Shaking off the ‘uncool’: Increasing classical concert appeal through familiarity, inclusion and understanding

Abstract

In a bid to expand the traditional demographic of classical concert audiences in Australia, research has investigated the experiences of new attendees at classical concerts. This has revealed the classical concert can be an intimidating and isolating experience for classical music novices as the classical concert and all it entails: repertoire, conventions and behavioural etiquette, attire, audience participation and interaction, is not immediately knowable to new attendees. Greater familiarity with concert conventions has been shown to increase enjoyment amongst new classical concert attendees. What remains to be identified is how to best go about imparting this knowledge onto new attendees. This study employs the use of questionnaires to assess 23 novice classical concert attendees’ experiences at a chamber music concert. Their experiences were informed by the familiarisation strategies in which they engaged: a pre- listening strategy; a pre-concert presentation strategy; and a non-exposure strategy. The findings revealed greater familiarity with the repertoire didn’t necessarily correlate with the greatest enjoyment. Instead, new attendees enjoyed their concert experience most when they had a contextualised understanding of the music in the concert setting. New attendees placed value in being able to recognise elements of the music. They felt more comfortable when they could converse and interact with others and when they knew, if only vaguely, classical concert conventions and etiquette. The pre-concert presentation was discovered to be the best method of instilling feelings of understanding, comfort and familiarity in new classical concert attendees. Other factors that couldn’t necessarily be anticipated or familiarised but nonetheless appealed to new attendees were the ‘new experience’ factor the concert entailed, the special quality of meeting a composer, and the visual and auditory impacts of seeing and hearing music created in the moment.