Why do people go to classical concerts really?

 This mull is prompted by a couple of things.

One: Recently in Glasgow I presented one of the world’s very greatest musicians – someone who has been at the top of the profession for 40 years, made many prestigious and critically acclaimed recordings, a familiar face to anyone who really loves Mozart and Beethoven. The next day, we had a very fine but far from famous musician who happens to be of Scottish descent. Venue, time of day, ticket price, repertoire and publicity were all pretty much comparable. The local lad outsold the international star by 2 to 1.

Two: Lately a colleague at GRCH has been running a series of free, informal, foyer, drop-in lunchtime concerts by pairs of students. They typically attract around 40 people, mostly innocent bystanders in our café who get drawn in when they hear the music starting up. Suddenly, one day we had a queue (unheard of) of 200 people waiting to get in. And they were mostly Chinese. Guess the nationality of the pianists.

Those two Chinese students outsold both the local lad and the international star.

This set me thinking,of course. I would love to get 200 Chinese music lovers to my concerts again. I went online to see where searches like ‘why do people go to concerts?’ got me. Mostly nowhere unexpected, though I found a blog on the subject by an old friend, Barry Kempton, Artistic and Executive Director of The Schubert Club in Minnesota. He rightly cites the classic reasons we believe: to find something spiritual and reflective; to discover something new; to hear much loved music; for a special occasion and to belong to a likeminded community. (Read Barry’s whole blog here: http://schubert.org/blog/2014/11/17/why-do-people-attend-live-concerts/)

Add that to the kind of results I have seen year after year after year when post-festival or concert surveys have asked attenders questions like ‘what was most important to your decision to attend this concert?” The answers generally come back as

-       THE MUSIC - repertoire generally (most important by a long chalk)

-       THE PERFORMERS generally (though surprisingly less significant than the music)

-       TIME AND PLACE

After that you’re into habit-related stuff like ‘I always attend the XXXX orchestra’ or ‘it’s my local concert hall.’

That mostly suggests that we have a highly informed, committed, serious-minded classical music crowd and that’s who goes to concerts. Now, I am no marketeer, but if that is so I have to ask: why did so few of that highly informed, committed, serious minded crowd want to hear a famous and great pianist while so many, many more wanted to hear two student pianists? Can’t just because they weren't prepared to buy a ticket.

All this suggests to me that we are a long way from knowing (or perhaps from admitting to ourselves) the real reasons people like concerts - and that could be because the kind of questions we ask them in surveys cues them to give particular kinds of answers. I get that it is a double-edged problem because correspondents often will give you an answer they think you want, or an answer that makes them feel good rather than the truth – and if some of the real answers are frankly unattractive or pitiable, would you share them? Music is desperately important to people perhaps in ways they would rather not say. Ask people why they drink red wine: won't most of them tell you they enjoy the flavour, discovering new wines, the conviviality it all. How many will tell you they drink to escape the desperation of their daily lives? Or to be more sophisticated than their peers? Sometimes we gain that kind of invaluable insights into this quite by accident: around 10 years ago a major new music  ensemble decided to develop its audience by inviting its small and loyal following to bring a friend to a concert for free, reasoning that if they loved it so much they would want to help spread the word and share the joy. They were not prepared for the fury of some responses: outraged fans made it clear that attending those concerts was one of the things that made them special, set them apart from everyone they knew. Last thing they wanted was to be robbed of their USP.

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding the complex web of personal and social psychology that may explain attendance or non-attendance. And it suggests that if we assume that people come to concerts just to listen to music we are way wide of the mark. Clearly questions of clan, self-esteem, nationality, identification, distinction all pay their roles... 

I’d love to learn more: anyone got any leads on more research into this?