COVID extensively affects virtually all aspects of life around the globe which has already prompted theoretical studies. A substantial amount of literature was thoroughly reviewed and the list can be found here.

In COVID days, confined people attended to music activities by technology and could self-control the music amount obtained. They worked through gadgets for music instead of going into a physical space having others while musicians would mostly see no audience. Without physical touch, discourses and rhetoric grew to fuel meaning for all parties.

The dynamism between audience’s and organisers’/performers’ actions in engaging music forms an arena where people shakily sustain the music scene and share essential knowledge for continuation. The notion of arena prompts the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, in which his dynamic and fluid schemata in understanding society may guide upon the topic theoretically.  

The influential sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930-2002) concepts and thoughts long influenced the field of sociology of music. He bridged macroscopic structures in societies and microscopic thoughts in individuals, emphasised different roles’ interplay, their thought structures (habitus) and the arena (field) they situate in.

Habitus are structured and structuring structures of individual agents. For they are “structured”, since individuals recognize those structures through their history and society. For they are “structuring”, since those structures affect how one perceives the future in similar situations. For they are “structures”, since they serve as packages of reactions rather than arbitrary random responses.

Everyone will have their own habitus and collectively a group of people will form the habitus of that group. These people, bringing their habituses, work and interact in a social space or, the “field”. The field consists of people occupying different positions and interacting in a certain way, showing certain flair to outsiders.

One can already find how tempting it is to apply these concepts in a musical context, exemplified by the Bourdieusian legacy for over 40 years. It is the interactions and the whole dynamic between the field and individuals that matter instead of just microscopic intentions or macroscopic structures. 

In the field of Classical Music, mingling with technology during COVID, different groups (choirs, orchestras, chamber groups etc.) brought their own histories and discourses to materialise the all-new field gradually solidified out of COVID necessity. Observing how other institutions react, the groups form their own habituses and take their positions in the new field, forming a particular landscape so that outsiders, perhaps non-music stakeholders, can see what is happening.

A surfacing characteristic of the COVID Classical Music Field may be the simultaneous effort for a listening space aiming at better well-being. Two parties, the producers and consumers, interact and create a space; missing one side will devalue the event. In reality, producers facilitate consumers on technological interfaces (such as giving practical technological directions or producing musical art catering the online scene), and consumers engage in those set up (such as installing relevant equipment). The synergy created a setting of music which prompts people to rethink how one is engaging, dialoguing and internalising music itself.

In a new COVID music field where each brings their own habitus to engage, the features of the field are something the research wants to figure out to see how it allows the stakeholders to review their position and act most strategically in current times, if we all believe that music is something worthy even in pandemic days.