1st Edition
Audience Experience and Contemporary Classical Music Negotiating the Experimental and the Accessible in a High Art Subculture
This book responds to recent debates on cultural participation and the relevance of music composed today with the first large-scale audience experience study on contemporary classical music.
Through analysing how existing audience members experience live contemporary classical music, this book seeks to make data-informed contributions to future discussions on audience diversity and accessibility. The author takes a multidimensional view of audience experience, looking at how sociodemographic factors and the frames of social context and concert format shape aesthetic responses and experiences in the concert hall. The book presents quantitative and qualitative audience data collected at twelve concerts in ten different European countries, analysing general trends alongside case studies. It also offers the first large-scale comparisons between the concert experiences and tastes of contemporary classical and classical music audiences.
Contemporary classical music is critically discussed as a ‘high art subculture’ rife with contradictions and conflicts around its cultural value. This book sheds light on how audiences negotiate the tensions between experimentalism and accessibility that currently define this genre. It provides insights relevant to academics from audience research in the performing arts and from musicology, as well as to institutions, practitioners and artists.
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Professor Stephanie Pitts
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Conceptualising and Researching Audience Experience
Chapter 3: Contemporary Classical Music and its Audiences
Chapter 4: Who and Why? Demographics and Motivations to Attend
Chapter 5: CCM as High Art Subculture: Audience Tastes and Perceptions
Chapter 6: The Social and the Aesthetic I: Musical Expertise and Experiences with Live CCM
Chapter 7: The Social and the Aesthetic II: Aesthetic Experience and CCM
Chapter 8: CCM and Audience Participation: A Case Study
Chapter 9: Institution–Audience Relationships in CCM Culture
Chapter 10: ‘Written without regard to the audience’: Classical Music Attendees on CCM
Chapter 11: Conclusion
Appendix 1: Methodological Appendix
Appendix 2: Survey Questionnaires
Appendix 3: Supplementary Tables
Appendix 4: Supplementary Figures
Appendix 5: Full List of Works Performed at the Survey Concerts
Index
Biography
Dr. Gina Emerson is a musicologist and curator. Her research explores and connects the topics of audience experience, sustainability and cultural participation in art music contexts. She is currently Postdoctoral Research Associate at the IASS Potsdam in the Art-Science Cooperations for Sustainability group.
