Melodious Motors

The ink was scarcely dry on the contract between U.S. Rubber and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony (TIME, May 17) when another great company decided to play patron to another great orchestra. Following Rubber's nationwide Sunday hookup (CBS, 3 p.m., E.W.T.), General Motors will sponsor another national Sunday concert, by the NBC Symphony (NBC, 5 p.m., E.W.T.). The cost to G.M. for a year is about the same as that to Rubber--around $1,000,000.

This deal still left two of the "big four" U.S. orchestras on a sustaining program basis: the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra. But musicians viewed the Rubber and Motors patronage as a portentous symptom. In the postwar world, industry might replace private wealth as music's chief patron, might even succeed in putting fine concert music and opera on a paying basis.

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