ABSTRACT
Commercial sponsorship can exhibit the ‘Chairman’s wife’ syndrome — or that of the Chairman — by which it is fickle and can lead to ill-considered changes in the repertoire or in style. A commercial sponsor may well react against planning of that sort, and the new piece is likely to be dropped. A major London orchestra received what was described as ‘major’ sponsor-ship; within six months the differences in the composition of their programmes was marked; back to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. The decision to give most sponsorship money to the places where it has been earned has more to be said for it than a self-regarding giving to prestigious national institutions only. Meanwhile, less subtle members of the government look forward to the day when industrial-commercial sponsorship and the National Lottery entirely take over from public funding.
