ABSTRACT
This chapter undertakes the first steps toward developing a ritual-theoretical examination of the alternative classical concert formats that are common today. The introduction to this hitherto unexplored field of research is provided by considerations of the extent to which formative characteristics of classical concerts, as well as those of pop concerts, can be compared with characteristics of Christian liturgy. The idea of setting music apart from the everyday and striving for a higher, quasi-religious experience in the study of music goes back to the strategies used to demarcate the early bourgeoisie from the nobility. In new concert formats, the traditional liturgical canon of bourgeois concerts is abandoned in various ways. These changes can be fruitfully described using questions from recent ritual research, involving key concepts such as symbol formation, common experience (appresentation), change, play, and risk. The author suggests that rituals—whether in religion, music, art or politics—are powerful forms of action that are in constant competition with one another. Rituals structure procedures as well as contents. In the long term, they also prove to be effective in terms of the distribution of power structures.
