My Own Practical Application

   As we can see, much of what was happening in the 18^th century created a vastly different concert experience than what 21^st –century musicians and audiences might be used to. What might it look like to incorporate some changes to our own concert experiences? As our cultural lens has changed with time, so what created the environments of the 18th-century public concerts would not necessarily create the same experience today. As a performer, I have given a great deal of thought to this and have begun experimenting in a new series I run with a friend, Emma Williams, entitled MusicBox. In our inaugural concert, we paired with an organization in The Hague called Conscious Kitchen, which aims to reduce food waste by collecting unwanted food from the Haagse Markt and cooking a weekly or biweekly meal in a community space. Individuals either volunteer for one of the jobs or pay €5 for the meal. The community eats together and can take home extra produce that wasn’t used in the making of the meal. Our MusicBox concert was given in conjunction with the meal that happens biweekly on a Sunday evening and therefore provided us with an audience of about 80, made up mostly of young, non-musicians.

   As with 18th-century concerts, the audience was there to socialize, create community, and participate in a cultural event. In order to get an idea of our audience background and makeup, I began by asking for a show of hands of everyone who had ever attended a classical music concert before. A majority of the audience raised their hands, which was more than I had expected. I then asked to see a show of hands of everyone who had attended a classical music concert and had felt uncomfortable, intimidated, or generally unsure about some aspect of that experience. Many audience members raised their hands, as well as all six of the musicians performing, which made everyone laugh. My co-director and I went on to then give a little information about the aim of the concert, to put the audience at ease and let them know what we expected. We told them that the idea was for them to experience this music, but not to feel constrained or as if there were rules that they needed to follow but did not know about. We told them that they were free to eat, walk around as needed, talk quietly, as well as take photos or little videos. We tried to set the scene to create a sort of experience that might be closer to what was happening in the 18^th-century sources that we read earlier.

   As this paper has discussed, 18th-century audiences often had some familiarity with the music or the musicians they were hearing. They had attended a rehearsal, they were musicians themselves, or they had attended other concerts with music by the same composers, which guaranteed some prior knowledge and understanding of the music itself. From personal experience, I know that part of what can make a musical experience more enjoyable is knowing something about the context of the piece or musical features. Therefore, in this concert we gave brief bits of historical context, information that made the composers sound like relatable human beings, as well as very brief demonstrations of musical features that gave the audience an entrance into ways to listen to the music directly before each of the pieces was played.

   While we played 18^th-century chamber music, our audience ate dinner around tables, talked, and listened. As a 21^st-century classical musician used to performing in dark and silent concert halls, I was surprised to notice that I felt as if I was playing background music as soon as audience members began to talk. However, as we continued to play and I continued to observe, I saw that there was a mix of people listening, talking, eating, taking phone photos or videos, and watching and that all of this was happening simultaneously and seamlessly throughout the evening. While I am used to having the silent attention of an audience, I slowly realized that though there was extraneous noise around me, maybe more than I was expecting or hoping for, this did not mean that the audience was not paying attention or was not taking in the music. I also found that I felt greater freedom to experiment and make mistakes while playing, since the environment of how I perceived the audience to be listening had changed.

   For the second half of the evening, since it was near Christmas time, we gathered for group singing and playing of Christmas carols. Though of course this repertoire is not based in the 18^th century, it brought in a particular familiarity to the audience and involved them in a way that maybe a ball or some other type of audience participation would have at that time. All of the audience seemed to really enjoy singing carols as well as the magical change in atmosphere as we turned out all of the lights, lit many candles, and projected the lyrics on the wall.

   After the concert was over, I conducted an informal survey of audience members about their experience. Some expressed enthusiasm about getting to hear this music without feeling constrained in their ability to talk and be social with others. They found it liberating and said that it helped them enjoy the music better since they did not have to worry about making noise or violating unwritten rules. Others expressed frustration that they could not hear the music better because of the amount of audience noise. They enjoyed listening and being with friends there, but found the extra sounds and especially the talking to be distracting. Everyone with whom I talked enjoyed the group singing immensely and felt that this helped them connect to us as musicians as well as all of the earlier music they had heard.

   These comments helped me see that we had in fact achieved some of the same results as what seemed to be happening in the 18^th century. As was discussed earlier, there were quite a number of 18^th-century audience members who were frustrated with audience chatter getting in the way of hearing the music, while others came more for the spectacle and the social aspect of the concert experience.

   This experiment was both a rewarding success and also a learning experience. In looking forward, I will continue to try many different ways of reaching our audiences of today, using historical sources and my growing experience to inform these decisions. My hope is that we can all continue to use information about the 18^th-century concert experience to challenge preconceived ideas of what makes a concert in the 21^st century, and to inspire our creativity in not only the music we play, but also the ways in which we share music with our audiences.