ABSTRACT
The most significant corporate involvement in live classical music in this period though was the development of the Barbican Centre, which opened in 1982. The increasing importance of sponsorship, particularly when it involved companies wanting to benefit from the cultural status of classical music, meant that orchestral programming policy remained just as conservative in the 1980s. What had initially made classical music culturally valuable—its transcendence of commerce and the market—was being seen as a financial liability. The most effective innovation in live classical music making, in 1968–84, came from the margins of the classical profession. Classical/rock collaboration did not reflect any sense on the orchestra’s part that cultural barriers had come down and that rock was a new kind of popular music, but was rather a pragmatic attempt to increase audiences. One could say that for classical music promoters, the 1970s and 1980s involved an increasingly intense effort to find alternative sources of cultural and financial support.
