Applying the frameworks of 'On Justification' to the cultural practice of classical & contemporary music

The topic of my postdoctoral research is value creation in contemporary music performance. I want to know how performers (i.e., practitioners, musicians) create aesthetic and social value and reflect what they themselves view as valuable in and about music performance. I would also like to understand the role of the audience in this system of value creation – not only what they contribute to a performance but why do they attend performances, thereby affirming value. Finally, I will tie in my long-term orchestra programming study. The decades long data set can shed light on how symphony orchestras, as dominant institutions of classical music, conceptualize the value of contemporary music.

In building a theoretical foundation, I began with Timothy Taylor’s Making Value: Music, Capital, and the Social (2024). Most of the case studies of the book, however, focus on the commodification of music and understanding its value in an economic or capitalist framework. In the seventh chapter, “Music performance as a medium of value”, Taylor touches on performance itself and its theoretical place in anthropology value theory. Taylor argues that performances are not “media of value”, but rather “public realizations of value” (Taylor 2024, 161). For Taylor, the value created in performances rests not in the event that is performance itself, but in all the actions (rehearsal, individual practice, years of training, etc.) that are embodied in a performance. At the same time, Taylor acknowledges that “while there is an anthropological literature on value, there isn’t much that considers performance as a medium of value” (Taylor 2024, 158). Taylor offers one possible conceptualizaiton of performance from which to understand value creation: the performance is that which encompasses a network of actions by a number of actors that is validated (realized) by an audience.

However, like many anthropological and sociological texts, the performance practice of classical music is reduced to its religious ritualistic core, as outlined by Christopher Small in Musicking (1987): “classical music concerts are about veneration of composer-gods and their medium-priests, especially the conductor and soloists” (Taylor 2024, 157). This characterization is not inaccurate and the concepts of fidelity to the score and authority of the composer have been well established in both music theory and music practice (see Goehr 1992, for example). While this characterization continues to underpin a lot of performance practice research in classical, I must ask: does this characterization hold up in current contemporary music performance practices? My own study of Finnish and American contemporary music shed light on the nuances of notation culture, shared ownership, and agency that exists within contemporary music practice today. And second, is it possible that value is created on other planes besides the ritualistic or the religious, for both the performer and the audience? And if there isn’t an anthropologic framework for understanding or conceptualizing this value, where can we look?

A deep bibliographic dive and little help from Claude have landed me with a daunting reading list. And that is where we begin here. The first book I tackle is Laurent Thévenot and Luc Boltanski’s On Justification: Economies of Worth (2006). Claude suggested that this book provides framework for understanding how actors justify their claims of value across what Thévenot and Boltanski outline as “orders of worth”. The authors, both students of Pierre Bourdieu, attempt to bring “critical sociology” (structuralism) to the “real world” in order to explain how people justify their decision, actions, and what they conceive generally as valuable in their lives (“pragmatic sociology”). Thévenot and Boltanski describe six polities (as opposed Becker’s “worlds”, LaTour’s “networks” or Bourdieu’s “fields”) as units of analysis. These polities are drawn from core texts in political philosophy: Inspired (St. Augustine), Domestic (Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet), Fame (Thomas Hobbes), Civic (Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Market (Adam Smith), and Industrial (Henri de Saint-Simon). Thévenot and Boltanski then outline how the “worlds” of each of these polities define what their members see as worthy (or valuable) and how they use this reasoning to justify their action (chapter 6). The authors also build a matrix (chapter 8) with how each group would criticize the justifications of another group, from their own foundational perspective.

Rather than try and ascribe a cultural practice to a polity (impossible, and useless, I think), as I took notes on the characterizations of these groups and how they respond to the.reasoning of other groups, I found myself identifying how aspects of each polity play a role in the cultural production of classical and contemporary music. I extrapolate these below, because as I know from writing my dissertation, you never know what might be useful in the future. And writing helps me think. So here we go.

The Inspired polity, within its religious underpinning, at first glance appears to be the most compatible with artistic practice. Defined as “dissociable from the person” (i.e., embodied), it defines itself as establishing worth in direct criticism of the other polities (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 88). Characterized as “weakly equipped” compared to the other groups, its instability could also be interpreted as flexibility, mutability, or variability, particularly across subgroups and over time. Importantly, in an artistic context, “what is worthy” in the Inspired polity “is what cannot be controlled or – even more importantly – what cannot be measured…” (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 159). For me, this is exactly how artists, in my opinion, like to conceive of what they do in artistic practice. Valuing, or placing worth, in the “bizarre, unusual, marvelous, unspeakable, disturbing, exciting, spontaneous, [and] emotional” also characterizes how scholars have attempted over time to articulate aesthetic value in art creation, and by extension, musical performance (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 159).

Criticisms that the world of the Inspired make of the other groups are also in line with how artists and artistic groups might criticize how their work is understood by others. For example, for the Inspired, the Domestic world are limited by the “shackles of habit” (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 237). Some artists, though perhaps not classical and contemporary musicians, might argue that patterns and routines can suppress inspiration and creativity. Of the Civic, the Inspired criticize the permanence and imposition of institutions, and Fame is criticized for its vanity and inauthenticity (Thévenot and Boltanski 2011, 238-239). Many contemporary artists, in particular, are critical of traditional classical music institutions for both aesthetic and social reasons. From an Inspired, or artistic perspective, the Market world’s money is a “bondage” of which one must free itself. This parallels, in many ways, the foundational argument of Bowen and Baumol in expressing the incompatibility between the production of artistic performance and market economics (the labor costs will never keep up with rising costs). Finally, the Inspired criticize the “rigidity of routine” and “oppression of…authority or competence that inhibits inspired worth” of the industrial world.

But what about the other polities? Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, there are aspects of the other worlds that are also compatible with the cultural practice of music. The Civic world aptly applies to classical music institutions like conservatories, universities, and symphony orchestras: “the things and arrangements included in the civic world are destined above all to stabilize and equip the collective persons, to objectify them in such a way as to give them body, permanence, and presence” (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 185). In securing and cementing the ritualistic elements of performance and the hierarchical roles of composer, performer, and audience, one could argue that institutions of musical education and performance have been integral in preserving certain aspects of classical music performance. They might argue, in fact, they have have been integral in preserving the cultural practice of classical music as a whole. Stability and predictability at the expense of spontaneity.

I anticipated that aspects of the Fame world more applicable to classical / contemporary music performance than what I ultimately found. The world of Fame values reputation, recognition, visibility, having success, and distinguishing oneself (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 179). In classical music, the virtuoso soloist, conductor genius, and composer god all utilize this framework. Competitions, whether they be composition prizes or performance competitions for instrumental soloists or conductors, also promote many of these orders of worth, and ultimately build and sustain the careers of many important musical actors. It might be that characteristics of Fame shape social and structural components of the contemporary music (or classical music) world initially. Aesthetic affects (sounding and non-sounding) come later.

The differentiation between Market worlds and Industrial worlds was notable to me, particularly because they are not typically distinguished in discussions of economic value in cultural production. Actions in Market worlds are “motivated by the desire of individuals, which drive them to possess the same objects” and “rare goods whose ownership is inalienable” (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 196). Furthermore, goods that are “salable” have the strongest position in a Market world (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 196). This is a core difference between the visual arts and the performing arts, articulated by not reconciled by Becker in Art Worlds. The Industrial world, on the other hand, values functionality, reliability, and operational capabilities through efficiency, productivity, responsibility, and usefulness (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 204-205). I’m not yet sure how these can apply in a classical music performance context, except to mention that it might be important to keep in mind that capitalism in the work of Marianna Ritchey, Andrea Moore, and others is as much a social system as it is an economic one.

Finally, I used the comparability matrix to also try and assess levels compatibility between worlds. The briefest criticisms between two worlds could be interpreted as a greater capacity for compatibility. For example, the Inspired world’s criticism of the Civic and the Civic world’s criticism of the Inspired were very limited. The Civic world criticized for the oppressive nature of its institutions and the Inspired world for its “impulsivity” and “individualism” (Thévenot and Boltanski 2001, 239 and 251). These accusations are very familiar in a music context. Contemporary musicians, in particular, often chafe against the dominance of classical music institutions. That the world of Fame appeared to be compatible with the Civic makes sense if one considers that competitions and prizes in classical music and very much embedded within classical music institutions (the competitions and prize-awarding bodies can be considered institutions themselves). Finally, Industrial world could consider itself relatively compatible with the Inspired world, though this compatibility might not be even in both directors.

References

Baumol, William J., and William G. Bowen. 1996. Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma; A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance. New York: Twentieth Century Fund.

Becker, Howard. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. 2006 On Justification: Economies of Worth. Translated by Catherine Porter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production. New York City: Columbia University Press.

Goehr, Lydia. 2001. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Wesleyan: Wesleyan University Press.

Taylor, Timothy. 2024. Making Value: Music, Capital, and the Social. Durham: Duke University Press.