This state of affairs has, of course, partly to do with the fact that symphony orchestras and concert halls are expensive and can be afforded only by wealthy societies. Today that means societies that have benefited, whether directly or indirectly, from the wealth generated by industrialization. But for the Western concert tradition to become established, it needs more than the ability to afford it; it needs the desire and the will to spend the wealth on this rather than on other things, including other ways of musicking. That has to do with the acceptance of the philosophy that lies behind industrial development. I discussed this philosophy at length in an earlier book (1977) and shall not reiterate it here, but it concerns the acceptance of the scientific worldview; of Western-style rationality, including the Cartesian split between body and mind; and of the discipline of the clock. Certainly, those values are clearly in evidence in this important ceremony of the industrial middle classes.
A modern symphony concert, then, is a very different kind of event from those at which most of the musical works we hear there today were first performed. It is not unfair to compare the modern concert hall with that other contemporary leisure phenomenon, the theme park, whose archetype is the various Disneylands. There, as here, all the resources of modern technology are put unobtrusively to work to create an artificial environment, where the paying customers are led to believe that what they are experiencing is a re-creation of the world of their ancestors, without the dirt and smells perhaps, but otherwise authentic. It is, of course, nothing of the kind but is a thoroughly contemporary affair that celebrates thoroughly contemporary relationships.
Similarly, in the modern concert hall we hear the ideal relationships of the past re-created, not as they were or in their own terms, which would in any case be impossible, but in contemporary terms, which is to say, in terms of the relationships that those taking part in tonight’s performance feel to be ideal. In this the relationships created by modern technology play an important, though largely unacknowledged part. The tension between those two sets of relationships is an interesting matter that I shall be exploring later.
CHAPTER 3
Sharing with Strangers
There is a telling phrase in George Lipsitz’s spirited defense of American popular culture, Time Passages (1990), in which he speaks of audiences for the performance arts in Western industrial societies coming together to share “intimate and personal cultural moments with strangers.” It is an odd thing that Lipsitz reminds us of. Whether it be a play, a film or a musical that we have come to see and hear, an opera, a symphony concert or a pop concert, not to mention a professional wrestling bout, a football game or a tennis match, we accept without thinking about it that not only the performers but also most, if not all, of the audience will be strangers to us. We are prepared to laugh, to weep, to shudder, to be excited, or to be moved to the depth of our being, all in the company of people the majority of whom we have never seen before, to whom we shall probably address not a word or a gesture, and whom we shall in all probability never see again.
What we accept as the norm is, in fact, the exception among the human race as a whole. In the culture of villages, as well as of those quite small cities (by present-day standards), from ancient Athens to eighteenth- century Vienna, which up to the recent past have formed centers of urban culture, performers and audience have known one another as members of the same community. Most of the world’s population lived in villages, where if certain members specialized in instrumental music it was in addition to their agricultural activities, as others might specialize in smithing, milling or shoemaking. And if, like the smith and the miller, they were paid for their services in cash or in kind, it was as part of the system of mutually binding obligations that linked the whole community.
Those music specialists were socially necessary for the central part they played in the rituals of the community that celebrated the mythologies of birth, marriage, death, harvest and the other great events of life. Since everyone took part in the singing and the dancing, the distinction between performers and listeners was generally blurred—if indeed anyone could be called a listener pure and simple. Certainly, just sitting and silently contemplating the performance was no part of the experience. The musical performance was part of that larger dramatic enactment which we call ritual, where the members of the community acted out their relationships and their mutual responsibilities and the identity of the community as a whole was affirmed and celebrated.
In a different way, that was true among the aristocracy, for whom musicking also played its part in the social rituals that maintained their conceptual universe. Music was as much for performing as for listening to, and when musicians were employed, they were there as much to help their employers perform as to perform to them. The musicians were customarily the patron’s servants, and often doubled as gardeners, valets, footmen, and grooms—only the superrich had full-time orchestras—and the listeners were his family, his dependents, and his guests, a tight community. Many of the pieces that the composer-music director composed were not so much for the patron to listen to but for him and members of his household to perform. In addition, the patron himself might well be a composer as well as performer, sometimes of more than amateur competence, as was Henry VIII of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and many of the princes of the Hungarian Esterhazy family which in the late eighteenth century was Haydn’s employer.
As for the music of the medieval and Renaissance Christian church, it was a communal offering to their God, in which the choir, should there be one, sang not to but on behalf of the congregation, who approved what they sang with their response of “Amen.” And of course, as is still true today, congregational singing needed no audience.
In none of these forms of musicking did anybody pay for admission to the performance. You were there by right as part of the community, or you were not there at all. Even the first concert societies, from about 1730 onward, were essentially private affairs, limited to a circle of subscribers, who were strictly vetted for their social suitability before being admitted. The practice of selling tickets, throwing open the event to anyone who had the price of admission, originated in the emerging mercantile society of England in the late seventeenth century, but did not become the rule until well into the nineteenth.
Even in modern industrial societies, sharing with strangers some of one’s most profound and personal cultural experiences is not the invariable rule. Not only do there remain smaller communities in which the traditional intimate patterns of performance survive, but even in great cities there are pockets where they remain strong: working-class social clubs; blues and jazz clubs; local repertory theaters; ethnic communities whose ceremonies of birth, death and especially marriage provide occasions for the affirmation of community; groups of friends who meet to make music together; sports and other activities clubs; and of course churches and other religious groups. But they are islands of community among the great sea of impersonal relations of the modern city.
Those attending tonight’s symphony concert come as strangers to one another and seem content to remain so. Even those who have come with friends sit, once the performance begins, still and silent in their seats, each individual alone with his or her own experience, avoiding so much as eye contact with others. Whatever may be the nature of the performance, they experience it, and expect to experience it, in isolation, as solitary individuals.
Strangers they may be to one another, and yet in certain respects not strangers at all. Those taking part in any musical event are to some extent self-selected in terms of their sense of who they are or of who they feel themselves to be, and this event is no exception. Any number of surveys, taken in a number of industrialized countries, confirm that audiences for symphony concerts are overwhelmingly middle and upper class in composition, which is to say, crudely, that they are either members of a group of occupations that includes business, management, the professions and government or are in training for or aspiring to those occupations.
In terms of formal education the well-educated, which is to say those whose schooling