‘Wherever You Are Whenever You Want’: Captivating and Encouraging Music when Symphony Orchestra Performances are Provided Online

Abstract

This article examines how ideas about music and music listening are articulated and what listening practices are constructed when symphony orchestras provide concert performances through streaming services. This is achieved by paying attention to how listening situations connected to symphony orchestras’ digital performances are characterized, how the audience is positioned in relation to the performances and the involved musicians, and furthermore to how the music is represented in text, images and verbal statements. The empirical data comprises the streaming service platforms, and supporting materials, of two concert institutions, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO), and was gathered during spring 2020, i.e. when concert halls were closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The article demonstrates how online listening practices are characterized as disconnected from constraints of time and space, and free for anyone to use, anytime and for almost any reason, yet also as strongly connected to temporal and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the listening practices connected to online symphonic performances are constructed in line with discourses on music as a health resource or as a mood enhancer and emotional regulator, but also in line with romantic aesthetic ideals. Even if the romantic aspects are less explicit, and thus could be perceived to be challenged, such ideals seem to remain uncontested as long as they are combined with more recent discourses on music.