculiar status that the BBC holds here.