The Social Dimensions of Listening to Music

Author: Judit Váradi

DOI: 10.5434/9789634902263/4

Abstract

Cultural heritage is a socially created and interpreted narrative, which becomes interpretable through cultural transfer (Sagrillo, 2018). The role of culturally creative communities in shaping and maintaining cultural constructs has always been decisive. Lasting values are determined by cultural choice. Through crossing cultural and historical boundaries, music a deeply coded discourse establishes communication at all times. The experience and emotional effects produced by music are based on previous experiences, emotional reactions, and memories. The art of listening to music has always been governed by the social norms and etiquette of the period, which also dictate the nature and quality of reception. The history of listening to music has, however, enjoyed little academic attention. Since it is an unobservable and amorphous phenomenon, it was defined as a natural receptive process for a long time. Only in recent decades has the question come into focus as various disciplines have explored short-term and long-term transformative processes to reveal the effect of social, political, and economic characteristics of several eras.

Keywords: listening to music, musical experience, receiving competence, concert

The Dichotomy of Music and Reception

In earlier periods, music was an integral part of everyday life, and understanding music was considered general knowledge. Nowadays, music has become a collective term due to its integrating power, comprising every genre and style of classical as well as popular music. The root of the dichotomy between high and popular culture lies in societal transformations, among other factors. Of all branches of art, music has truly become part of everyday life. As the musical horizon has broadened and a variety of genres have appeared, classical music is separated from other musical genres by the presumption of an artistic category and the representation of social and aesthetic value (Dahlhaus & Eggebrecht, 2004), which even transcends time. In other words, classical music contains the contradiction that it is an integral part of everyday life, to which, paradoxically, it is not related directly, since its high artistic standard, in a similar way to other branches of art, is distant from popular influences, even at the cost of declining popularity (Johnson, 2002). The strong presence of mass communication has contributed to the emergence of mass culture, which follows shifts in fashion and trend. Regardless of time and space, we may listen to music anywhere and anytime, which results in the evolution of a passive attitude for cultural consumption instead of reception. Appreciative reception presupposes that music is not some decoration in the background, and that the listener not only hears but also listens to it. In the past decades, various studies have examined the process from the perspective of reception, that is, the psychology of listening to music has enjoyed interest. The listener is regarded as an active participant of the cultural process, who takes part in the decoding of the musical process. Auditive practices and quality are influenced significantly by the environment, established routines, expectations, the identity of the audience, and the form of participation.

The Evolution of Concert Life in Hungary

The history of music listening is a culturally significant process, which, for a long time, manifested itself in the exclusive form of perception. Public concert life in Hungary emerged as late as the last decade of the 18^th century. Musical life prior to that was vibrant yet private. At the end of the 18^th century, the audience of events where one could listen to music without any additional purpose consisted of noblemen and musicians’ benefactors (Dobszay, 1984). The separate performance of artistic music, which is not connected to any other activity, began to come to life from the 18^th century. It was from 1787 when in larger towns so-called music academies took place, which was the term for public concerts. The first concerts were organised in Pest-Buda (now Budapest), Brassó (now Brașov), Kassa (now Košice), Pozsony (now Bratislava), Nagyvárad (now Oradea), and Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca) (Domokos, 2000). The dramaturgy of the concerts varied substantially: movements performed on various instruments followed each other, while performing pieces or excerpts of literature was also common. Purely instrumental music was not held in high regard. The most popular form of entertainment was the opera, and arias were known by the masses. Among the artists who took part in the concerts, only a limited number of instrumental players were present alongside the 2 or 3 opera singers. The performance contained several pieces and certain movements from larger compositions. It was accepted to perform concertos, even piano concertos, with piano accompaniment. If the audience desired it, famous arias and duets were also performed, which influenced instrumental players immensely, who played opera pieces, arrangements, paraphrases, fantasies, reminiscences and finished the concert with improvisation to a theme provided by the audience. Franz Liszt, who contributed greatly to the emergence of the contemporary piano, had a large effect on his audience as well as on how repertoire is selected. He established the genre of piano recitals, whereby it is only the pianist who performs, and one instrument is placed at the centre of attention. The word “recital” was invented by him to denote a solo piano performance and was used for the first time in relation to a concert in London on 9 June 1840. He played parts from Beethoven’s Symphony No.6, and his own compositions as well as arrangements of Schubert’s songs were also performed. Interest for the piano elevated the prestige of the instrument significantly (Čiefová, 2014). The piano, which is an instrumentalised form of cultural capital, was an obligatory accessory of bourgeois salons, proving that the owner was an educated and wealthy person (Fónagy, 2013). In the 19^th century, musical education was a crucial element in being educated in the middle and upper strata of society as it elevated the individual’s social prestige and represented a higher level of life which also considers intellectual needs (Váradi, 2017b).

In Hungarian music history, the 19^th century brought about stimulation with the establishment of musical institutions, which enable the emergence of an independent musical life. It was in this period when Hungarian classical music reached a European quality. The notion of Hungarian national operas was put forward by Ferenc Erkel. Around the same time, instrument production in Hungary began to bloom, and the first comprehensive volume of Hungarian music history was published. Many from the Hungarian nobility chose to become musicians (e.g., Imre Székely, Kornél Ábrányi). Concert life expanded further as concerts with entry tickets were organised throughout the country, both in larger and smaller towns. Back then, there was no clear division between professional and amateur musicians because they often performed together in a chamber setting or even at public events. The first musical society in Pest, which organised the famous concert series titled “Musical Merriment” was founded in 1818. Musical societies, including musical associations and clubs, were increasingly frequent in several towns and took on various roles: they organised concerts, provided music education, and published sheet music.
By the second half of the 19^th century, the leading position in the musical scene moved from the castles of nobility, palaces in the city, churches, and cathedrals to more inclusive initiatives. In Budapest, musical performances took place in the National Theatre, opened in 1875, and the Opera House, opened in 1884. Concerts were also organised in ball rooms, hotels, and in large halls of any institution.
The structure of concerts at the time differed greatly from the current convention. Concerts were followed by dancing into the night, which was still a tradition in the 20^th century. Besides public concerts, the communal experience of music had also included playing music at home and in salons. In the 20^th century, playing music at home became less common, while the tradition was continued in concert repertoires through chamber music. The divide between professional and amateur musicians’ performances began to grow, which brought about in the same proportion the distancing of audience and artist. Audiences became interested in cafés and smaller establishments as well as in the Gypsy style. Compositions with Hungarian folk elements were the most popular in this period.
At the beginning of the 20^th century, appreciative concert life in Budapest was maintained by a musically educated group. Exceptional figures of music gave concerts in Hungary, while remarkable Hungarian artists toured abroad regularly.
During the First World War, musical life in the country did not cease completely, although the number of concerts and opera performances diminished significantly, and the musical scene became isolated as international ties were cut. The political change of the country in 1920 brought about transformations in all areas of life and society. The network of musical institutions, which had been built and maintained gradually and carefully, disintegrated, with Budapest remaining as the only musical centre in the country. Concerts were organised mostly by the Philharmonic Society or in a private framework.

Conventions of Music Listening, Behavioural Culture in Western Europe

The history of music listening is documented traditionally from the emergence of the tradition of modern audiences, that is, from the period after the 1750s (Johnson, 1995; Besseler, 1959). The modern tradition of listening to music, which has gone through constant transformation ever since, was developed in the same period. Precursors to the modern definition had existed, however. Protestant documents from 17^th century England mention the “art of listening” (Thorau & Ziemer, 2018). Religious practices and music listening were also related in Victorian times. The first annotated concert programme was produced in relation to church service (Bashford, 2018). The emergence of music listening as an activity generated demand for professional musicians’ presence, which did not work in favour of amateur players.
In the 18^th century, it was standard behaviour in circles of aristocracy that during concerts and opera performances, the audience talked loudly, entered and exited the room freely, ate and drank, smoked, and devoted hardly complete attention to the performance, due to the social nature of such events (Thorau, 2016). Some scholars highlight that the process of music listening occurred in relative, though not complete, silence, but not immersing oneself in the music did not mean rudeness; instead, it was a way of music listening which corresponded to the period and social expectations (Weber, 2018).
The Paris Opera was established in 1669 by Louis XIV. In the mid-18^th century, Louis XV and his family visited the opera, which operated officially as Académie Royale de Musique, quite frequently. His closest relatives took the most extravagant seats (Johnson, 1995). The convention of the time was to arrive late to the opera. Until dusk, noblemen and noblewomen spent their time in the café of the opera or walking in the garden. The performance started 5-15 minutes later, depending on when the actors arrived. Those who arrived on time did not sit down; instead, they roamed the candle-lit hallways. The start of the performance did not conclude the movement and the constant noise of talking. Butlers and young bachelors had their place in the cramped auditorium. Princes frequented the boxes on the first-floor balcony, while the second floor was reserved for gentlemen and ladies, who wore ample jewellery. On the dark third floor, lovers hid from curious eyes. Order was maintained by 40 soldiers, who patrolled the opera with loaded muskets. Since opera performances were social events, few people complained about the noise. In the hierarchical society, listeners themselves were the main characters, while music provided a pleasant setting.
Public concerts in Paris began around the 1770s or 1780s, when a series of events were organised to perform instrumental and vocal pieces regularly. Although they were not entirely open to the public, the performances formed an integral part of the French audience’s musical experience. Concerts were organised by the musicians, who took on considerable financial risk as they shared revenues as well as potential losses. Such events were central cultural occasions also among opera lovers in every town. Performances included opera arias and passages, virtuoso pieces, and opera-inspired fantasies. The initial goal of the concerts was to provide music for the people of Paris on days when the Opera was closed. In the first two years, this meant thirty-five days a year, including holidays. Concerts were so successful, however, that in 1727 their frequency multiplied: two were organised each week in the winter and one in the summer. Even the cheapest tickets cost more than for opera performances. Just as in the mid-century opera, the mood was directed by a “little master”, an appreciative judge, who clapped and shouted “Superb!” or “Terrible”, when they did not like something.
After 1789, the Paris Opera was less of an elite institution with random seating, which brought an end to the relationship between visibility and social status.
After the Revolution, in 1798, the first regular series of concerts with twelve concerts a year was launched. The Concert des Amateurs offered both vocal and instrumental music. In five years, the offering doubled, but only season ticket holders could participate in the events. Season tickets were not dedicated to a person and could be transferred to someone else if the original holder was otherwise engaged.
The season ticket for men was more expensive than for women, while a half-price discount was offered for children under fifteen. The orchestra had 80 members, which had been the largest in the history of French music. Visitors were at the venue hours before the performance to secure a place. The media of the period considered concerts, where rivalry and enmity cease and music is at the focus, as a tool to mitigate political tensions.

The Social Responsibility of Promenade Concerts

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, promenade concerts, the name of which derives from the French “promener”, were highly popular. Such events took place in parks or ball rooms, and tickets were relatively cheap. The audience could walk around during the performance. The orchestra played on an elevated stage or another covered platform. Promenade concerts carried great social significance and became a crucial tradition of musical life. They were proposed by the French composer Philippe Musard (1792-1859). In the 1830s and 1840s, Musard was one of the best known personalities in culture, whose extraordinary concerts were renowned both in Paris and London. Musard played a vital role in the emergence of popular classical music. In London and the United States, his concerts were referred to as “à la Musard”. He included in his concerts standard classics as well as dance music, which was especially attractive for the working class, not to mention the symbolic price for the ticket. Previously, this social class had not taken part in concerts, having regarded music as entertainment only. In the mid-1830s, Musard’s events were called a “musical paradise” and took place in a spacious hall with mirrors, statues, and fountains. His orchestra included 48 violin players, 14 cornet players, and 12 trombone players (Harding, 1980). Musard, whose popularity was comparable to that of virtuoso soloists, was the first widely recognised conductor in Paris. The audience went to concerts not just to listen to music but also to see him conduct personally. To assert his dominance, Musard broke convention by standing up several times while conducting with wide and excessive motions and grotesque gestural communication. Not only was Musard a successful composer and conductor, he was also a popular manager of his time as he created orchestras for specific events and managed them successfully, gaining him significant wealth. Musard employed innovative techniques to popularise his events. He used flyers and newspaper advertisements to promote his enterprise, which influenced promotional practices in both European and American music.
The first similar promenade concert in London, which was advertised as “à la Musard”, took place in 1838, with Louis Antoine Jullien as the conductor. The popularity of the series was mainly due to the fact that both popular and classical pieces were performed, including Beethoven’s symphonies.
London had 38 parks where concerts were organised, but the most famous of them is the Vauxhall Garden. Concerts organised there are regarded the precursors to Proms summer classical concerts, which were initiated in 1895 by manager Robert Newmann and conductor Henry Wood. The series of promenade concerts was organised during the summer, when no concerts and theatre performances were held, with symbolic ticket process. Newman’s goal was to start out from popular music and increase the quality gradually, so that the audience gets to know and like classical music. The opening concert featured Wagner’s Rienzi Overture. Between 1894 and 1942, Proms events were organised in the most prestigious concert hall in London, Queen’s Hall, which was home to the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in the 1930s. The eight-week-long event is one of the most popular concert series in Britain even today.

Transformation of Reception Attitudes

At the end of the 18^th century, a new period of reception attitude began, with music in the focus as opposed to text. In critical studies and texts, the notion of attention appeared consistently as late as the end of the Enlightenment. In the 1770s and 1780s, people wrote about several technical elements of contemporary music which influence the listener’s attention in various ways.
Historians of the time recorded that in 1784 the audience “listened with a silence of pleasure and admiration” to Gossec’s music (Johnson, 1995, p.78). To silence the audience, composers started their pieces with a loud chord to raise attention to the beginning of music. This musical concept is a critical area at the boundary between the discourses of composition theory and the philosophically oriented music aesthetics (Riley, 2004).
In the Romantic period, emotions took over the focus from depictions of nature, which is why instrumental compositions which express orchestral harmonies legitimately and help experience the expressive power of music became so popular. The revolution of musical expectations at the end of the 18^th century, which was supported by strong cultural presence, cannot be explained by cultural influences solely. The audience reacted to innovation unambiguously, which caused the perceived musical categories of understanding to expand. Attentive music listening was characterised by simultaneous diversity. The ideal type cannot be defined precisely; the goal is the immersion into music. In search of the ideal music listener’s model, the French encyclopaedist d’Alembert wrote in 1750 that the listener should understand the message when music depicts nature, even if it is instrumental music without any words, which results in the art of music listening. Listening itself is an active process and requires certain energy input from the listener if the musical piece poses a challenge to the audience (Bonds, 2018). This presupposes that changes in genres, musical material, and periods are accompanied by transformations in the environment of listening.
As printed concert programmes appeared, distinct activities became simultaneous. During the concert, reading attached to the process of watching and listening to music. The adoption of Botstein’s “listening through reading” system prepares the audience for the reception of musical pieces. Concert programmes with comments can be interpreted as educational programmes. After 1850, the rise of virtuoso visuality caused concerts to become some sort of tourist attraction (Thorau, 2018), whereby the artist’s person was the most attractive trait. The power of aesthetics supported a new goal, while the demand for opening up concerts to the public entirely grew stronger. Concerts were more than mere entertainment for the idle rich: they also contributed to the development and expression of knowledge and talent by promoting the superiority of art. There was a movement to terminate social discrimination by opening up concerts to anybody who could pay for the ticket. According to Ducharger (and quoted by Johnson, 1995, p.94): “Concerts must in no way be private, but public: they contribute to the softening of manners, and it is unjust not to render them common to all the members of the state.” In a similar way to theatres and operas, concerts evolved into social institutions, which provided a connection between the individual and the state by shaping people’s tastes through creating a similar lifestyle. The new public sphere of listening re-conceptualised the basic notions of the inclusivity of cultural life: the audience of concerts as well as the way and reason of music listening were all transformed. Implicit doubts received explicit support, while the articles and reviews published in newspapers provided guidance by increasingly analysing music listening as a social event.

The Art of Listening

As the middle class advanced at the end of the 18^th century, the behavioural culture of music listening transformed both in theatres and concert halls. In a study, Thorau de Bary (1937) examines the written rules of Frankfurt Museum, which offers advice not just for museum visitors but also for the audiences of literary events, concerts, musical events; that is, for anybody who appreciates art. The guidance highlights that visitors of artistic performances should refrain from making loud noises and talking, and mentions specifically that dogs are not allowed to enter such events. The written rules show that behavioural culture cannot be taken for granted. The cultural history of music listening is closely related to transformations in public behavioural culture, to aesthetic requirements, and to musical innovations. Changes in the horizon of expectations represents musical understanding and attracts appreciative reception instead of superficial and passive listening. According to Gay’s theory, unintentional music listening, which immerses the listener into a musical experience, impedes physical reactions and social interactions (Thorau, 2016). From the perspective of cultural success, becoming a silent listener is both productive and deconstructed. The art of listening is a cultural practice which is essentially a learning process based on ability, competence, or technique. The ideal of attentiveness may be extended into every acoustic environment, can be improved with practice, and may be employed in aesthetic perception and mundane social interactions as well as in psychotherapy, spiritual counselling, sociology, and philosophy. As the role of the bourgeoisie grew in the 19^th century, the audience began to be socialised in a different manner. The performing artist, the composer, and the performed musical piece came into focus, while the audience listened attentively in silence, refraining from spontaneous shouting and clapping. The innovation of “inward listening” is a cultural achievement. However, critics of the time argued that the audience had lost the critical perspective. The collective trust crisis of judgement is caused by the silence itself, which can be the result of fear from being ridiculed for those who lack sophisticated taste. Books on etiquette specify that it is not appropriate during concerts to sing or hum along with the music, to move one’s head to the rhythm, to tap the rhythm with one’s hands or feet, or to attract other people’s attention in any way. It is inadequate to talk loudly while performers are on the stage. Society signals the necessity for appropriate behaviour, the lack of which indicates inferiority. Therefore, the knowledge of and the adhering to the rules is converted into self-confidence. The individual’s social identity is reinforced by noticing those who do not follow the rules, due to ignorance, laziness, insufficient education, insensitivity, or even general boredom. Despite the fact that the 1828 handbook proclaims that all people are equal in appropriate behaviour, society rejected those who could not meet the expectations, thus maintaining class inequalities (Johnson, 1995).
The response to any public musical expression, even the achievement of the desired silence, is a social phenomenon, which is influenced by the discourse and behavioural pattern determined by culture. It was in the 19^th century that the auditorium was dimmed for the first time to enforce silence. Thus, audience members could not see each other, social differences disappeared, attention was limited to the performance on stage; at the same time, the audience became invisible for performers. The professional artist and the audience grew distant from one another. Spontaneous expressions of approval were replaced by collective applause at the end of the musical piece. An environment in which the aesthetic experience of sound became individual despite the public nature of the performance was created by rules and etiquette. During the performance, the individual aesthetic experience of the collective social encounter lasts as long as the artist is playing and the audience is listening to the music. Besseler (1959) views the 17^th century as the beginning of the modern period, when the musical performance came into focus and the professional musician performing on stage received a clearly distinct character from the audience with respect to social interactions. He assumes that the more the inclusion into music occurs as a listener, the more intensive the activity of reception becomes. In the 20^th century, according to Besseler’s (1959) implicit theory, activity depends on the depth of music listening and follows the changes in music proportionally. Wolfgang Dömling (1974) rejects Besseler’s theory by arguing that music listening cannot be explained independently of history; instead, it can be interpreted only in the context of social, historical, and individual relationships as an interaction between subjective and intersubjective learning processes. In the mid-1990s, culture historian Peter Gay stated, in relation to the bourgeoisie’s music listening, that music listening is not directed towards concrete compositions or genres. According to Gay’s theory, the most substantial change in the bourgeois culture of the 19^th century was the emergence of the introspective direction, which Hegel identifies as absolute interiority (Thorau & Ziemer, 2018). Hegel believes that music has an effect on subjectivity, “music is the art of the soul and is directly addressed to the soul” (Kedves, 1997, p.198).

Music-Space

Music, the art of introversion, can be interpreted as a special cultural practice of intensive and undivided attention. Several philosophers have emphasised that the process also represents an anthropological dimension, which predestines the perception of sound to this particular form of sensation. Unlike spectators, listeners do not have physical space between them and the object of perception; in music, there is no visual product as opposed to other branches of art. The internalisation of the external sound in the ear creates a connection between the music and our internal vibrations through the immersion into receptive silence and into the sound. The musical process creates a psychological space as the result of the spatial experience initiated at the beginning of the performance, which is determined for the listener by the position of sound sources and the auditive spatial environment (Horváth 2005).

Audible music is affected by the surrounding space, which effect, however, is mutual since the music heard in a space affects both the space and the environment. According to our interpretation, the musical space, or music-space, is a physical space in which musical compositions come to life, are sounded, and can be listened to. A crucial part of the music-space is the performer’s space, the stage, or the area delimited by the performer’s suggestiveness. Bielawski argues that the acoustic space of audible music is shaped, alongside the venue, by performers and listeners alike in a psychological and acoustic manner (Horváth 2005). Musical performances, concert venues, the instruments used, and repertoire selection have all gone through major transformations over the years, but such events can also be interpreted invariably as a social space because they provide an occasion for personal encounters. The auditive experience of a concert is largely determined by the acoustics of the music-space, which even affects the selection of instruments and repertoire. To improve the experience of music listening, the issue of an appropriate auditive environment was first addressed around 1820. The demand for an ideal venue spread throughout Europe: opera houses, which were designed according to social expectations and with the intention of creating an ideal acoustic space, were built in Rome, Barcelona, and Paris almost simultaneously.
The musical experience is never exclusively musical as the space of the performance is always located between the musical material and the audience. The space is filled with the artist’s expressiveness and personality, who contributes to the completion of the musical communication process by creating the artistic force field.
The relationship between performer and audience is influenced by the space and physical distance. The sounding space, which is an environment with concrete acoustic characteristics, exerts a significant effect on the sound of the musical piece and on the musical performance, as well. The experience in a closed space such as a concert hall, where the proximity of the performance and artists gives the illusion of participation in creation and interpretation, is substantially different from a stadium or an open-air performance. Changes in the auditive space affect the evolution of musical experience. Establishing the suggestiveness of the performance poses a separate challenge for open-air performances, when the listener may choose to stay or leave. The extent to which the space and environment of music influence reception is evidenced by an interesting experiment of the Washington Post from 2007. Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell played in disguise at a subway station for 45 minutes, including compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jules Massenet, Franz Schubert, and Manuel Ponce. Only seven people of 1097 stopped. In a subsequent interview, passers-by confessed to being too busy and overwhelmed with thoughts, which is why they had not heard the high-quality music. Under such circumstances, music had been irrelevant for them (Wimmer, 2016). In the relationship between music and space, open-air concerts can be interpreted as a separate genre. This form of musical representation is directed towards social groups which otherwise would not necessarily encounter live music performances. The role of flash mobs, which are unexpected events popularised in the 21^st century, is to raise attention and break the usual everyday routine through their spontaneity. The privilege of music is to be used as a tool for bringing people together even in non-traditional spaces for performances such as hospital concerts. As various studies have shown, the enjoyment of music serves for listeners as an investment which aids their recovery. Such occasions enable performers and listeners alike to love art for the sake of art (Melody Ng, 2016).
According to the composer’s or performer’s intention, music itself might become spatial or multidimensional, whereby the performers’ spatial position and disposition carry an additional meaning in the acoustic space. Moreover, there are efforts to combine and perform together traditional acoustic music and electronic music.
With the emergence of electronic devices such as sound recorders and players, there have been constant attempts to recreate the acoustic effect of live performances. From the 1960s, the use of two speakers in two-channel sound systems had the goal to create a 3D sonic image of music. Since 1967, quadraphonic systems, which are also referred to as surround-sound or four-channel systems, have been in use for a better multi-directional sound. The spatiality of music has posed various challenges for developing engineers. In 1982, the Dolby Surround four-channel encoding format was launched using passive matrixing, which made use of the left side and the right as well as the middle and the back. Inventors of the 5.1 sound system claim that the user is able to enjoy an experience which is identical to a live concert. Due to technical developments of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, music is available at the push of a button anywhere and anytime, without the need for a live musical performance. The most commonly used device for music listening is the mobile phone, which surrounds the listener with a virtual sonic space through the formation of an acoustic bubble, which disconnects the listener from the environment and makes music listening private. A typical example of private music listening is a young person who is listening to music using headphones, thus remaining separated and alone even in a crowd. In our fast-paced world, which demands multi-tasking, immersing ourselves in the stream of sounds with undivided attention and in complete silence requires a behavioural attitude which is entirely different from our everyday life. Concert visitors of our time face the great challenge of remembering to turn off or at least mute their mobile phones and of refraining from following and commenting the information which is pouring in from social media.
The idea to modernise performances in concert halls initiated in the United States. In 2012, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was among the firsts to offer a “tweet seat”, in which it is permitted to use one’s mobile phone during the concert. In 2015, the Philadelphia Orchestra launched the LiveNote application, which provides images, illustrations, and explanations on the mobile phone or tablet during the concert to accompany the music which is being played (Thorau, 2016).
Initiatives like these break the tradition and refer back to the norms of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, when the reception of music occurred with divided attention. The difference is that communication is not bounded by physical space anymore as it takes place in virtual space.
The transmission channel of audible music is the space between the ears and the sound source. Using headphones for music listening could result in a significantly larger perceived space than the actual one. In this interpretation, the psychological space is a subjective sense of space, which is tied to momentary sound.
Classical music requires space and an appropriate environment for it to be able to provide the desired effect and experience (Váradi, 2018). The social transitions in the 1990s brought about a shift in young people’s leisure activities towards the entertainment industry. The emergence of mass communication plays a vital role in the restructuring of the cultural landscape (Dohány, 2010). As regards the public spaces of popular culture, the most characteristic novelty of the 1990s is the party space, which is a typical virtual-symbolic space to provide entertainment for young people (Fejér, 2000). The rise of an extensive consumer space which corresponds to the age group and tastes results in the expansion of public and liminal urban spaces. As a result of the powerful and spatially formative role of music, a joy-based space is created, which disconnects from the traditional space and also transcends traditional time simultaneously.

Dimensions of Cultural Sociology and Culturology

In her book, DeNora (2000) uses empirical examples to conceptualise music as power, which plays a role in every dimension of our life and affects our body movements, conscious or subconscious motions, moods, individual states in relation to ourselves or others, and our sense of time. Cultural sociology, or “culturology”, as Bennett Berger put it, explores and decodes the social content of art. According to Berger, it is especially beneficial because it has become possible to separate the typology which assigns artistic styles and social prestige (DeNora, 2000).
With respect to the Baroque doctrine of affections, music theorist and aestheticist Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) only values music which expresses emotions. In addition, he also argues that the artist’s education and disposition determines the manner of music interpretation. Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818), who is widely considered to be the creator of music theory, evaluates music listening as a process, which stretches from the actual listening to genuine comprehension (Riley, 2004). To judge a piece in its entirety, more is needed than just the artist’s expressiveness and virtuoso technique: appreciative perception presupposes thought (Bonds, 2018). As for the listeners’ diversity, the first audience typology was created in 1799 by Friedrich Rochlitz (1769-1842) with four categories: 1) those who listen with devotion; 2) the rational listener, who “knows” the music; 3) the virtuoso listener, who is interested only in the artist’s exceptional technical abilities; 4) “pitiable” or snob listener, who has no genuine connection with music and attends musical events from vanity only, to follow the fashion (Thorau & Ziemer, 2018). The various types of behaviours in relation to music, as well as the background of their emergence, have been investigated the most thoroughly by Theodor Adorno (1970). The 20^th-century philosopher and music aestheticist created a typology to depict the composition of the audience as a sociological model, in which the groups are not overly distinct from each other. He finds that the number of those who appreciate music declined in the 20^th century due to changing music consumption habits. Certain culture consumers revere music as a cultural good and attend concerts to advance their social position (Váradi, 2017a).
Unlike empirical studies directed towards the subjective, Adorno’s system is not limited to the examination of taste, habits, sympathy, or antipathy. Since listener’s reactions are determined by the objective and structural characteristics of music, the focus of the investigation is the extent to which the quality of listening corresponds to the heard music. The types of listeners are sorted into six categories, from the professional musicians’ full and adequate music listening to the indifferent or imitative perception.

The conscious music listener, often a professional, recognises musical forms, perceives musical processes, possesses the ability to identify harmonies, and is able to understand the complex language of music. Advanced musical casual thinking presumes the professional musician’s level of education. Living the experience of music listening does not require professional knowledge on music, however.
“Good listeners” are characterised as language users who are not familiar with grammar or syntax but use their mother tongue with utmost confidence. The basis of musicality is sensible music listening.
In the secularised society of the 20^th century, the number of music appreciators declined with the transformation of music consumption habits. Some consumers of culture revere music as a cultural good and attend concerts for their own social advancement. They do not possess basic musical knowledge, are ignorant about biographic details, do not know about the performers’ merits nor the characteristic melodies of the compositions, but listen to previously heard pieces with the experience of recognition.
The fourth category consists of emotional listeners whose experience is represented by the immersion into the emotional content, effects, feelings, and characters of the piece. The music creates visual associations in them. During music listening, they re-live their own emotions, get to relieve their anxieties, and identify with feelings which they have never felt before.
The largest group of music listeners comprises those who regard the activity as mere entertainment, which provides a source of stimulus instead of a valuable connection. The individual who uses music in the background could have various motivations. The listening is inattentive; distraction may be disrupted by momentary attention only.
Without interpreting the phenomenon of musiclessness in the broader or narrower sense, Adorno creates a separate category for those who are indifferent about music, have no aptitude for it, did not experience music as a child, and have never had the opportunity or intention to learn it.

Naturally, the typology contains categories only, without the transitions in between (Váradi, 2017c). Adorno associated music with cognitive abilities. According to his reasoning, Schönberg’s idiosyncratic, simultaneous, and varied compositions require active and focused participation, which is a challenge for the listener and presumes previous experience. As socialisation increases, progressive music requires cognitive, perceptual, and emotional competencies. Adorno’s typology provides answers to the questions of social sciences by assuming that music affects social consciousness, life, and structure. His theory has the disadvantage that the generally created categories are not verifiable in other cultural environments, and the social significance of a piece is difficult to determine from the perspective of empirical research.
In his book titled Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979), Bourdieu examines the mutual effect of consumption and social structures by analysing differences in style and taste in the social context. He suggests that the socio-cultural background determines people’s thinking, habit, taste, relation towards culture, which also affects decision alternatives automatically. He conducted a survey with films and musical compositions from varying classes of taste to determine whether respondents have seen or heard them. The survey contained Rhapsody in Blue, Traviata, The Blue Danube Waltz, Hungarian Rhapsodies, L'Arlésienne, The Firebird, Scheherazade, and the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. He used these to distinguish between classes of lifestyle in the period (Hadas, 2001). According to Dahlhaus’s theory, we assume that that the narrative of history is comprehensive when we examine through the history of perception the way in which art has attempted to represent a period, nation, class, or social group (Johnson, 1995). The struggle towards an undisturbed and immersed perception was problematic even in the 20^th century as listeners resisted reforms and deviations from the established norm. The situation has encouraged researchers to conduct further studies to investigate the evolution of listening habits with respect to urban traditions (Weber, 1997). The evolution of 20^th-century listener typologies reveals the existence of a group with a taste which is not confined to one genre only; in other words, some listeners have become musically polyglot. At the end of the 19^th century, the eclectic listener type was common, while genres and venues determined the modes of listening and became strong signals of identity. Salon music, popular and entertaining music, as well as other lighter genres at the pole opposite to classical music became increasingly popular at the turn of the 20^th century. The binary system determined the world of music and demarcated the middle and upper classes as the connotation of the social system. It is undeniable that the concert hall is the best place to get the ideal sound experience. However, many statements about music listening can be interpreted as an attempt to legitimise value for society, since its dominance has declined. While some have questioned artistic music listening, centuries-long cognitive tradition distinguishes between artistic and non-artistic categories.
In the consumer society of the 20^th century, creating listener typologies had commercial purposes. In other words, music listening habits were investigated to sell albums and records. Although Hanslick identifies widely different levels in determining the appropriate method of listening, the various attitudes get reduced to a binary option, namely the rational and emotional levels. In Ellis’s (2018) theory, the attentive listener, who is not characterised and described in detail, represents the golden standard. Fred Maus’s (2018) qualitative study, which investigates listening from an individual perspective, corroborates the diversity of listening behaviours. The close connection is related to possessive desires, whereby listeners experience the musical expression of art as their own.
Applegate (2017) highlights that the discussions about the aesthetic ideal of audience and the universal validity of music have occurred in a context which represents the insecure position of music and musicians in culture and society alike. Musical life reflects the universally polycentric nature of the political and social life, but enables both performers and listeners to immerse themselves in other cultures. According to Applegate’s theory, music listening ought to be legitimised in a social context at its artistic level as a valuable and reasonable activity which connects with the high quality of art (Thorau & Ziemer, 2018). Due to the struggle towards the ideal, audiences resisted reforms throughout various periods, because the deviation from the norm always attracts special attention.
In the evolution of listener typologies, audience members have never intended to become idols. The hierarchisation of listener habits and the creation of listener typologies have always been closely related to the evolution of hierarchy between genres and tastes. The spread of the radio in the 1930s transformed listener habits substantially. This tradition did not mean a complete rejection of past traditions; instead, it generated an ideological change. The developments are illustrated exceptionally by an analysis from 1963. In a survey to assess the role of the media in Great Britain, the natural medium of music listening was the radio, and there was no significant role assigned to the television, besides opera broadcasts (Mason, 1963). The new forms and contexts which have emerged due to technical developments have affected constantly how the art of music listening has evolved and have contributed to the popularisation of certain genres and pieces significantly.

Summary

The Romantic musical experience marked a new manner of music listening. This was aided by the favourable acoustics of theatres and concert halls as well as by the emergence of the bourgeois etiquette, which resulted in a more intensive receptive experience because the attention was now focused on the stage, with distracting factors having been removed. The astonishing popularity of instrumental concerts, the enthusiasm towards music, and the new manner of listening were all direct results of the liberalisation of music from text and language. Music listening became more than figuring out the meaning; the interpretation no longer meant the identification of an emotion, of a familiar sound or image; the message even transcended words. Previous listeners would have defined the goal of music as a representation of images or the composer’s emotions and thoughts, whereas instrumental music is free from all that. Beethoven attached descriptive titles to each of the movements in his Symphony No.6 titled Pastoral Symphony, which were also made available to the audience. The piece contains separate melodies for the quail, the cuckoo, and the nightingale, as well as a description of a storm. Critics of the time were not impressed and regarded the initiative as a sad parody, which was unnoticeable in its triviality but for the composer’s name on it. Absolute music occurs in a verbally indescribable private space. Music is different from other branches of art in that it retains individuality despite offering a collective experience and touches everyone with its emotional diversity in a different way. The various listener typologies reveal receptive diversity and in every period, often unintentionally, create an ideal type, which provides a benchmark to examine, critique, and evaluate the audience. The relationship between the ideal and the practice represents a kaleidoscope of different listening attitudes (Bashford, 2018). In an analysis about music listening in concert halls, Neil Gregor (2018) presents a new perspective around the Second World War. In the specific historical context of music listening, he points out that behavioural culture in concert halls is not determined by nationality but by the manner of listening. In the 1950s and 1960s, contemporary reports suggest that attending concerts had become a surprisingly traditional practice (Tewinkel, 2018). Even though concert attendance has been affected by demographic waves, the decline of the bourgeois lifestyle, the globalisation of tastes, technological development, and mass communication, an audience for concerts still remains despite pessimistic forecasts. The primary place of representation for auditive culture is the concert hall. Those who analyse the transformations highlight that live performances retain their characteristics by the necessity of artists and the communal presence of the audience, which cannot be replaced. In the 21^st century, the acoustic experience of concert halls receives special attention as it has an impact on the receptive experience as well as on the direction of cultural tourism. Changes in receptive attitudes are to be interpreted multiplicatively and not linearly. The process of music listening is based on the musical process, while the concert hall is the venue for the experience of a musical performance. Transformations in the musical world are connected to the material and immaterial criteria which represent diversity and often reflect the stability of identity and culture. The interdisciplinary connections of music listening ought to be investigated in the productive discourse of various disciplines, including music history, musicology, aesthetics, history, cultural anthropology, sociology, art history, and the history of sound. Furthermore, relevant information can be found also in literature, the history of theatre, architecture, as well as contemporary and recent media.

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The Social Dimensions of Listening to Music | Zeneművészeti Kar

The Social Dimensions of Listening to Music