Edward W. Arian, 88, bassist, teacher, writer

It might have been enough to become a double-bass violinist with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.

Edward W. Arian did just that from 1947 to 1967, becoming assistant principal bass.

But he did more.

Mr. Arian rose against what he described as the moneyed elite that then controlled the orchestra, helping to lead an eight-week 1966 strike that got the musicians their first guaranteed 52-week salary.

Then, he shifted careers and eventually became chairman of the political science department at Drexel University and of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. At Drexel, a poster on his office wall declared: "The important thing is this - to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

On Feb. 12, Mr. Arian, 88, died of congestive heart failure at Rydal Park, a retirement community in Abington Township, where he had lived since 2001.

Making music and challenging perceived elites weren't enough.

After founding the arts administration program at Drexel, Mr. Arian became an arts-management consultant to such groups as the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and the Southwest Florida Orchestra.

His assault on Ormandy and his board came in the 157-page version of his doctoral dissertation, Bach, Beethoven, and Bureaucracy: The Case of the Philadelphia Orchestra, published by the University of Alabama Press.

In a prepublication appreciation of the 1971 book, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster wrote that Arian found that to be on the orchestra board, "the only qualification has been inclusion in the Social Register."

Those elite paid the 104 musicians in the orchestra so poorly, Webster paraphrased Mr. Arian as saying, because they "insisted on its efficient operation so that relatively few wealthy persons could make up a small deficit and so keep the orchestra to themselves."

Webster wrote that Arian's book documented the result: "This efficient machine has no room for new works that require extensive rehearsal.

"It becomes a performing machine devoted to standard repertory, music which can be rehearsed quickly, and antagonistic to contemporary music and composers."

Yesterday, Mr. Arian's wife of 67 years, Yvette, said the orchestra had changed substantially for the better since he wrote the book.

After completing a 20-year career with the orchestra in 1967, Mr. Arian earned a doctorate in political science at Bryn Mawr College in 1969, and then joined Drexel.

In a 1979 interview, Mr. Arian said, "I lost 35 pounds after I left the orchestra. When people get bored, they eat," which he said he was when he was with the orchestra.

"The same repertoire, the same routine day after day, can be very boring."

After serving on the arts council for six years, in January 1979 Mr. Arian became its chairman, heading 17 experts authorized to disburse nearly $3 million in federal and state grants to arts groups.

In 1989, Temple University published his other book, The Unfulfilled Promise: Public Subsidy of the Arts in America.

He was a visiting professor in arts administration at the Wharton School and at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Born in Cleveland, he graduated from Granville High School in 1939, served in the Navy during World War II as a musician, and earned a diploma in 1944 at the Curtis Institute of Music.

He was in the Denver Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony before joining the Philadelphia Orchestra.

While with the orchestra, he earned a bachelor's degree at Combs College of Music in Philadelphia in 1960. At what is now the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, he was an instructor of double bass from 1960 to 1974.

He was chairman of the Alumni Affairs Council at Curtis for two terms, from 1995 to 2001. In 2002, he received the annual Curtis Alumni Award.

Besides his wife, Mr. Arian is survived by daughters Anne-Lesley and Carol, and five grandchildren.

A memorial was set for 3 p.m. April 17 at Rydal Park.