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.

This kaleidoscopic collection reflects on the multifaceted world of classical music as it advances through the twenty-first century. With insights drawn from leading composers, performers, academics, journalists, and arts administrators, special focus is placed on classical music’s defining traditions, challenges and contemporary scope. Innovative in structure and approach, the volume comprises two parts. The first provides detailed analyses of issues central to classical music in the present day, including diversity, governance, the identity and perception of classical music, and the challenges facing the achievement of financial stability in non-profit arts organizations. The second part offers case studies, from Miami to Seoul, of the innovative ways in which some arts organizations have responded to the challenges analyzed in the first part. Introductory material, as well as several of the essays, provide some preliminary thoughts about the impact of the crisis year 2020 on the world of classical music. Classical Music: Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges will be a valuable and engaging resource for all readers interested in the development of the arts and classical music, especially academics, arts administrators and organizers, and classical music practitioners and audiences.

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and Performance is a landmark publication that maps out a new interdisciplinary field of Concert Studies, offering fresh ways of understanding the classical music concert in the twenty-first century. It brings together essays, research articles, and case studies from scholars and music professionals including musicians, music managers, and concert designers. Gathering both historical and contemporary cases, the contributors draw on approaches from sociology, ethnology, musicology, cultural studies, and other disciplines to create a rich portrait of the classical concert’s past, present, and future. Based on two earlier volumes published in German under the title Das Konzert (The Concert), and with a selection of new chapters written for the English edition, this companion enables students, researchers, and practitioners in the classical and contemporary music fields to understand this emerging field of research, go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and methodologies, and spark a renaissance for the classical concert.

By exploring the many different types and forms of contemporary musical instruments, this book contributes to a better understanding of the conditions of instrumentality in the 21st century. Providing insights from science, humanities and the arts, authors from a wide range of disciplines discuss the following questions: · What are the conditions under which an object is recognized as a musical instrument? · What are the actions and procedures typically associated with musical instruments? · What kind of (mental and physical) knowledge do we access in order to recognize or use something as a musical instrument? · How is this knowledge being shaped by cultural conventions and temporal conditions? · How do algorithmic processes 'change the game' of musical performance, and as a result, how do they affect notions of instrumentality? · How do we address the question of instrumental identity within an instrument's design process? · What properties can be used to differentiate successful and unsuccessful instruments? Do these properties also contribute to the instrumentality of an object in general? What does success mean within an artistic, commercial, technological, or scientific context?

The Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts represents a truly multi-dimensional exploration of the inter-relationships between audiences and performance. This study considers audiences contextually and historically, through both qualitative and quantitative empirical research, and places them within appropriate philosophical and socio-cultural discourses. Ultimately, the collection marks the point where audiences have become central and essential not just to the act of performance itself but also to theatre, dance, opera, music and performance studies as academic disciplines. This Companion will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates, as well as to theatre, dance, opera and music practitioners and performing arts organisations and stakeholders involved in educational activities.

Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and Performance is a landmark publication that maps out a new interdisciplinary field of Concert Studies, offering fresh ways of understanding the classical music concert in the twenty-first century. It brings together essays, research articles, and case studies from scholars and music professionals including musicians, music managers, and concert designers. Gathering both historical and contemporary cases, the contributors draw on approaches from sociology, ethnology, musicology, cultural studies, and other disciplines to create a rich portrait of the classical concert’s past, present, and future. Based on two earlier volumes published in German under the title Das Konzert (The Concert), and with a selection of new chapters written for the English edition, this companion enables students, researchers, and practitioners in the classical and contemporary music fields to understand this emerging field of research, go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and methodologies, and spark a renaissance for the classical concert.