![]() The article examines how ideas about music and music listening are articulated and what listening practices are constructed when symphony orchestras provide concerts through streaming services. The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO) were among the symphony orchestras that increased their music distribution using already established streaming services, and it is these services that will constitute the empirical focus for this article. The lockdowns that followed the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic also made online concerts the principal mode of engagement for many symphony orchestras, who at that time expanded their range of online concerts, either by making available previously recorded concerts in their archives or by offering live-streamed performances. One such event was the virtual ‘At-Home Gala’ arranged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, featuring ‘more than 40 artists performing in a live stream from their homes all around the world’ ( Metropolitan Opera, 2020). For concert institutions that were forced to suspend their public activities, the possibility of maintaining contact with their audiences was a strong incentive to engage in digital broadcasting. In other cases, musical performances were arranged with the ambition to strengthen and encourage people affected by the pandemic, such as a concert featuring Andrea Bocelli that was live-streamed from the Cathedral of Milan on 12 April 2020 ( Bocelli, 2020). ![]() In some cases, the concerts were meant to pay tribute to healthcare professionals, such as an event organized by Lady Gaga in collaboration with WHO, which was live-streamed on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube ( Lady Gaga, 2020). Even if the romantic aspects are less explicit, and thus could be perceived to be challenged, such ideals seem to remain uncontested as long as they are combined with more recent discourses on music.ĭuring spring 2020, when public music events were cancelled as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, many artists, concert promoters, and cultural organisations began using digital channels to broadcast performances. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the listening practices connected to online symphonic performances are constructed in line with discourses on music as a health resource or as a mood enhancer and emotional regulator, but also in line with romantic aesthetic ideals. The article demonstrates how online listening practices are characterized as disconnected from constraints of time and space, and free for anyone to use, anytime and for almost any reason, yet also as strongly connected to temporal and spatial dimensions. when concert halls were closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical data comprises the streaming service platforms, and supporting materials, of two concert institutions, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO), and was gathered during spring 2020, i.e. ![]() This is achieved by paying attention to how listening situations connected to symphony orchestras’ digital performances are characterized, how the audience is positioned in relation to the performances and the involved musicians, and furthermore to how the music is represented in text, images and verbal statements. This article examines how ideas about music and music listening are articulated and what listening practices are constructed when symphony orchestras provide concert performances through streaming services.
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