Future of ensembles

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

The Covid craziness is making me wonder. I see that Carnegie Hall has now cancelled all concerts until 2021. That's a lot of concerts wiped out.

So, here's a thread to discuss the long-term future of musical ensembles.

Modern municipal symphony orchestras, of the type we're used to, are huge, unwieldy beasts with massive budgets, teams of administrators, local and global commitments, union rules, and so on. What's going to happen to them? Ditto opera companies.

Maybe the situation is less dire with chamber and choral ensembles, just because they're smaller. But they face some of the same problems.

I take comfort in the fact that, when Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and their contemporaries were writing 100s of orchestral works, the permanent municipal orchestras as we know them didn't even exist. Yet this music got played anyway.

Maybe orchestras will turn into musical collectives that configure in certain ways for certain types of musical events, breaking down and building up as necessary. Flexibility would seem to be a plus. Full orchestra one day, chamber ensemble the next, outside one day, inside the next, etc.

Any thoughts?