ABSTRACT
The established mode of listening in a classical concert setting has remained practically unchanged since the beginning of the twentieth century and carries with it strong metaphysical implications of the nineteenth century. It seems, however, that it is no longer adequate for today’s audiences. This chapter analyzes four strategies of how some of the agents in the concert business have started to react to the changed ways of listening. These strategies are auratization, spiritualization, visualization, and theatricalization. By critically discussing them, the chapter concludes that the crisis of the classical concert consists in the crisis of its ability to produce “presence,” making reference to the book Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Thus, solving the crisis means increasing the presence of music—or more precisely, its performance—in order to quench the thirst for presence that media-oriented society appears to generate.
