ABSTRACT
Why is classical music performed the way it is? How did the form of the classical music concert evolve, and what drives its prospective development? While these questions are seldom addressed in musicology, they might be essential for musicians, ensembles, and festival directors to think about when it comes to developing new concert formats. Will the new format be successful, or will it fail?
This chapter develops a concert theory that grasps both historical and recent developments in audience behavior, concert hall architecture, programming, and other aspects constituting “the concert.” Such a novel understanding of the concert is extremely useful when thinking about the future of classical music and the way new audiences could be addressed.
