City, is the largest public funder of the arts in the United States. DCLA's funding budget is larger than that of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal government's national arts funding mechanism. DCLA provides funding and support services to about 1,400 art and cultural organizations in the five boroughs, including 375 museums, 96 orchestras, 24 performing arts centers, 7 botanical gardens, 5 zoos and 1 aquarium. Recipients span many disciplines, including the visual, literary and performing arts; public-oriented science and humanities institutions including zoos, botanical gardens and historic and preservation societies; and creative artists at all skill levels who live and work within the city's five boroughs. DCLA also administers the Percent for Art program, which funds public art at building sites. In fiscal year 2007, DCLA's expense budget, used for funding programming at non-profits, was $151.9 million. Its capital budget, used to support projects at 196 cultural organizations throughout the city ranging from roof replacement to new construction, is roughly $867 million for the period between 2007 and 2011. Arts Music Beginning with the rise of popular sheet music in the early 20th century, New York's Broadway musical theater and Tin Pan Alley's songcraft, New York became a major center for the American music industry. Since then the city has served as an important center for many different musical topics and genres. New York's status as a center for European classical music can be traced back to the early 19th century. The New York Philharmonic, formed in 1842, did much to help establish the city's musical reputation. The first two major New York composers were William Fry and George Frederick Bristow, who in 1854 famously criticized the Philharmonic for choosing European composers over American ones. Bristow was committed to developing an American classical music tradition. His most important work was the Rip Van Winkle opera, which most influentially used an American folktale rather than European imitations. The best-known New York composer, indeed, the best-known American classical composer of any kind, was George Gershwin. Gershwin was a songwriter with Tin Pan Alley and the Broadway theatres, and his works synthesized elements of many styles, including the music of New York's Yiddish theatre, vaudeville, ragtime, operetta, jazz and the post-Romantic music of European composers. Gershwin's work gave American classical music unprecedented international recognition. Following Gershwin, the next major American composer was Aaron Copland from Brooklyn, who used elements of