ABSTRACT
Musicologist Christian Thorau tracks the history of guided listening in and outside of the concert hall, starting with the traditional program leaflet in the time of Ludwig van Beethoven, which then grew into the program booklet and the concert guidebook at the end of the nineteenth century, and was then transformed into the current digital technology for music listening in the early twenty-first century. Based on current research on program notes and listening behavior, this chapter provides answers to the question of how such commentaries play a role in drawing attention to both the music and the performance. Knowledge about music-listening guides is consolidated from three temporally equidistant points over the past two centuries (1800, 1900, 2000–10). In relation to the present situation, the chapter focuses on new formats and digital devices (such as Ohrphon, Keeping Score, and LiveNote) and reflects on their implications for the concert experience.
