You missed the word "dying" in the OP. The popularity of orchestral music has waned to the point where what you are loosely calling "essentially donations" gets a lot less bang for the buck these days.
Just for a single example-- the count who funded the Mannheim school got musical rockets in return, ones that became the envy of all of Europe. Of course orchestral developments were happening in other locations as well; in general this set off a kind of orchestral space race. You can track it through history all the way to Bayreuth and beyond.
Hell, there's probably a line from those orchestral crescendos to the "orchestra hit" General MIDI instrument.
At the height of all that orchestral fervor you've got, for example, an opera composer as a member of Italy's first parliament. How many people on HN can even name a living composer?
Now imagine $living_orchestral_composer at the helm of a nationalist movement in the U.S.
I've read the preceding sentence three times and brain just outright refuses to come up with imagery for that.
So while I guess you can squint and see the historical funding of orchestras as "essentially donations," there's a big difference between donating to a historical society and donating to the red cross. The 19th century funding of orchestras was much more like the latter-- funding for something that is essential to living (or at least in the U.S., essentially to being taken seriously by Europe). Today it's like building model trains for your ears.
Just for a single example-- the count who funded the Mannheim school got musical rockets in return, ones that became the envy of all of Europe. Of course orchestral developments were happening in other locations as well; in general this set off a kind of orchestral space race. You can track it through history all the way to Bayreuth and beyond.
Hell, there's probably a line from those orchestral crescendos to the "orchestra hit" General MIDI instrument.
At the height of all that orchestral fervor you've got, for example, an opera composer as a member of Italy's first parliament. How many people on HN can even name a living composer?
Now imagine $living_orchestral_composer at the helm of a nationalist movement in the U.S.
I've read the preceding sentence three times and brain just outright refuses to come up with imagery for that.
So while I guess you can squint and see the historical funding of orchestras as "essentially donations," there's a big difference between donating to a historical society and donating to the red cross. The 19th century funding of orchestras was much more like the latter-- funding for something that is essential to living (or at least in the U.S., essentially to being taken seriously by Europe). Today it's like building model trains for your ears.