"Chamber music and organization theory: some typical organizational phenomena seen under the microscope"

This paper sets out to analyse the production processes in the performing arts. In the first section we look at some general characteristics of arts management. In terms of organization theory, there are three concepts which are central to the production of live art forms, and these will be investigated in the subsequent sections: - the notion of the prosumer, i.e. producer + consumer (Toffler, 1980), which expresses the element of active participation on the part of the "consumer" in the production process of any performed art; - the centrality of the "listening ability" that characterises the relationships between the various components of any performing group during the production process (Adorno, 1962); - the importance of defining the concept of "value" (Hansen, 1995) in the context of arts management. These three concepts emerge with striking clarity if we look at the specific case of chamber music. It can be taken as a paradigm of what actually takes place in all the performing arts. The main characteristics of chamber music production can be summarised as: (a) the pleasure of taking part in a small-scale activity, giving the sensation of belonging to a "select few". A working definition of chamber music today indicates compositions for a limited number of musicians, producing a modest volume of sound and characterised by a certain intimacy, particularly suited to performance in a room ("chamber") rather than the concert hall. In quantitative terms, works involving up to ten instruments are generally considered as chamber music. This establishes the dimensions of the organizational phenomenon we intend to analyse, but it is also a first indication that the clear distinction between audience and performers made in a theatre or concert hall by the physical separation of the stage has become blurred. The role of the prosumer in this production process is reinforced by the physical intimacy of a space ideally conceived of as a "chamber", where the sonorities have their true attributes of dynamic range and colour; (b) the "concertante" or "dialogata" style of writing, in which the different instruments in turn take up the melody and accompany each other. In terms of performance technique, in chamber music there is no doubling up of parts or reinforcing of melodic lines. Each instrument (or voice) has its own independent role in the ensemble (in a string quartet there are four stringed instruments, in a five-part madrigal there are five singers). This style of writing determines the way in which the performers interact, which we will investigate as the "listening ability" of the members of a performing group. Obviously such a form of production process will be based on partnership; (c) from the time of its origins in court life in the late Middle Ages, chamber music was made outside the "institutional" contexts of musical production, and thus became a sort of "counter-culture", alternative and in some ways inimical to "official culture". The musicians were responsible for organizing their own activity, making them "entrepreneurs and managers of themselves". As we have said, the performing groups are not large, there is no conductor, and the coordination and acknowledgement of leadership comes about spontaneously: the members of such groups are directly and collectively responsible for relations both with the concert-going public (prosuming) and within the group (listening ability). As we shall see, such a direct involvement of the musicians means that the performing groups function as auto-organizations, and this has important implications for the definition of the concept of value in the perspective of the performing arts. In the final section of the paper I shall show how the specific case of chamber music brings out, as it were under a microscope, some of the phenomena that are typical of all types of organization