Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experience with music as the result of encountering sound/music in the context of a specific situation. By presenting a transdisciplinary sub-field of empirical (concert) studies, we unfold this theory for one such frame: the classical concert. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, a selective literature review is conducted to look for evidence on the general plausibility of the single elements of this emerging theory and to identify desiderata. We refer to common criticisms of the standard classical concert, and how new concert formats try to overcome alleged shortcomings and detrimental effects. Finally, an empirical research program is proposed, in which frames and frame components are experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience. Such a research program will provide empirical evidence to tackle a question that is still open to debate, i.e., whether the diversified world of modern-day music listening formats also holds a place for the classical concert – and if so, for what kind of classical concert.
All experimental procedures were approved by the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society, and were undertaken with written informed consent of each participant. The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. We declare that there are no conflicts of interest. We wish to thank Alexander Lindau, Patrick Ulrich and Eike Walkenhorst for help in organizing and implementing the concerts, Mathias Scharinger and Cornelius Abel for help with data preprocessing, Alessandro Tavano for data quality checks, Helen Singer for annotating the musical beats in the music recordings, and Thijs Vroegh and Elke Lange for the use of their absorption questionnaire. We thank Martin Tröndle and Folkert Uhde for preliminary ideas for this research project and the concert program. We thank Claudia Lehr and Freya Materne for organizing the invitations of the participants, and finally, thanks to the many assistants during data collection, particularly Till Gerneth, Sandro Wiesmann, Nancy Schön, and Simone Franz.
This study aimed to uncover potential effects on and meanings experienced by audience members who participated in performances (‘participants’) of intentional efforts to integrate participatory elements in art music practice. We document a recent project in which two contemporary composers were commissioned to write new pieces including parts for audience participants. We analysed observational and questionnaire data from three concerts that interrogated the experiences of participants at three participatory performances in different countries ( n = 273), and identified key emergent themes from participant responses: special group experience, interactive musical experience, experiencing shifting power relationships as well as an evaluative theme about the consequences of participatory elements. These categories connected substantially to concepts of active/passive, empowerment and community prevalent in discourses about participatory theatre. Quantitative analysis of participants’ ratings showed high levels of affective and cognitive engagement, moderated most by prior attendance at a preparatory workshop, and least by demographics or levels of prior musical engagement/experience.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.