En relasjonell musikkestetikk – barn på orkesterselskapenes konserter. A relational aesthetic of music – children at professional orchestras' concerts

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, there has been a huge growth in the education and community work ("outreach") undertaken by the West-European professional orchestras. It represents a new practise that within the orchestras may have been perceived as somewhat on the sidelines of the their traditional mandate as steward of the symphonic musical work. The object of the study is to describe the development of this practise in the orchestras and examine whether children’s concerts today are being established with consistent genre markers that sets them apart from the traditional concerts that appear in subscription series and season programs. It discusses whether the children’s concerts can gain legitimacy within the professional orchestra’s collegial concord, and thereby raise their status from being part of repertoire to being part of canon. A basic question for a study of an organisation whose mandate is to steward music on a high artistic level is: Are children able to experience art? Illumination of the subject is in this study based on the notion that the construction of the concepts of childhood and art experience are built-in concepts of time-specific cultural discourses and social expectations. A chronological illumination of the two concepts through the history of the professional orchestras from the last half of the 18th century to present shows how the question has been, and today could be, answered. The artistic/creative part of the study is represented by four of my concerts for children. These concerts are presented in an enclosed DVD, and they are analyzed and discussed in the thesis. The intention is to describe how I work when creating children’s concerts anchored in what could be called a relational aesthetic of music, and aims at showing how knowledge of the child’s rich perceptual state of readiness when listening to music, can be related to the child’s need for relevant participant strategies at concerts.