On the surface, this may seem a bit of a strange idea. But, with rapidly changing production and consumption habits, reviewing what live performance really means has become increasingly important.
Whether musical or theatrical, the bounds of what constitutes a live performance are continually being blurred. With growing numbers of streamed and interactive productions to the increasing presence of sampling and loop tracks within musical performances, the definition of what constitutes live within the arts is being challenged.
Over a series of articles, I shall discuss how the way we understand live performance has changed, how COVID-19 has forced a revolution in mediated live productions, and what the future has in store for interactive, streamed and traditional live productions as we enter the “new normal”.
Let’s start with music
As a musicologist, I have spent years questioning what music is. When and how does something become music? Where is the boundary between sound and music? Do notes scribbled on a page count? Or do they have to be heard? And just how much of a universal language is it?
Similar questions arise over the notion of live performance.
Until the late nineteenth century, the answers were a lot simpler. To hear music, someone could play a piece themselves or listen to someone else perform in a concert hall or in the streets.
Sound was invisible and fleeting. Immediate, personal, and unedited. Almost the dictionary definition of live.
The idea of capturing audio to be able to listen to it again was a farfetched fantasy.
At least it was until 1877.
The Recording Revolution
Enter Charles Cros and Thomas Edison.
Working either side of the Atlantic, Cros and Edison were pioneers. Both using Éduard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph as a basis, they each sought to develop something that could not only capture sound but also retrieve it. The outcome: Cros created The Paleophone Process while Edison patented the Phonograph. Sound recording was no longer a dream but a reality.
For a while, there appeared to be a clear boundary. Live Music vs Recorded Music. Immediate vs Mediated. Human vs Mechanical.
However, as technology continued to develop, so did people’s imaginations, coming up with possibilities of how to exploit recorded sound. From Pierre Schaffer’s musique concrete to the Beatles, across the musical spectrum new ideas were taking shape with ways to manipulate and incorporate audio recordings into new music.
The divide between live and recorded was beginning to blur.
Add sampling, looping, and lip-syncing into the mix and the world of musical performance has become a lot more complex. The once clear definition of what a live concert meant, with the music being generated in the moment by the immediate actions of the performers themselves no longer seems to fit the bill. Not only incorporating synthesisers and DJs but increasingly live streaming, live music has become more mediated than ever before.
This isn’t to say that these developments are a bad thing.
In many respects, quite the opposite. With the current dominance of streamed concerts and productions, potentially more people than ever can access the arts without the great financial burden that had previously become attached to them.
However, although accessibility may have increased, it is important to acknowledge how our consumption habits have changed and with this, how they have affected our expectations of live. While listening to sampling and looping may have become second nature to many of us, we must be wary about how the definition of live will need to evolve again in response to streaming.
The great romantic composer Beethoven is quoted as saying
‘To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable’.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Maybe this adage, created well before the advent of recording, provides a clue to creating this new definition. Perhaps live performance will now rely more than ever on the emotional connection and response it produces, rather than whether the creator and spectator are in the same room or either side of a monitor.
Polyphony 