PhD defense Veerle Spronck, researcher at MCICM
Veerle Spronck is a researcher at the Center for the Innovation of Classical Music (MCICM), where philharmonie zuidnederland is also a partner. The public defense of her dissertation will be held on Wednesday 6 July at 13:00 in the Aula of Maastricht University. The digital version of the book 'Listen Closely: Innovating Audience Participation in Symphonic Music' is publicly available.
New forms of audience participation in classical music
Traditionally, the visitor to a symphonic concert is primarily a silent, attentive experience. But isn't this outdated? Can we make it more exciting, both for public orchestra? The relationships between symphony orchestras and their audiences have been continuously critical of discourse in the Netherlands over the past twenty years. Perhaps, orchestras also regularly wonder, attentive listening is no longer always the ideal form of audience participation. In recent years, Dutch symphony orchestras have started to organize experimental concerts in which the public is given a new role.
As a researcher within the MCICM and the Artistic Participation research project (funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO), Veerle investigated exactly what kind of work it takes for orchestras to innovate audience participation. It turns out to be a complex task for orchestras, because when the role of the audience changes, it leads to unfamiliar situations throughout the organizational process that rattle the existing aesthetic framework. It ensures that guidelines, standards, working methods and guidelines and designs are revised.
The innovation of audience participation is about much more than just repositioning chairs, playing a new marketing campaign from outside the concert hall. Innovative concerts touch on the identity of the orchestra as an aesthetic organization in the traditional sense: it challenges symphony orchestras to demand existing standards that demand a specific form of aesthetic quality performance. When symphony orchestras start to innovate in audience participation, more quality repertoires become important than just the traditional aesthetic. The innovation thus requires reflection on the question of what actually a good concert is. Public participation is therefore innovative not only for practical work for symphony orchestras, but also for artistic work.
Article philharmonie zuidnederland (in Dutch)
Veerle Spronck