Katy Hamilton

Last night, as I was making my way home from a day at the British Library, and attempting to exit the station path onto the pavement home, a teenager began peddling towards me on his bicycle. He was aiming for the space between two bollards on the path, so that he could cycle to the station entrace steps. As it happened, I was also aiming at the exact same space, at pretty much the same time. I tried to make eye contact, but he wouldn’t look at me; I tried to dodge round him, and he continued to cycle as if I wasn’t there; eventually, in frustration as I stumbled out of the way, I called out, ‘No, don’t mind me!’ – and he didn’t. He simply carried on cycling. No eye contact, no physical or verbal response, nothing.

Now, life in London can be (as anyone who’s recently been here will know) a surreal and isolating experience in which people often seem to spend the majority of their time trying to pretend that they are not in fact surrounded by hundreds of others. But I have never, in my ten years of living here, had an experience as bizarre at my run-in with last night’s cyclist, because there was a real sense in which he wasn’t just ignoring someone he knew was there. It was more than that. I could have actually not existed at all.

There is a lot to be said for feeling visible. It is not necessarily something that we want to feel all the time; and sometimes we might prefer to be seen as part of a group rather than just a single soul distinctive from the rest. But feeling some sense of individuality, to have agency, to be distinguishable from others, is important. And in understanding its importance to us, we can also appreciate the value of others as individuals.

On Monday, I spent the day in Sheffield at a study day, run by SPARC (the Sheffield Performer & Audience Research Centre) and the Royal Musical Association, entitled ‘Listening to the Listener’. It was a day of thought-provoking papers and lively discussion, focussing on the broad subject of what it is that audience members get out of live performance experiences; why they come; how arts organisations (a number were represented at the event) look to entice would-be concert-goers, and what new tactics they have adopted to attempt to draw people into their performance spaces. Surveys, post-concert discussions, questionnaires and note-taking, interviews… these, and many other techniques, were used to glean answers.

It was a fascinating day, and I was delighted to be in the company of a group of people who were earnestly intent on trying to understand what drives concert lovers, and how to encourage new audiences. These are important questions, and certainly not less important for being sociological and financial rather than purely musical. But I noticed something curious about the way that most of our speakers presented the classical concert experience. They all downplayed, with a certain amount of embarrassment or even gentle humour, the role of what might broadly be termed the ‘traditional’ audience member. You know the ones I mean. The ones who go because they like and are comfortable with the music and its presentation, are probably over 60, don’t want anything too modern on the programme, attend pre-concert talks and read the printed notes before the music starts. This is the audience which is In Crisis. It is getting Too Old, not being replaced, and yet is the principal target of most current marketing strategies. This is why we need to Do Something to encourage younger audiences, perhaps through promising more relaxed performance environments, socialising opportunities with players, and so on.

This put me in mind of Philip Clark’s October talk at the Swansea International Festival, in which he berates organisations which privilege new methods of presentation over  focusing on producing really high quality performances. (I certainly don’t agree with all of Clark’s points, but he does make some interesting observations.) But more than that, it struck me as weirldy self-negating. Almost none of the people in that room – and there were probably 40 of us in total – were of, or indeed near, retirement age. We all loved classical music. We all went to concerts. And yet in trying to identify the nature of this Audience Problem, the first thing we did was to ignore ourselves. Are we exceptional? Yes, probably, because of the nature of our work. But we are also not statistically insignificant. So why aren’t we paying any attention to us?

This was not, in fact, a question that was ignored by our fine presenters in Sheffield. One of them sounded a warning: that we were in danger of losing a sense of concert-goers as individuals in our quest for audience statistics and ways of improving them. I couldn’t agree more. In the little pockets of data that people presented, we found people of a variety of ages who attended concerts for a raft of interesting, varied and often very personal reasons. What they wanted from a concert could change from day to day and month to month. Some of them were quite opposed to the idea of interacting with performers – the distance between audience and musicians was one to be rigorously maintained. A few loved the thrill of encountering an entirely new piece. Others spent a good week preparing to see a new work through reading and listening. Couples came to compromises over what they would attend based on individual tastes. Some went alone to find new friends with whom they could discuss the music. This and a thousand other reasons draw people to live musical events, and they remind us that our ‘listeners’ are not just a walking pair of ears. They have bodies (just as important in listening, as Jeremy Geffen has so beautifully explained), brains, hearts, relationships, requirements and desires far beyond the wildest dreams of any marketing department strategists.

So just be careful, all ye who are depressed by The State of Classical Audiences. Let’s not get so messianic about better performance ideas (which definitely have their place, I don’t deny it) that we gaze vacantly through the loyal audience of a traditional venue as if it is a generic, entirely non-diverse group. Let’s not undermine them. Or undermine ourselves – because I, for one, would count myself among them. I offer each and every one of you a challenge. The next time you go to a classical concert, talk to someone. Just one person. Just for a couple of minutes. Find out what they do and why they’re there. This is information that people will often volunteer willingly, and it never ceases to interest me, when I attend performances, to find out something about my fellow listeners. After all, we go to hear to live music together, communally. Take a chance. Find out, from within the crowd, just how rich a collection of individuals you are.