New Audiences for Classical Music: The Experiences of Non-attenders at Live Orchestral Concerts

Abstract

Exploring the assumptions and experiences of audience members new to classical music holds the potential to increase our understanding of why individuals attend classical concerts—and, importantly, why they do not. Building on an earlier study by B.M. Kolb (2000, You call this fun? Reactions of young first-time attendees to a classical concert, Journal of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association, 1(1), 13–28), nine culturally-aware participants (aged 24–36) with little or no experience of classical concerts were invited to attend three orchestral concerts at London venues. Data from focus group and individual interviews revealed that feelings of inclusion and participation in the performances were important predictors of the participants' enjoyment of the concert experience. The use of embedded information (e.g. spoken introductions from the stage) played a significant role in enhancing the participants' understanding of the events and developing a valued sense of performer–audience rapport. The implications of these findings for orchestras and concert organizations are considered.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the orchestras and venues involved for giving permission for the study to take place at their concerts. This research was funded by a University of Sheffield Project Studentship; I am grateful to Stephanie Pitts and Chris Spencer for their supervision of the doctoral work from which this paper derives, and to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous draft.

Notes

¹The ‘Concert Companion’, a hand-held PDA device provided to audience members so that they can receive short electronic programme notes and close-up images of the performers, was the first technology used to do this (see Wolf, 2006). At the time of writing in 2010, the expense of providing audience members each with a hand-held device has limited the idea's uptake, although some orchestras have recently piloted using the micro-blogging site Twitter to similarly transmit short programme notes to audience members via their own mobile phones (see e.g. Midgette, 2009).

²For further information see http://www.oae.co.uk/thenightshift/index.html (accessed on 13 September 2009).

³Pitts (2005a, p. 104), for example, identifies a set of ‘ritualized’ enthusiastic responses displayed by regular attenders at the Music in the Round Festival in Sheffield.

⁴Although the rationale of historically informed performance was explained to the audience at The Night Shift, none of the participants gave any indication of recognizing that the OAE was operating under a different set of ‘rules’ from the other two orchestras.

⁵These elements have also been noted for their importance to existing concert attenders (Pitts & Spencer, 2008; O'Sullivan, 2009)

⁶To my knowledge, there are no available video recordings of Levin performing any piano concerti with which to compare his live performance at Concert 2, but a general sense of his manner of speaking and playing can be gained from the bonus DVD which accompanies his 2006 Deutsche Harmonia Mundi recordings of Mozart Piano Sonatas K. 279, 280 & 281. Most likely because he is here performing a solo piano sonata without a live audience, his gestures when playing are less exaggerated than those during his performance at The Night Shift, but note his frequent characteristic use of large hand gestures when speaking. Clips from this DVD can also be viewed by accessing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWKbOGMqDVw and related links (accessed on 5 May 2009).