Beethoven as open dialogue: Doing participation differently in symphonic music?

Since the early 2000s, the relevance of symphonic music concerts, and in particular how the audience participates in them, has been questioned. Picking up on such discourse and pressured by policy measures and budget cuts, symphony orchestras in the Netherlands have started to organise concerts in which they aim to innovate audience participation. However, the way in which the audience participates in symphonic concerts, as an attentive listener, is inherently linked to prevalent aesthetic ideals. Consequently, orchestras have been concerned about how they can innovate participation whilst also continuing to provide artistic quality. This chapter examines how symphony orchestras try to balance doing participation differently and providing an artistically good performance of symphonic music by ethnographically analysing the case of the Dutch experimental collective Pynarello. This practice aims to break down the boundaries between audience and musicians by performing ‘symphonic music as open dialogue’—for example by playing without a score or conductor. It is concluded that organising a participatory project enables art practitioners to develop a reflexive focus on their own taken-for-granted ways of working and their aesthetic ideals. Innovation through participation should thus be concerned not only with creating new forms but also with a deep reconsideration of new and existing norms.