Classical Concert Studies

A Companion to Contemporary Research and Performance

Martin Tröndle, Martin Tröndle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000171709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and Performance is a landmark publication that maps out a new interdisciplinary field of Concert Studies, offering fresh ways of understanding the classical music concert in the twenty-first century. It brings together essays, research articles, and case studies from scholars and music professionals including musicians, music managers, and concert designers. Gathering both historical and contemporary cases, the contributors draw on approaches from sociology, ethnology, musicology, cultural studies, and other disciplines to create a rich portrait of the classical concert's past, present, and future.

Based on two earlier volumes published in German under the title Das Konzert (The Concert), and with a selection of new chapters written for the English edition, this companion enables students, researchers, and practitioners in the classical and contemporary music fields to understand this emerging field of research, go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and methodologies, and spark a renaissance for the classical concert.

Part I

The Concert as an Event

1

A Concert Theory

Martin Tröndle

Every art form has once been contemporary.

Every presentation form has once been contemporary.

If you sit in a concert hall these days, placed in your seat shortly after eight o’clock in the evening, you probably rarely take time to wonder how what you are experiencing has come about. You see how the musicians step onto the stage before they begin to tune their instruments and how the conductor is received with applause while a few throats are cleared one last time before the hall falls silent. But have you ever stopped to wonder about the customs of the event, the dress code of the musicians, the behavior of the audience, the information provided by the program, the building and its seating arrangement, or the stealthy rustling of the candy wrapper—and whether it all came about by chance? Or if it rather follows a certain logic?¹

Amazingly, musicology is hardly interested in this question. The concert situation during the nineteenth century, from which the music we perform today mostly originates, is rarely discussed, even though “the concert” denoted something completely different back then.² Only a few publications take into consideration the development of the concert and its institutions, customs, and performances.³ And, as valuable as they are for their meticulous amount of detail, they usually offer little more than an overall description or regional classification⁴ of individual concert forms.⁵ More recently, the English-speaking world has focused on the concert from an ethnological or cultural-scientific perspective.⁶ The general reservation toward approaching the “cultural form of the concert” may be due to musicological traditions, which primarily focus on musical works and their analysis, biographical research on the composers who created these works, and the works’ classification in terms of stylistic history. A glance at the standard reference work, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (or its German equivalent, Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart—MGG),⁷ is more than enough to support this thesis. Here, music history is conceived as a history of progress, whereby the reader marvels at the formal parameters as they change from masterpiece to masterpiece: the fugue culminates in Johann Sebastian Bach, the sonata form in Ludwig van Beethoven, the lied in Robert Schumann, and the leitmotif in Richard Wagner. Almost ingeniously, these ideas are incorporated and have been unfolded in the musical work,⁸ and the musicologist becomes the custodian of these inputs and creations. Music history is thus read as a series of ingenious works made by great (white) men.⁹

Yet, if one doubts the existence of ingenuity and asks why these works have prevailed, or why attention was paid to this invention or the further development of that instrument, or why this concert form and not another, no answer is given. At best, this traditional line of thought makes reference to “quality,” even if no one can say exactly what this “quality” might be. The history of concert development cannot be traced by typification and historiography, nor can it be traced by references to quality. Following Adornian cultural critique, it is only possible to speak of a “history of devolution.” Even interpreting the concert as a machinery of habitus and social status¹⁰ (in reference to Pierre Bourdieu) does not help to develop a concert theory, with which it is possible to grasp the acoustic, architectural, performative, and other aspects that constitute a concert or describe how a concert changes over time. How, then, can the development of the concert be understood from its beginnings in the sixteenth century to the present day? How might the transformations in concert practice be explained, and how might it even be possible to develop prospective conclusions about the concert? To explain such historical changes as well as to be able to predict developments in the future, a concert theory is required. To this effect, I have interwoven two theoretical perspectives: evolutionary aesthetics and affordance theory.¹¹ With the help of the central term “attention,” a concert theory, grasping both historical and current developments, is illustrated in the following.

The Evolution of the Concert

To understand the evolution of the concert, it makes sense to take up a theoretical perspective notable for its processual quality, that is, one that is time related. Evolutionary theory deals with the emergence of things that are new, that is, that are different from what already exists. The Latin word ēvolvere simply means “to develop out of something.” And yet—and this is essential for a modern understanding of the theory of evolution—this development has no goal, no purpose, and no telos.¹² It is simply about changes that happen by chance, biologically through genetic mutation, and culturally through learning.

Biological evolution is understood as the transformation of the genetic makeup of a population, that is, the development of a new species from an existing one.¹³ The new species does not have to be more complex or “better,” but simply different. Moreover, it must be able to assert itself in its environment and find an ecological niche. Due to its adaptability (for example, a differently shaped beak or a longer neck), the new species either has access to resources that other species lacked or attracts attention through a variation of conspicuous features, such as prominent antlers, a unique coloration, or a special song.¹⁴

As a test, let us apply this perspective of “attracting attention” to the development of the history of musical instruments, and ask the following question: What is common in the development of plucked instruments such as the lute, the chitarra battente, the romantic guitar, the modern concert guitar, and the electric guitar? Or in the development of the harpsichord, the fortepiano, the grand piano, the concert grand piano, and the electric piano? Did these developments in plucked and keyboard instruments establish themselves purely by chance? Why do we play some instruments today and not others? Some people may regard the electric guitar or digital music production as a step backward when conceiving a history of musicological progress, or even as a degradation. However, this normative judgment cannot change the fact that, looking at these instrumental developments over the centuries, both were able to attract a growing audience. By improving playability, virtuosity increased, which was impressive. These developments also led to entertaining tonal effects and a steady increase in volume. During a concert, a musician is able to captivate the interest of approximately one hundred listeners with the lute, around three hundred with the concert guitar, and maybe thirty thousand with the electric guitar.¹⁵ With this increased attention to the concert event, higher revenues (resources) can also be realized, which in turn gives the musicians and organizers reason to arrange more concerts. The development of the concert can be understood to a large extent as a self-reinforcing (autocatalytic) process that has led to the constant further development and differentiation of the concert industry.

This theoretical perspective is also useful because of its broad applicability. It can be applied to pop music, where one is sometimes amazed at the musical simplicity of certain pieces of music and performers that become famous. The new piece is not “better” than the old ones, but simply “different.” It is often accompanied by a special rhythm or dance style and a specific dress code. If the innovation (a variation of what already exists) is particularly successful, others copy it in hopes that they too will be successful. Psy, for example, not only garnered over 3 billion hits on YouTube with “Gangnam Style,” but also countless imitators who copied the song. Similar things could be said about Franz Liszt, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Michael Jackson, who all influenced current styles through their innovations.

From this perspective, one might say that every new concert variation that attracts the attention of the audience—from the great symphony to the riff in the 4/4 time of rock and roll—opens up financial resources that lead to its stabilization.

Although it might be bold, it is interesting to apply this theoretical perspective to the history of composition. It is not possible to attribute the variation and development of musical works to genius or coincidence; instead they must be attributed to a perpetual accumulation of attention. Works that attract a great deal of attention are imitated by others, thus establishing similarities and styles. In retrospect, it is possible to explain compositional trends, temporarily preferred parameters of form, and schools of thought,¹⁶ regardless of whether what is under discussion is sentimentalism, early classical music, or punk. This concept of analysis opens up an understanding in musicology that is focused less on the work or composer and more on musical developments as a whole and their potential to attract the audience’s attention.

Developing Models

The model of evolutionary theory is extremely simple and is characterized by the stages of variation and selection.¹⁷ Variation means that a variant—that is, a deviation or further development from the previous one—has been created. If it is successful in its specific environment, this variant is able to stabilize itself. As a result of the emergence of this new species, it exerts environmental pressure on other species, which in turn are forced to adapt to these new conditions—in other words, to undertake an “adjustment measure.” Over time, a constant dynamism of changes develops in which species can also disappear, namely those that cannot adapt at the same rate as the environment changes.

If we do not limit ourselves to biological evolution alone, but also consider cultural evolution, then variations do not arise solely by chance, but also intentionally, primarily through experimentation and learning. How might it be possible to envision such a theory?

A look at the logistics of the product and service industry can be helpful here. For example, if you ask yourself why there are so many different detergents, toothbrushes, mobile phones, and service contracts, you quickly realize that the deliberate production of “real and fake product innovations” is a frequently used strategy for establishing or maintaining oneself on the market with one’s products and services. New variations are introduced time and again. Competitors observe this and react to these variations by varying their own products and services (adjustment measures). Those selected or purchased tie up enough resources to stay in the market or hold on to a niche.

If we now apply this theoretical lens to our subject of investigation, the concert scene, a variation can be, for example, a new instrument, a new compositional technique, or an altered concert format—essentially anything that influences the concert scene. One example of an altered concert format is the Yellow Lounge in Berlin, which relocates the classical concert to the club.¹⁸ Other examples include the updated tradition of house and promenade concerts, such as Hamburg’s salon concert series Musik in den Häusern der Stadt;¹⁹ the Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker, which relocates the concert to virtual space; and the Radialsystem in Berlin, which is synonymous with staged concerts.²⁰ Last, but not least, the private concert organizers and concert associations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries always tried (also in their own interest) to attract an audience. They were concert entrepreneurs. If one of their competitors offered a new concert format that was met with increased public interest, they imitated it to be part of the new trend.²¹

After the rise of the coincidental or deliberate concert variation, a decision for or against the innovation follows. If enough potential concertgoers decide in its favor, t...