The power of music to influence mood, create scenes, routines and occasions is widely recognised and this is reflected in a strand of social theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an influence on character, social structure and action. There have, however, been few attempts to specify this power empirically and to provide theoretically grounded accounts of music's structuring properties in everyday experience. Music in Everyday Life uses a series of ethnographic studies - an aerobics class, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions and the use of background music in the retail sector - as well as in-depth interviews to show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing together concepts from psychology, sociology and socio-linguistics it develops a theory of music's active role in the construction of personal and social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and organisation in late modern societies.

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Music in Everyday Life

Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. This new work outlines a theory of what Small terms "musicking, " a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower. Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.

Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening

Drawing on an analysis of critics' reviews of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) performances, we investigate how broader shifts in institutional logics shape the discourse of critics and their judgment of performances. We highlight how the aesthetic logic that traditionally informs the practices of the symphony yielded, in the face of declining orchestral resources, to a more commercially oriented market logic. As institutionalists have argued, shifts in logics are often catalysed by exogenous shocks. In the ASO, this blending of aesthetic and market logics became salient in the wake of a pivotal organizational event, the 1996 musicians' strike. Qualitatively comparing pre- and post-strike reviews of ASO performances, we find that the discourse of critics shifted to capture the changing logic of the symphony: post-strike reviews were more attuned to market than aesthetic aspects of the symphony. Nonetheless, their reviews suggested that judgments based on notions of cultural authenticity were virtually unaffected. Although our results echo existing claims that art world critics often act in a ritualistic fashion, serving as gatekeepers for the authenticity of cultural genres, we extend scholarship by highlighting how critics' stories are embedded in broader discursive fields that reveal how they patrol the boundaries of genres.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/joms_531.pdf?abstractid=758082&mirid=3

From the Critics' Corner: Logic Blending, Discursive Change and Authenticity in a Cultural Production System

Drawing on an analysis of critics’ reviews of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) performances, we investigate how broader shifts in institutional logics shape the discourse of critics and their judgment of performances. We highlight how the aesthetic logic that traditionally informs the practices of the symphony yielded, in the face of declining orchestral resources, to a more commercially oriented market logic. As institutionalists have argued, shifts in logics are often catalysed by exogenous shocks. In the ASO, this blending of aesthetic and market logics became salient in the wake of a pivotal organizational event, the 1996 musicians’ strike. Qualitatively comparing pre- and post-strike reviews of ASO performances, we find that the discourse of critics shifted to capture the changing logic of the symphony: post-strike reviews were more attuned to market than aesthetic aspects of the symphony. Nonetheless, their reviews suggested that judgments based on notions of cultural authenticity were virtually unaffected. Although our results echo existing claims that art world critics often act in a ritualistic fashion, serving as gatekeepers for the authenticity of cultural genres, we extend scholarship by highlighting how critics’ stories are embedded in broader discursive fields that reveal how they patrol the boundaries of genres.

From the Critics’ Corner: Logic Blending, Discursive Change and Authenticity in a Cultural Production System*

A coherent account of emotional change must find a dynamic, a vector of alteration, outside the discursive structures and normative practices that have monopolized ethnographic attention in research on affect. But this dynamic can be found in the very character of emotional expression. Emotion talk and emotional gestures are not well characterized by the notion of “discourse” derived from the poststructuralist theories of Foucault or by that of “practice” derived from the theoretical writings of Bourdieu, Giddens, and others. These concepts do not capture the two‐way character of emotional utterances and acts, their unique capacity to alter what they “refer” to or what they “represent”–‐a capacity which makes them neither “constative” nor “performative” utterances but a third type of communicative utterance entirely, one that has never received adequate theoretical formulation. An attempt is made to formulate a framework for emotional utterances, and the framework is applied to a number of examples.

Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions

Beginning with the simple question, 'Why did audiences grow silent?' \"Listening in Paris\" gives a spectator's-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today. Drawing from a wide range of sources - novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like - Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon's musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie's polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book's theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.

Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.

Music and the middle class: The social structure of concert life in London, Paris, and Vienna

Introduction Part I. Miscellany and Collegiality, 1750-1800: 1. Concepts and contexts 2. Variations on miscellany Part II. Crisis and Experiment, 1800-48: 3. Musical idealism and the crisis of the old order 4. The rise of the chamber-music concert 5. Convention and experiment in benefit and virtuoso concerts 6. Toward classical-music orchestral concerts 7. Promenade concerts: rise of the 'pops' Part III. Founding a New Order, 1848-75: 8. Classical music achieves hegemony 9. Vocal music for the general public 10. Epilogue: state of the musical community in 1914.

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The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms

The English invented the idea of musical classics. In the 18th century England was the first country where old musical works were performed regularly and reverentially, and where a collective notion of such works - "ancient music" - first appeared. This work explores the formation of the musical "classics" in regard to repertory and social contexts. It examines the performance of old music in 18th-century England, from the interest in music of the Elizabethan period at the beginning of the century, through the performance of works by Henry Purcell, Arcangelo Corelli, and other English and Italian composers, to the development of festivals that featured choral-orchestral works of Purcell and Handel. The book concludes with the establishment of the Concert of Antient Music in 1776, where the traditions of performing old works came together as a self-conscious canon focused upon the work of Handel. It examines closely the political and social reasons for these developments. In addition, it shows how they laid the groundwork for the classical-music tradition of the 19th century.

The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology

Fast upon the rise of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette to the throne of France, the Academie Royale de Musique-or, in "vulgar" terms, the Opera-began a complete housecleaning of its repertory, eliminating virtually all old operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his successors, which had loomed large in its programming throughout the century. New works, often called "grand opera," by Christoff Willibald Gluck, a host of Italian composers, and a few Frenchmen, became the new repertory. By 1782 an administrative memorandum spoke of "the epoch of revolution in music" since 1774, and in 1783 another saw it as "a veritable revolution in musical taste."' That magical word re'volution, implying the end of a cycle in taste, suggests the magnitude of what took place in Paris's central theater during this time. If the most visible change was in the age of repertory, the decade after 1774 saw as well a rethinking of many aspects of the institution-its genres and productions, its administration and authority structure, and its sense of artistic and political purpose. Thus departed in short order, fifteen years before the Revolution, the opera world which had begun under Louis XIV and was dedicated to the myth of his grandeur. That the old repertory, or la musique ancienne as it was called, lasted as long as it did during the eighteenth century was ultimately more remarkable than the abruptness of its departure. Everywhere else in Europe the present ruled musical taste, for it was highly unusual for works to outlast the lives of the composers, save when a youthful prodigy such

William Weber

Papers

Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.

Music and the middle class: The social structure of concert life in London, Paris, and Vienna

The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms

The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology

La musique ancienne in the Waning of the Ancien Régime