Overtones: The social world of the Israeli philharmonic orchestra

The present paper, anchored in a social world perspective, endeavors to apply symbolic interactionist methods to an empirical case study - that of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) Subscribers' Series -, in order to analyse the relations between the social production of music and its context. The discussion opens with a brief account of the IPO's foundation and development. The consecutive section describes the current world of the subscribers' series, indicating its predominant traits. The concertic mode of musical experience is then analysed as constituted by a number of social processes, the most significant of which is the creation of a symbolically controlled and predictable field of relevance. The empirical material presented gives rise to the main argument according to which the musical experience and social context are (in terms of the different codes and rules of relevance regulating each sub-system) seemingly mutually exclusive yet existentially conditioned. It means that the social world collapses into the realm of the music performed while the converse fading away takes place when the musical part is concluded. Control and predictability are denoted as major integrating processes.