Empowering others

Abstract

Abstract Audience participation has been a significant field of experiment within twentieth and twenty-first-century art music. A survey of the various approaches taken by composers demonstrates the difficulty of distinguishing cleanly between liberatory and subjugatory effects, a point that has been extensively rehearsed by critics of participatory theatre, including Jacques Rancière in his widely read essay ‘The emancipated spectator’. This chapter argues that the inevitable involvement of the interests of the organiser is not in itself reason to discount the empowering potential of a participatory opportunity: agency is always the outcome of ‘patiency’, or being acted upon. Ideas from the field of community organising are used to elaborate upon ways in which musical attempts to involve an audience may afford productive new distributions of power. In conclusion, a study of Luc Ferrari’s Société V (1967–69) demonstrates the intimate entanglement of composers’ instincts to liberate and to dominate.