Audience Experience and Contemporary Classical Music

Negotiating the Experimental and the Accessible in a High Art Subculture

Gina Emerson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780367696818
• eBook ISBN: 9781000847949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Art General

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Conceptualising and researching audience experience
• 3 Contemporary classical music and its audiences
• 4 Who and why? Demographics and motivations to attend
• 5 CCM as high art subculture: audience tastes and perceptions
• 6 The social and the aesthetic I: musical expertise and experiences with live CCM
• 7 The social and the aesthetic II: aesthetic experience and CCM
• 8 CCM and audience participation: a case study
• 9 Institution–audience relationships in CCM culture
• 10 ‘Written without regard to the audience’: classical music attendees on CCM
• 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