IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, and chairman of the board of Transaction Publishers. As an extracurricular activity, he has written extensively on the social aspects of music of Pshychology Today, Commonweal, Journal of Jazz Studies, and other publications.

The critical point of cross-over between
sociological and musicological
forms of analysis is audience. Earlier varieties
of analysis that dwelt on composers,
performers, and compositions have given
way to changes in the mode and size of
audience participation. Music as an object
for purchase may not be what musicians
have in mind at the moment of creation
or invention, but in the final analysis the
listener, as a buyer of tickets to a concert
or a drinker at a bar with a piano player in
the background recalling classic melodies,
is very much part of the cultural process.
Changes in electronic technology alter the
consumption no less than the production
of music. Bluntly put: has the mass audience
of the twentieth century fizzled into
the elite savant groups of the twenty-first
century? The burden of this analysis is to
provide some operational guideline, if not
exactly a full-scale answer to this question.

The issue of audience size and participation
has emerged in a new technological
universe. It has come to preoccupy social
scientists and musicologists alike. Whether,
in an era of astonishingly high-quality
recordings and systems of private audio
retrieval systems, people will continue to
attend live concert performances becomes
a core issue. My purpose in this exercise
is to provide a sense of those elements
relating to concert hall attendance in an
effort to seek a realistic response to this
vexing and compelling question. For what
is at stake is the heritage of culture as such.
In doing so, I will draw upon an extramusical,
or a sociological tradition, that
takes into consideration symbolic interactional
elements and extra-musical considerations,
specifically, the social verification
of status, musician and audience networks,
comparison and confirmation of talent,
audiences as confirmation of social tastes,
cultural exclusivity afforded by attendance,
the act of enjoyment apart from considerations
of purchases, and finally, the role
of the new technology involved in “live”
versus “recorded” music sounds.

Prior to doing so, it is necessary to
review the major statements on the issue
of audience and artist as put forth in
the work of musical commentators and
performers turned analysts. These are
individuals for whom the issues of live
versus recorded music involve nothing less
than the survival of the culture as such.
In its simplest, most atomistic form, the
incongruity goes as follows: In the age of
electronic recording, the sound of music
has become astonishingly precise and even
higher in quality than live performances;
why then should anyone go to hear music
in person? A variety of reasons have been
offered for performance as such. The issue
has become considerably magnified in
an era of multiple-track recording engineering
that is virtually error-free and
increasingly larger-than-life. Add to this
the escalating costs of maintaining major
orchestras, competing media claims on the
public that require little else than turning a
dial, not to mention the escalating costs of
attending and participating alike, and one
can readily detect the makings of a crisis in
audience size, not just in the economics of
musical performance, but in the texture of
creation as such.

Before addressing the theoretical issues,
it must be noted that the actual situations
in concert halls and other places where
live music is heard—from huge concert
halls to miniature college adult education
centers—indicate a huge increase
in the number of ensembles and musical
events and in audience attendance. This is
true of all kinds of music, from classical
to country and Western, from Lincoln
Center to the Grand Ole Opry. In remote
places of small cities and municipalities,
one finds chamber ensembles springing up
and communities of civic supporters not
far behind. While one might argue that
the tradition of the new is rarely found
in such venues, neither can it be denied
that the venues themselves most definitely
exist—and support a segment of groups for
whom the life of art merges with the art of
life. Audience size varies, but its support
for this larger number of activities underwrite
the expansion of concert halls and
nightclubs quite apart from the substance
and quality of performance or recordings.

There is a broad cultural pessimism afoot
in the musical world that seems to underlie
a good deal of the belief in the live concert
performance’s demise. One senses a sentiment
that serious music, however that be
defined, is no longer finding a significant
audience in the twenty-first century, or
indeed, through most of the second half
of the twentieth century. This is neither
the time nor place to challenge such sentiments.
Rather, this set of beliefs generates
a feeling that the very purpose of attending
concerts has funereal rather than creative
purposes. To read the brilliant essay by
Glenn Gould on music in Russia—actually
a wide-ranging discussion of Prokofiev,
Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Miaskovsky, and
its frightening dualism of the cumulative
musical language and the specific cultural
traditions of a backward culture—is to
come face-to-face with a dualism that in
Gould’s mind saps the energy and drive of
music as a whole.

It is fair to say that Glenn Gould crystallized,
in his person as well as his thought,
the post-classic problem of how the musician
relates to the audience. A musician
of widely heralded quality, who burst on
the scene in 1955 with his recording of
the Bach Goldberg Variations, he deserted
the concert hall stage a decade later, thereafter
confining his work to the recording
studio, on terms largely dictated by him.
In a series of five essays, Edward W. Said
claimed, and properly so in my opinion,
that Gould was the master of and supreme
interpreter of counterpoint in the twentieth
century. Said went on to note that
Gould, by virtue of his ability to connect
the emotions and the intellect in perfor
mances, generated a regard that went
beyond the musical world. That so able a
performer as Daniel Barenboim concurs in
this judgment underscores the respect for
Gould among his colleagues.

In such circumstances, it is little wonder
that his writings on the decline in concert
hall attendance and audience involvement
in musical culture as such created such a
sensation when they first appeared in the
1960s. And while Gould slightly modified
his position by the close of his career—and
life—the “hedge” was never more than a
coating. In his final statement in an interview
with Tim Page, he tells us that he
“always had misgivings about the motives
of people who go to concerts, live theatre,
whatever. I do not want to be unfair about
this; in the past, I have sometimes made
rather sweeping generalizations to the
effect that anybody who attends a concert
is a voyeur at the very best, and maybe a
sadist to boot!” While he is prepared to
admit that the acoustics in a concert hall
may actually be equal to those from a
recording enjoyed in one’s own living
room, he returns to his central theme:
“the whole business about asking people
to test themselves in situations which have
no need of their particular exertions is
wrong—as well as pointless and cruel.”

This theme has been picked up and
refined by Joseph Horowitz, not exactly
a minor figure in musicological circles.
Whereas Glenn Gould just about says
good riddance to the bad rubbish of the
concert hall, Horowitz exhibits genuine
regrets about this development. He focuses
on the weakness of the musical product
to explain a public lack of interest. It is
the work of Steve Reich, Philip Glass,
John Adams, and the rise of minimalism
as a semi-popular style that would result
in the fracturing of audiences. He speaks
of them already in the past tense, a group
flaunting non-Western and primitive
elements while relying on Western technologies
of tapes and amplifiers used in
composition and performance. The need
for compelling performances seems to be
a core task. “Too many orchestras and
opera companies seem not to notice or to
care” about the magnitude of this transformation.
As a result, “marketing has been
the most insidious force in the shrinking
of public life” Horowitz continues in this
vein, suggesting that “the indulged and
uninquisitive American electorate thus
engendered is paralleled by American classical
music that, as countless musicians will
privately testify, asks for little and gives
little back.”

Horowitz thus sees the decline not so
much in attendance terms but in creative
activities by the musicians. “The new
music shares with the new musicians in
which they are excitements for whom
neither European values nor the concert
hall represents the measure of all things
musical.” For Horowitz the answer to a
decline in the culture and a parallel decline
in personal judgment “can only be overcome
by the residual classic music landscape.”
Whether such a native or national
tradition will “demonstrate quality and
be synergetically refreshing” is left unresolved.
Horowitz speaks of the new
music as a weak reed—and that for him
includes the classical soloists who seek to
add dubious innovations to the classical
repertoire. Once again we can see how
this brilliant commentator strikes many of
the same thin chords as Gould—with the
essential proviso: the issues are converted
from political to formalist criteria. The
ideological proclivities of fascism, Nazism
or communism or the status of national
strains and tensions in music are not
addressed. Rather, the cultural crisis is
declared to be inherent in the nature of
musical innovation in the postmodern era,
or the lack thereof; which does not resolve
the concerns expressed.

The enormous outpourings of the
recording industry and its advances in
digital reproduction have converted some
musicologists into discographers. So that
fine writers like Norman Lebrecht can
speak of the need for musicians to “realize
that recording required a different discipline
and temperament from public
concerns.” He goes on to declare that this
technology provided the artist a chance
to “overcome the fear of error” and “to
achieve a perfect score.” This new development
allows Lebrecht to focus on conductors
as maestros and maestros as technical
wizards. The difficulty with this is not so
much the frontal assault on concert-going,
as to dismiss attendance as some sort of
obsolescent fashion.

The more recent version emphasizes
the fact that the drive of new technologies
converts the musical culture of free
market societies into a highly refined,
elitist activity that excludes ordinary citizens,
that is, in the sense that the “primary
production” of the “perfect score” takes
place in the recording studio. Indeed, such
postmodern trends seek verification of
value from the absence of audience, much
the way positivism viewed its significance
as breaking from philosophy as such. But
while the essential sources of discontent for
Horowitz, Gould, Lebrecht, and legions
more, may differ, the consequence of postmodernity
is the same: good music drives
out the mass audience; the construction
of a post-modern culture weakens social
solidarity. As a result, the production of
experimental music is off-putting, leading
major audiences to dwell on the established
warhorses while awaiting the solitude of
the post-concert night air to remove this
discomfort with innovations, which may
be of little or no consequence.

One problem with the pessimistic
vision is the authenticity of pessimism
itself. There is a strong tendency to see the
audiences of classical music as much larger
than they actually were. Critics forget the
role in the past of musical halls, folk tunes,
and music in places of ill repute, etc. that
have always been far larger than the special
groups that attended classical concerts or,
for that matter, who purchase classical
records. While the buyers of recordings
are probably fewer than five percent by
industry-wide reports, it probably was not
much larger even in the heyday of grand
opera and popular recordings of classical
scores in the Long-Playing era. But that
inconsequential judgment of history is one
that we can omit from present consideration.

As musical attendance at public events
has increased, the quality of recorded sound
has dramatically improved. In ethnographic
terms, the question may be posed
as: Why should someone attend a dimly lit
nightclub, prepared to be irritated by other
people’s conversation and tinkling glasses,
instead of staying home and listening to a
nearly perfect recording of Barbra Streisand—
one of Gould’s favorite performers—
in her most recent studio session? Similarly,
why should anyone attend a concert hall,
which is sometimes acoustically obsolete,
and pay a heavy premium to do so, rather
than listen to a recording of Lazar Berman,
which is probably far less expensive and
less taxing than attendance at a live performance?
What Gould neglected to take into
account is how recordings lead to demands
for sight as well as sound—and how these
can be delivered via disc format, but no
less through attendance at such events.

This is not to suggest that live performances
are uniformly inferior to recorded
sound. I start rather from the premise that
debates about musical engineering are
not especially pertinent. What is relevant,
however, is that such comparisons can even
be entertained. Clearly, the gap between
live and recorded performances has been
reduced to such miniscule dimensions that
it is no longer self-evident that in-person
performances have an overwhelming
edge, or, for that matter, any edge. Sometimes
the risk of error is taken out of live or
television musical performances by verbal
mimicry of recorded efforts. Hence the
issue of why we continue to see and hear
music “in person” in contrast to simply
hearing music has, if anything, increasing
relevance for our age. Having set forth the
context of this problem let me now indicate
possible sociological resolutions to this
musicological anomaly.

Live performances, especially of intimate
forms of music such as a classical
quartet or a jazz quintet, reveal interactions
between musicians that produce
quite different effects on the listener than
the private act of putting on a recording.
For example, a simple-to-listen-to Haydn
quartet may in fact be a very difficult and
intricate work to perform, resting upon
precise melodic and harmonic relations
which would be destroyed by improper
performance. A recorded musical piece
which projects a fluid, effortless quality,
may in a concert hall performance create
a frenzied, vigorous, pulsating effect. The
act of creation is ultimately an act of labor.
But the hard work involved in performing
a piece of music cannot easily be gleaned
from listening to the recording. The
empathy, the very sweat of the musicians,
are elements that the audience can identify
with and share with the musicians.

Another side to this interaction relates
not so much to the audience and musician,
but rather the exchanges of the musicians
with each other: how they relate to one
another in the process of creation. This
becomes a feature of value, a facet of the
performance that an audience can identify
with in relation to a group of musicians.
The glance, the nod, the smile, the unobtrusive
gesture—often indicating approval
or disapproval—upon entering and leaving
a passage are extramusical elements that
lend themselves to an intense musical
experience. Such interactions are particularly
fascinating at live jazz performances,
where improvised solos may be as new to
the other musicians as they are to the audience.
It also can be observed in audience
perceptions of the relationship between
conductor and orchestra in the classical
sphere.

Seeing a performance involves something
akin to watching a high wire act:
the audience waits for the mistake, for the
human foible, the failed note, the flawed
passage. The musician’s side of this idiosyncrasy
is the strategy involved in live
musical performance. Vladimir Horowitz
noted in an interview that in his 1928
debut with the Philharmonic at Carnegie
Hall, he played the Tchaikovsky Piano
Concerto rapidly and loudly—entirely out
of keeping with the spirit of tranquility
that Sir Thomas Beecham, the conductor,
was striving for. His motive was simple: he
believed that a highly romantic and virtuosic
performance—one designed to be
highly successful in audience terms—was
essential if he were to succeed in America.
If he had emulated the conception of
Beecham, Horowitz feared he might have
been shipped back to Europe permanently.
He felt he could not risk this one
big chance, hence the musical “mistake”
involved in an extramusical dimension.
Live performances often involve extramusical
elements that can only be understood
and participated in by those who attend.

A key element of participating in or
attending live musical performances
is to verify that a population segment
(fellow attendees) has good taste. Audience
members confirm both one another’s
taste and position in a stratification system.
Good taste becomes a function not necessarily
of listening to good music but of
where one listens to good music—which
in turn determines quality. To be “hip”
in jazz terms is to visit select clubs, which
are seen as being “in” by the attendees or
the musicians—or both. In the world of
classical music, one appears au courant with
the most acceptable performances and
performers—to gain social and cultural
verification as a music lover—in rough
proportion to the number of times that
one attends the great symphonic hall or
opera house of any great city, or its smaller
chamber or recital halls. Attendance serves
not simply to verify the musical taste of the
music lover, but also to confirm, by one’s
presence, the place of technique and style
in the verification process.

Live performances create living relations
between the performer and the
patron, unlike a recording which permits
great distance in space and time between
the performer and the listener. In “live”
activities, the networking process draws the
two constituencies much closer together.
A considerable portion of any audience for
music is composed of associates, acquaintances,
and family members of the musicians
and their cohort. This in itself is
part of the networking process in defining
audience size as well as content. The sale of
records also creates a relationship of high
expectations between the performer and
the audience. Live performances confirm
and verify what is on the disc, making
clear the authenticity of the recorded
sound by permitting comparison with the
living performer. The recording, like sheet
music in the nineteenth century, assures
accuracy and authenticity in performance;
and it does so for a much larger audience
incapable of reading musical scores. The
recording is a secondary confirmation of a
presumed primary relationship.

This network analysis suggests that
recordings may function to enhance attendance.
The similarities and differences
between recorded and live performance
itself becomes a stimulus to attending
such events. The recording can reinforce
rather than diminish audience expectations.
These expectations provide a framework
for measuring and confirming what
the recording “says” in regard to quality,
innovation, and musical imagination. In
the world of jazz this is especially important
because the live performance, to
be truly successful, must sound like the
recorded performance, but at the same
time—unlike pop performance—it must
not imitate the record. A solo jazz or piano
recital in sonata form must be rich, but not
identical with other performers; otherwise
the listener to a live show may feel
“cheated.” The live performance verifi
es the quality of the musicians involved.
One of the key dilemmas of rock music is
that live concerts are often far more imitative
of the recorded performance than is
the classical or jazz performance. Popular
audiences demand of popular music strict
familiarity. That creates a problem for the
creative artist whatever the medium.

It is worth pointing out that classical
musicians have been far less prone to use
synthesizers, pre-recorded tapes, or signal
delay equipment than other types of
performers. The commitment of musicians
to instrumental—no less than artistic—
purity makes them less likely than others
to bridge any presumed or actual gap
between recorded and live performances.
Classical music, along with jazz, is a domain
in which perfect replication is not only
considered less than ideal, but a downright
negation of the innovative aspects of solo
and ensemble performance. In the world
of serious music, variations on a theme are
but one form of presenting a musical idea;
it is not the correct way, any more than a
live performance is an incorrect way. In
this sense, it is only fair to note as a caveat
that listeners to live musical performances
are not measuring the correctness of interpretation
or how well the recording is
simulated, but simply searching for new
variations on a familiar theme. In this, the
dedicated musician shares with the serious
listener a special relationship that guarantees
a commitment both to see and to hear
a musical performance or a specific musical
artist.

Given the importance of engineering
capabilities in recording rock music and
other forms of music that rely heavily on
overdubbing, echo effects, etc., many musicians
cannot readily duplicate the sound of
their recordings in live performance. As a
result, some rock groups and vocalists in
particular never venture forth from the
studio, or do so only at their own peril. The
disastrous comparison of “live” performances
with carefully engineered studio
performances of such groups as Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young were certainly a
contributing factor to their demise. To
the contrary, the Carnegie Hall dates of
performers like Miles Davis and Benny
Goodman enhanced their respective jazz
reputations. As a result, a clearer distinction
emerges between artistry and theatricality.
Many of the newer rock groups
emphasize showmanship—light effects,
costumes, makeup, bizarre behavior, and
any element that can function as a supplement
to the music itself. The mutual
conformability of the recorded sound and
the live performance form the ground work
for the total audience of any musician or
group of musicians.

Social standing is particularly determined
by the act of attending a live musical
performance, and even more, buying a
season subscription. But attendance does
more; it also confirms social standing in
the larger nonmusi cal community. This is
much truer of the classical musical audience
than the jazz musical audience, given
the higher socioeconomic status of classical
musical audiences. But in all forms,
musical participation at concerts confirms
social standing in the community generally.
There is a veritable pecking order of
power in relation to the actual character of
musical performance.

Whether at the Lincoln Center or the
Monterey Festival, the highest status is
conferred by recognition as a listing in
the program notes as a special individual
or institutional donor to a performing
group or special event, followed by
whether a persons sits in the orchestra or
in the balcony, followed by where in the
orchestra or balcony one sits, followed (in
some cases) by what one wears to a musical
outing. The world of music is a world of
fashion, not simply a musical fashion but
also fashion in the broad stylistic sense
of that term. If the musicians tend to be
uniformly dressed, for example, the audience
takes on the role of the performer
in terms of this and of other extramusical
activities. Hence, the question of musical
participation or attending the musical
performance is also in its cultural model
a matter of being seen, rather than of
listening.

Going to a place called a concert hall,
nightclub, or dance hall, represents a
mechanism for class diversification and
cultural differentiation. In this specifically
sociological sense, attendance at musical
functions serves two seemingly disparate
functions: first it distinguishes the cachet
of attendees from non-attendees. But it
also fuses the people in attendance as an
exclusive (if temporary) body unto itself.
There is a strong implication that a temporary
cluster of people going to a night club
to see Miles Davis or Yo Yo Ma in that
very activity, distinguish themselves from
all other passing “communities.” At the
same time, attendance unites those who go
to observe the musical performance. The
presumption of such commonalities makes
possible elitism quite characteristic of class
diversification and cultural differentiation
in general.

The presumption that such commonalities
of taste form the backbone of
lasting human relationships is itself probably
dubious, but it is nevertheless widely
respected. It is an inheritance from an
age when music and belief systems were
intensely integrated. Anyone broadly
familiar with the classical tradition from
Bach to Wagner could scarcely doubt
this. But in the twentieth century, when
music has become bifurcated from theological
systems or church attendance, the
secularization of culture has led to a desacralization
of ritual. And this in turn has
led people to view music as such, in itself,
apart from other considerations as a thing
unto itself, providing a basis for cultural
fusion and differentiation.

The purchase of recordings by an individual
is a serious business. It denotes
matters of personalized taste, it involves
a statement of preference, and ultimately,
it commands allegiance to one’s own taste
and defense against the criticisms of others.
To spend an evening listening to “serious”
or “pop” music may be enjoyable, even
entertaining, but to own a CD collection
based exclusively upon such music might
just as readily be construed as bad taste.
There are elements of risk and of value in
assembling a record collection that are not
involved in attending concerts or nightclubs.
New standards of seriousness and
of entertainment have come to the fore—
above all, the belief that record collections,
like book collections, are specialized
representations of self, laden with symbolic
messages and meanings, for the associates
of the collector no less than the individual.
Above all, a record is a permanent addition
to one’s private world, a standard to
be measured by, no less than measuring,
the artists involved.

In the case of live performances, there
is a motion-picture-like atmosphere which
builds up, including the right to criticize
the performance as well as the musical
content. Attending a concert is a transient
event, a happening that leaves few
permanent marks and involves few risks.
This powerful differential—the serious
and permanent nature of a record collection
and the transient nature of concertgoing—
works to maintain high levels of
attendance, since this is the best way to
insure cultivation without commitment.
The concert hall and theatre are perhaps
as close to a religious experience that can
unite theists, deists, and atheists.

The new technology serves as a challenge
no less than a threat to the musical
culture. Live rock music sound systems,
for instance, are now becoming as sophisticated
as studio systems, although used
differently—to amplify volume rather than
nuance. Large concert halls, gymnasia,
open stadiums, and similar places can be
filled with as much sound, with as much
“separation,” as any living room can with a
stereo recording. What began with Richard
Wagner ends with Eric Clapton. As musicians
and ancillary technical personnel
become accustomed to the technologies
employed in performances before live audiences,
their concert dates may more nearly
approximate their recording dates.

This closing of the technical gap only
serves to point up special problems of
innovation, creativity, and authenticity
and how these connect to mass and class
preferences. But these do little to shake
the social bases of audience attachments to
live performances. Some groups have even
mimed performance, with their recording
played through the concert amplification
system. In some instances, such groups
acquire reputations of being more competent
than their recordings would suggest.
Some have found that live performances
lead to disastrous results, and have lost
segments of their audiences, both for live
and recorded performances. The use of
tape, however, and of signal delay equipment
has added new capabilities to simple
rock groups. In short, the gap between
recordings and live performance is a recognized
fact of life that some musical styles
and groups have candidly begun to force.
The commitment of jazz and classical
musicians to instrumental—no less than
musical—purity make them less likely to
bridge this gap between live and recorded
performances.

Musical groups, including pop
music—no less than classical—music,
still opt whenever possible for the intimate
chamber music forms and formats;
the smaller, acoustically balanced concert
hall is a better fit for smaller communities
with limited resources. But in a football
stadium or a large hall the hardware is
enlarged precisely to simulate a recording
studio (and often includes the recorders).
It is clear that musical quality is lost in the
live performance, no matter how sophisticated
the onstage hardware. But whatever
the relationship between live and recorded
performance, whichever is deemed superior
by the listener, differences are real and
persistent. Thus the mutual conformability
of the recorded sound and the live performance
forms the groundwork for the total
audience of any musician or group of musicians.

The subject of this survey on seeing and
hearing music, while hardly exhausted by
this brief analysis, may open a more intimate
dialogue between musicological and
sociological forms of communication analysis.
The inherited dichotomies, in which
the claims of music and those of society
were perceived as uncomfortable straitjackets
on each other, may now yield to
a closer inspection of the ways in which
musical audiences and environments serve
to stimulate or retard musical creations
over long time frames. For such an undertaking
to be remotely successful, the skills
of all concerned will be needed—starting
with an appreciation of the co-existence of
two modes of presentation in search of a
common and shared tradition of communicating
culture over long time and intimate
space.

NOTES

  1. Glenn Gould, “Music in the Soviet Union,” in The
    Glenn Gould Reader, edited by Tim Page, (New York:
    Random House, 1984), pp. 166–84.

  2. Glenn Gould in
    “Glenn Gould in Conversation with Tim Page,” in The
    Glenn Gould Reader, pp. 451–61.

  3. Joseph Horowitz,
    Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall.
    (New York and London: Norton Publishers, 2005),
    pp. 518-39, with special attention to the “Postlude on
    Post-Classical Music.” This is arguably the most infl
    uential book on the subject of the future of classical
    music in the new century.

  4. Norman Lebrecht, The
    Life and Death of Classical Music. (New York: Anchor
    Books/Random House, 2007), especially pp. 7–20.

  5. Theodor Adorno, “Music Language and Composition,”
    in Essays on Music. (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
    University of California Press, 2002), especially pp.
    123–26. Adorno perhaps inadvertently opened up discussion,
    by developing a strong model to distinguish
    between class music and mass audience. The problem is
    that his taste and politics were often on different sides
    of the ideological tracks.

  6. Edward W. Said, Music at
    the Limits, with a foreword by Daniel Barenboim. (New
    York: Columbia University Press, 2008).