Nevertheless, it was not only differences in the physical sound that made a piece ‘fresh’ for the participants; being in the concert hall altered how participants heard the music. Watching the musicians play provided a visual focus to their listening that enabled them to hear previously unheard aspects of the music.
Sandra I like to identify where the sound is coming from, from what instrument. You just accept the sound if you’re listening to [a recording], and it makes you a lot more aware, when you are seeing the orchestra, where that sound’s coming from.
Robert You look at an instrument, either anticipate, like the timpani for example, and you really hear the timpani because you’re looking at somebody, or a cello. You can look at the general orchestra and still pick that out by looking at them directly, it almost magnifies the sound. It doesn’t, obviously, because the sound acoustics in Symphony Hall are world-class. But just by looking at it, concentrating, it seems to bring it out as well. And you don’t get that on the CD.
Emma With, sort of, being able to see the orchestra, you can pick out which instruments are actually playing which bits of [the music], whereas if you’re just hearing it on the radio or something, you don’t really distinguish ‘oh that’s being played by that’, ‘oh they’re playing that’. I just really enjoy finding out how things are put together.
Participants could identify the sound of individual instruments by looking at the players in the orchestra. It is worth noting the high level of musical knowledge that some participants displayed here and which is discussed in Chapter 13.2. Being able to watch the sound being produced by various instruments encouraged participants to listen to the music in a different way, to interrogate the sound they were hearing, rather than passively ‘accepting’ it. In addition, Robert links this mode of listening to the quality of the acoustics in Symphony Hall as discussed in Chapter 9.2; whereas some elements may become inaudible on a CD, in the hall, there is the potential to hear every sound if audiences hone in on it. Being able to see the musicians therefore allowed participants to hear new elements in a piece that they have not heard on recordings, bringing a freshness to the piece in a different way. In addition, as seen in Anthony’s comments at the start of the chapter, participants were able to listen in a more focussed way in the concert hall than was usually possible in everyday life.
Robert When you’re at home and you listen to music, you don’t listen to music because you’re doing something else, whether it’s reading, Sudoku, crossword, but when you’re at a concert, you listen to the music.
Anita I tend to have the radio on all the time which again is very superficial because it’s background. […] Occasionally I’ll put on CDs and things and try and concentrate but I find I don’t concentrate so well at home because I’m usually distracted. But here, it’s different. You focus. […] You can’t go off and make yourself a cup of tea or decide you’ve just got to do that dusting that you’ve noticed. You’re sitting there and listening.
Lawrence To sit and listen intently to Mahler [at home] would probably be difficult, but coming here and listening isn’t difficult.
Listening requires self-discipline that few participants could achieve in their
everyday lives. The concert hall removes distractions, forcing listeners to do nothing other than sit in their concert seat, though, of course, audience members could be mentally pre-occupied with other things. Each of these responses stems from the question of how concerts differ from recordings, however, it is worth noting that many participants told me that they rarely listened to classical music in a
Jackie I would never just sit, probably, and listen to a piece of music, I would be doing something else at the same time.
Gordon In the last 10 years, […] I have fallen out of love with listening to the radio anymore or buying CDs so probably the only time I switch off from everything else is when I come from a concert.
Sandra We don’t play records very often. […] Unless you’ve got the radio on, [concerts are] a nice way to keep up with the music. […] You feel when you’ve come out sometimes, that you ought to go back and start playing your records, you know, play them again.
While previous research on the value of live performances has always articulated liveness in relation to recorded or mediated art, this study suggests that, for many audience members, concerts are the only time in which they listen in a concentrated way to classical music. Part of the value of concert-going therefore seems to be that it carves out a time in which to engage with classical music in a concentrated way. This is backed up by Anthony’s comments from the start of this chapter, where he describes concert-going as ‘permission’ to switch off from daily life and focus on the music. Indeed, participants valued concerts as a way of removing the distractions of everyday life, not only in order to listen better but also as a tool for wellbeing.
Peter It’s a way of relaxing. Particularly when I was working, it was just fantastic to come here after work and just sit there and just lose yourself in the experience.
Cathy The live experience is just maximising everything that’s going on in an hour and a half, two hours. It’s saying ‘right now, this is where my brain is, this is what I’m doing, I’m focussing on this, I’m not trying to do anything else. This is it. This is what I’m doing. Don’t fidget, don’t think about anything else, just enjoy this and be lifted’. Cathy’s use of the term ‘maximising’ linked her concert listening to the effort-risk- reward framework; when she has made the effort to attend a concert, she wants to enjoy it as much as possible and get as much out of the experience as she can. It is also related to her belief that she is ‘lucky’ to have the opportunity to go to concerts (Chapter 9.3), whether she means in terms of them being available within travelling distance, or in having the disposable income to be able to afford to attend, she believes she must make the most of her opportunities, much like Emma in Chapter 5.1. These are interesting quotations because not only did participants highlight the relaxing nature of concert-going, but this therapeutic quality seemed to be entirely intertwined with aesthetic appreciation in their accounts of listening. It suggests that to engage with music aesthetically, even when it requires great effort to ‘focus’ and ‘not fidget’, is an act of relaxation. Peter’s description of relaxing in terms of ‘losing himself’ in the music is linked to ideas of captivation and flow, state of intense concentration characterised by a loss of self-awareness (Csikszentmihályi,
1975; 1990). A small number of participants’ accounts of listening described experiences of flow in listening.
Anita You get lost in [the music].
Jackie [My mum] just gets lost in it. It’s… once you’re in there, you can just relax and enjoy what’s in front of you.
Alison I guess you really are absorbed and lost in that music and that build-up in that music.
A small number of participants, smaller than may have been expected given the attention that ‘flow’ or captivation has received in audience research literature, described themselves getting ‘lost’ in the music when listening. Linking back to the idea that focus is achieved much more easily in a concert hall than listening to a recording, it could be expected that flow is also more readily experienced within the concert hall. There is however a distinct difference in tone between these comments, and those of Sandra, Gordon and Jackie above. Here, the experience is far more passive; the participants ‘lose’ themselves, suggesting a sense of surrender to the music, that the music is somehow in control. Sandra, Gordon, Jackie and Lawrence, on the other hand, described listening as work, making a conscious effort not to think about anything other than the music. As I noted in the literature review (Chapter 2), ideas of concentration and captivation, and their opposites, distraction and boredom, have not been adequately understood in audience research (Chapter 2.5). Gritten (2014) has claimed that no account of engagement is complete without considering boredom or distraction, and Gross’ (2013) research at the BBC Proms noted that boredom is always a possibility in the concert hall. In this study, some participants felt guilty for these lapses in concentration, taking it to mean they had failed as listeners.
John When I was at work as a teacher and a head teacher, I remember once I went to City Hall, Sheffield to a concert I was particularly looking forward to enjoying and about half way through I suddenly realised I’d spent the entire concert solving the problem of this kid and his relationship with his parents and I thought ‘well damn me! I didn’t switch off, I brought my work with me’.
Emma There was one where I think it was… I can’t remember which one it was, it was like 40 minutes long, and about half an hour in you, sort of, zone out completely and then zone back in and you’re like: ‘I think they’re still playing the same piece’. Yeah, I think I was in the choir [seats], so you end up sort of audience-watching and then you think ‘okay, I feel a bit bad, okay, there’s an orchestra playing, they’re still going’.
Both John and Emma’s comments are couched in ethical language as they seemed to judge themselves for not listening well enough. John was annoyed that he thought
about work, like Cathy, he felt that he had not made the most of being in the concert. Emma’s criticism, on the other hand, was directly related to the musicians. She felt guilty that the players were working hard to produce this music to which she was not paying adequate attention. In Chapter 8.2, Emma described herself as being ‘not very good’ with core concerts, lending more weight to the idea that she rationalised her lapses in concentration as her failing as a listener. Her comments betray a sense of insecurity about her engagement with classical music. Dobson and Pitts (2011) found that CANAs assumed classical music to be inherently good and therefore, if they did not connect with a piece of music, it was because they themselves were at fault. This suggests that the difficulty that new attenders can face in engaging with the music may translate into feelings of inadequacy as listeners. A small number of long-term attenders, on the other hand, blamed the orchestra, not themselves, when they became distracted.
Ruth I think it’s a pretty poor performance if I think about something else [other than the music].
Mark It is nicer if it’s a popular programme, but we still come, we just don’t fall asleep!
While Mark and Ruth are both long-term, frequent core attenders, they have radically different attitudes to the orchestra and programming. Ruth is highly- knowledgeable about classical music, believing herself to be a good listener; any lack of enjoyment is therefore blamed on the musicians. Ruth can be seen to
demonstrate what Bennett et al. (2009) have described as ‘cultural confidence’ in the inherent rightness of her own evaluation and choice of arts engagement (p.66– 71). Because she is confident in her own judgement to discern between good and sub-standard performances, she attributes any periods of boredom to the
inadequacy of the playing. Mark similarly blamed the musicians or programme of music for his moments of disengagement, but this stemmed from his belief that the orchestra should entertain him. He seemed to want to be captivated in a concert rather than having to work to listen. Though Mark and Ruth’s relationships to the orchestra are vastly different, they both seem confident in their ability to judge the quality of the performance, whereas Emma believed that any lack of enjoyment was caused by her failure as a listener.
Nevertheless, distraction or disengagement from the music was not always seen as a bad thing. Indeed, Pitts’ (2016) recent study with CANAs and O’Sullivan’s (2009) research with orchestral audiences both found that their participants ‘defended’ their right to ‘daydream’ (Pitts, 2016, p.12) or to ‘switch off’ from the music as they
wished (O’Sullivan, 2009, p.216). Indeed, for Helen, losing concentration was not the fault of either the orchestra or her listening, but a natural part of concert-going.
Helen I mean sometimes you can just, because you just chill, you just wanna sleep! But hey, that’s part of it. If it’s relaxing me from work or something like that, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Okay, yeah, I’m sorry if I fall asleep, but I have never snored! But you know, it’s one of those things, everybody says they do it at times. You just chill, relax, close your eyes for a moment and that’s it, you’re away. And the orchestra take you away. So, I just view that as part of the process.
If daydreaming, or actually dreaming, is a natural part of concert listening, then once again the line between aesthetic and therapeutic qualities of concert
attendance are shown to be blurred. Helen’s comment that she has ‘never snored’ suggests that she believed herself to be within her right to sleep if it did not impact on anyone else’s listening. She cannot be sure that she has never snored so this statement is interesting, striking at the ethics of listening discussed in Chapter 2.4 (Gross, 2013; O’Sullivan, 2009). These comments once again reinforce the ethical nature of concert etiquette and judgement for audience members who impair others’ listening. Helen cannot be sure that she has never snored, but is keen to assert that she does not disturb other people.
While the concert hall was valued for its affordance of focussed listening, which could bring freshness to a piece of music, listening in a concert also had ethical implications for participants. Indeed, how participants reflected on their own concert listening was determined by a number of different factors. For some, they judged themselves for being unable to listen because they had failed to ‘make the most’ of their concert experience. Having put in a great deal of effort to attend, they had then restricted their enjoyment by thinking about things other than the music. For others, whether they attributed their distraction to failing as a listener or to an inadequate performance was determined by cultural confidence (Bennett et al., 2009). Experienced arts consumers were confident in their ability to concentrate on and engage with the music, whereas newcomers, like in Dobson and Pitts’ (2011) study, felt any disengagement was a failing on their part.
Conclusion
Live performances were valued by participants for bringing freshness to familiar pieces of music. They do so in two distinct ways: firstly, the music can physically differ from a recording in interpretation, or in the quality of the live sound; secondly, the concert hall setting allows audience members to listen to the music differently, through being able to see the musicians and concentrate harder.
Although new attenders may not be able to identify different interpretations, they were still able to identify that the live orchestral sound differed from a recording. In addition, they still articulated the value of being able to watch the musicians play and the opportunity to listen in a concentrated way in the concert hall.
I have shown that while listening can be made easier in a concert hall, it is still often conceptualised as effort or work. More experienced participants reconciled
moments of distraction as either a natural part of listening, or as the fault of the performers, but other participants, especially Emma, judged themselves for not being able to maintain concentration for the duration of a concert. In Chapter 8, I described how CANAs felt that it was easier to maintain concentration at populist concerts than at core concerts, due to the shorter length of the pieces and the greater familiarity of the music. In the next chapter, I draw these findings together by exploring how ideas of knowledge and familiarity interact in concert listening.