Program

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 presentation 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. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, I will demonstrate how it has informed the empirical research program of ECR, in which frames and frame components were experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience.

These are analyses conducted within the project “Experimental Concert Research”. Audiences of public live concerts (all staging the same chamber music pieces by Beethoven, Brett Dean, and Brahms) were observed to analyze physiological and motor responses, assuming that the music would induce synchronous physiology and movement in listeners (induction synchrony). Hypothesizing that such synchronies would be present, we also expected them to be linked to participants’ aesthetic experiences, affect and personality traits assessed by questionnaires. Clear evidence was found of physiological synchrony (of cardiac measures, skin conductance, respiration rate) in over 800 participants of 14 different live concerts. In a subsample of three concerts with 130 participants body movement was captured from videos during the concerts and was found to be significantly synchronized as well. Breathing behavior, that is the timing of inhaling and exhaling, was however never found synchronized. Links between bodily synchrony and aesthetic experiences indicated that synchrony was higher when listeners felt moved emotionally by a piece, and were immersed in the music. Personality traits were also associated with the individual contributions to physiological synchrony. Thus the concerts audiences resonated with the music, their music perception was embodied.

What is different in orchestra concerts designed to attract new audiences? What to listen for, and what are the performative and interpretive frames the observer must comprehend? The research presented my talk, is based on pragmatist aesthetic participant-observation, listening and interpretation, of 36 orchestra events, concerts and educational performances, involving 14 symphony orchestras. Majority of the concerts were chosen on the basis of their diversity and representation of the variety of development activity that the symphony orchestras promote. Inspired by DeNora’s adaptation of Adorno’s music sociology, an indicative scheme was used to review the concert experience, but “experience” is understood here in the pragmatist sense of music as participative process. To understand the musical event as a meaningful collective activity in terms of its structure, social activity and uses of music the concert is defined as a temporal organization with structural elements, boundaries and timeframes, behavioural patterns and history. The concert organisation thus exists for the duration of the concert, when people (orchestra, audiences, etc.) come together for music making. The advantage of defining the event as a temporal organisation rather than as an instance of a performer-audience relationship, or other types of contract-bound transactional activity, is that it offers the chance of re-arranging the interactions and appreciate them in a more holistic way. Furthermore, if we allow for imagination and let ourselves think through the music, alternative events give critical insight into what changes to the concert structure might mean for the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given a boost to the audiovisual streaming of classical concerts — a cultural practice long entrenched in the analogue. While opportunities and problems for the convergence of classical concert culture and the digital sphere are already discussed in research and practice, the debate about the future of this trend lacks a unified starting point. Addressing this, the presentation examines classical music performance practice in digital forms by presenting a systematization of the field of practice and a comprehensive literature review. For the systematization, different types of streaming platforms for classical concerts are categorized along dimensions of streaming. Additionally, ideal-typical digital concert formats are described based on examples (user-generated concert, conventional digital concert, concert film, concert show). The literature review summarizes previous publications, from the perspective of both production and reception of audiovisual concert streaming. Subsequently, research foci are identified. Further, the methodological framework of the research project “Digital Concert Experience” (DCE) is presented. DCE investigated the audience experience of different classical concert streaming formats in a large-scale online experiment.

Watching a live concert does not necessarily entail to be in the actual place of performance physically. But how is the concert experience affected by the relation of time and space within the concert is presented?
Modern concert formats offer a wide range of scenarios regarding these temporal-spatial combinations due to current technological possibilities. The presentation features a study comparing concert experience in two opposing scenario poles: concerts in physical co-presence of musicians and audience and digital concert streams. Data analysis showed that stream concerts were experienced less intense in different aspects (especially social related) than the concerts in physical co-presence. The study contributes to the understanding of what makes a concert in the liveness mode of physical co-presence so special for many of us.

Concert live streaming and recorded concerts have increased the possibilities for attending live performances and became more accessible during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, our goal was to gain a deeper understanding of the qualities of the aesthetic experience in digital concerts of Western classical music by conducting an online experiment. We thematically analyzed the free-form comments left by 341 participants at the end of a quantitative questionnaire after they viewed one of four digital concert films. With an inductive approach, we developed a thematic framework focusing on medium-related affordances and their influence on the participants’ experiences. The potential of the camerawork distinctly affects sensory perception, among other acoustic- and vision-related aspects. Additionally, the peculiarities of having a concert in one’s living room creates a situation that can both foster and inhibit aspects of the experience and cause a constrained kind of social connectedness to take place. Hence, specific experiential dimensions—such as closeness and immersion—are enabled and developed by the digital medium in distinctive ways. Through these dimensions, the experience of liveness can also be evoked in forms that do not rely on physical co-presence, whereas participants’ previous live experiences induced expectations conditioning the whole experience. Overall, our study contributes to understanding how an audience’s aesthetic experience acquires specific qualities through the digitization of the concert. To that end, it encourages qualitative research approaches to concert experiences. The findings also indicate possibilities for triggering specific dimensions of the audience’s experience in future digital or hybrid concert design.

The presentation aims to convey a personal and honest account of my first two years of being artistic and managing director of the prestigious Beethovenfest Bonn. I was appointed with a clear task of transforming a (very) classical music festival with a 170-year tradition into a younger and far more contemporary-feeling music festival. This implies radical changes in how we need to program, communicate and lead. In many ways, the transformations we are going through at Beethovenfest are prototypical for the classical music space as a whole. How can we reach new audiences and not lose the old? How to diversify the concert format and experience? What are the most urgent parameters we need to change in order to create a ecosystem of classical music that it fit for the future?

This talk focuses on the practical and real-world implications, challenges and opportunities of change and shines light into the machine room of transformation. I present learnings, successes and failures of my first two years in charge of Beethovenfest Bonn, focusing on our core-output and interface with audiences: the concert and countless experiments in changing it. Thereby I also try to destill what we can learn from Beethoven for this contemporary challenge: that we need to be decisive and maybe also go to far, in order to arrive anywhere new and worthwhile.

Since 2015, Folkert Uhde and Hans-Joachim Gögl have been developing exceptional event concepts for the Montforter Zwischentöne festival, which they founded in Feldkirch, Austria, in the state of Vorarlberg. While it is clear that classical, new, improvised music and jazz invariably play a role at this festival with relatively traditional concert formats, there are moments when such forms of music are not the main focal point but support the exploration of other themes. Music may provide the impetus for dealing with a particular social or political issue, but it can also provide a resonating space for the spoken word. Such themes arise when dealing with the specific region in which the events take place and can stem from politics or regional development, touch on aspects of personal development, or address societal challenges. Uhde and Gögl also provide practical case studies from their work in Austria to accompany the theory offered in their presentation.

The motivation to attend cultural events is an insightful aspect to study audiences. To understand their motivations and their experience is key for audience development. However, classical concert visitors have rarely been studied in this regard. Moreover, the relationship between motivation and experience has not yet been studied at all. In order to shed light on this topic, 802 concertgoers of a concert series were surveyed before and after the concert about their motivations, expectations and experiences and also provided sociodemographic information. A cluster analysis of motivation items reveals four types of concert visitors: Accompaniers, concert enthusiasts, social-event visitors andmusic lovers. The statistical analysis of the types shows that they also differ regarding their frequency of concert attendance, music education, lifestyles, listening modes, etc. as well as with regard to their expectations and experiences. For the field of audience research, this analysis represents a comprehensive and novel perspective on classical concert visitors and offers meaningful implications in the fields of arts management, cultural sociology and concert design.

My presentation will provide representative figures on the socio-demographic structure, concert attendance and media habits of the post-pandemic classical concert audience in the German capitol of Berlin. Based on data from an online survey, I determine typical media usage patterns employed for listening to classical music with the surprising finding that a third of the Berlin classical concert audience rarely ever listens to classical music in the everyday. I then continue by checking for social factors that help explain the personal affinity to using audiovisual concert streams. My findings demonstrate that while audiovisual concert streams used to be a niche offer for music professionals and tech-savvy male classic enthusiasts before 2020, the pandemic not only helped in increasing overall use frequencies but also stimulated usage in new segments of the classical concert audience (especially ‘Digital Natives’, women and higher-educated), thereby reducing priorly existing inequalities in digital cultural participation. Furthermore, my results also show that any fears of concert streams becoming a substitute for traditional concert visits seem unwarranted: The more frequent Berlin classic enthusiasts attend concerts in person, the more frequent they also tend to use concert streams and vice versa.

Classical concerts suffer from a decline in attendance, as confirmed by visitor statistics, promoters, and our own perception. Even though this decline may have various social causes that seem to be irreversible (e.g., the collapse of the educated classes and a taken-for-granted canon), nevertheless, concert organizers try to reach out for new target groups and to attract new strata of society. “Education” projects of diverse methodologies have been installed at almost all classical music institutions, some of them for decades. So far, it seems, they have not yielded a measurable change, at least none is publicly documented.

We propose to reverse the direction of the question: Instead of having officially appointed music educators and concert educators think about how to reach new audiences, we directly asked potential visitors about their own preferences.

For this purpose, we conducted an online survey as part of a music sociology seminar at Leipzig university. We used a variety of methodological approaches (such as design thinking, cf. Dollmann 2023). In this survey, 454 participants expressed their views and wishes regarding repertoire, venue, performance, and audience behavior during classical concerts. Preliminary results of the ongoing survey will be presented and discussed.

Music has been shown to induce reactions on multiple emotional response components, including physiological indicators of arousal (e.g., heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance), and facial expressions of listeners. However, few studies have tested these methods in realistic listening contexts, for example, with larger audiences in classical concerts. In this presentation, we will show results of the analysis of facial expressive and physiological audience responses within the Experimental Concert Research Project.

Infrared cameras captured the faces of several hundred audience members participating in the study. iMotions Affectiva, was used to analyse the facial expressions of the listeners (e.g., anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise). Furthermore, we recorded Skin Conductance, Blood Volume Pulse and Respiration Rate from the same audience members. Subsequently, we explored if ten different string quintet movements presented in the concert elicited corresponding expressive and physiological responses in audiences.

The facial expression analysis indicates that audience members show different emotional expressions while listening to musical movements with differing emotional connotations. For example, the first movement of Brahms String Quintet No. 2 in G major elicits more joy in the audience’s faces than the third movement in G minor. Furthermore, these results are supported by changes in indicators of physiological arousal. Taken together, the results of this study support the conclusion that both behavioural and physiological signals can be captured from audiences during concerts indicating their experience of music that differs in emotional expressivity.