The thesis originates from a previous paper dealing with the Ensemble
InterContemporain, the chamber orchestra founded by Pierre Boulez in
1976 in order to make contemporary music accessible to a broader public.
Because of my academic background, a master's degree in business administration
from Ecole
Supérieure de Commerce de Lyon (France) and Universität
des Saarlandes (Germany) as well as studies in musicology, I started
an analysis of the EIC when I entered IRCAM's
doctoral
program of music and musicolgogy of the 20th century. In this paper
I examined the artistic policy of this orchestra, which is exclusively devoted
to contemporary music : the repertoire, the finances, the audience and the
programming.
Hugues Dufourt and Jean-Baptiste Barrière encouraged me to continue
with a Ph. D. thesis which would deal with a similar subject on a larger
scale. We found an additional thesis advisor, Bernard Bovier Lapierre, director
of the Institut d'Economie
de la Culture, Pôle Universitaire
Léonard de Vinci, whose primary focus is the economics of art
and culture.
Because of the many possible relations between artistic policy and financial
constraints, it was important to find a suitable example. The situation
of contemporary music in a country, like the US, where public support is
less available than in Europe, appeared to be an interesting subject. With
a Lavoisier
grant by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs I started to analyze
the situation of contemporary music in the US at UC Berkeley's Center for
New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).
The main idea is that in addition to differences in musical tradition, different
economic environments also have a measurable effect on the dissemination
process of contemporary music : with ensembles more exposed to market rules,
the artistic flexibility might be more limited. By analyzing repertoires
and studying financial resources of ensembles in Europe and the US, I hope
to demonstrate this. This kind of approach implies economic and musical
aspects so that the more musicologically oriented reader can be deterred
by the economic content and vice versa.