Comforting the unfamiliar: Audience development and digital transformation in classical music

Abstract

In dialogue with Pierre Boulez in Contemporary Music and the Public Michel Foucault said that I have the impression that many of the elements that are supposed to provide access to music actually impoverish our relationship with it (Foucault and Boulez, 1985, p. 8). In this regard, the current period of digital transformations presents many questions around technology's applications to and integrations with music. It is not that technology as an entity is new, what are new are the mediums and the effects. Does the technology help to attract and increase new audiences and how? What do we lose and gain? Is it worth it? We assume that the new generations need and desire classical music to be in some sense upgraded and made more palatable, more approachable through including other digital arts-but do they? Does it possibly reinforce the stereotypes of music and thus limit the hearing? In seeking to address these questions, this chapter offers that while digital transformation engagement with music may widen and/or deepen the audience for classical music, attempts at audience development may also, as Foucault states, impoverish us in some ways. Considering aspects of comfort, familiarity, and accessibility, we reflect on whether in trying to make classical music an event to attract new audiences we are in fact altering and cheapening the experience. © 2024 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.