Graduate Student, Music
PhD student
Stephanie Pitts
Christopher Spencer
About
I read Music at King's College, London, and then completed an MA in Psychology of Music at the University of Sheffield. My Master's dissertation explored jazz musicians' and classical string players' respective beliefs about performance. It focused on the demands that performing imposes on a player, and also considered the effects of musicians' lifestyles on their well-being.
My PhD thesis empirically investigates audience experience of live classical concerts: it questions why individuals attend classical performances - and, importantly, why they don't. I explore the functions that concert-going fulfils in attenders’ lives, as well as the experiences of audience members new to classical concerts. The thesis addresses the roles of familiarity and novelty in the enjoyment of concert experience; distinctive features of ‘liveness’ in classical concerts (e.g. the capacity for performer spontaneity; the role of visual stimuli; and relationships between live and recorded listening); and, using concepts from environmental psychology, explores the ways in which concert venues shape the experiences of audience members within them, as well as the perceptions of potential attenders who have yet to venture inside.
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