The Artworlds Approach: Music as Collective Action

The Artworlds Approach: Music as Collective Action

Dr. Vaishali Joshi

 St. Mira’s College for Girls, Pune

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.9020348

Received: 11 February 2025; Accepted: 19 February 2025; Published: 24 March 2025

ABSTRACT

Though Sociology of music has become a vibrant field today, its relevance has to be demonstrated to both, the broader sociological community and the practitioners of music as well. Seminal sociological works have enlarged the possibility of looking at music as a mode of social interaction governed by socio-cultural context. The study of music in turn has offered important insights into a range of general sociological concerns such as social interaction, social organization and social stratification. Using Howard Becker’s framework, this paper looks at music as collective action and seeks to throw light on how musical meanings are socially constructed rather than being inherent in the music itself. By tracing the artworld of music, the paper looks at music as a socially embedded phenomenon, shaped by historical contingencies and collective interactions. Drawing from the account of Gandharv Mahavidyalaya in Pune, the paper attempts to trace how music is meaningfully produced and consumed in a context of collective social organization. By exploring the Artworld of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, the paper seeks to investigate how peculiar musical meanings are constructed and contested, how music is configured through the ways in which it is performed and heard.

Keywords: aesthetics, Art world, social conventions, sociality of art

INTRODUCTION

From antiquity, music has been an integral aspect of human societies, shaping and being shaped by diverse social contexts. However, scholarly inquiries into the social dimensions of music have remained somewhat constrained. Traditionally, music has been conceptualized as a deeply personal, emotional, and transient phenomenon. Within the domains of music theory and musicology, the predominant assumption of musical autonomy has limited sociological scrutiny. Musicology has primarily concentrated on aesthetics, tonality, and form, emphasizing subjective and psychological experiences of music. Conversely, the objective stance that characterizes sociological inquiry has historically rendered the study of music within this discipline more complex.

Despite broad acknowledgment of the interplay between musical forms and social structures, comprehensive theoretical frameworks for understanding the social nature of music remain underdeveloped. While the sociology of music has gained prominence in recent decades, its relevance must be continually demonstrated to both the wider sociological community and practitioners within the musical sphere. Sociological perspective has expanded the scope of understanding music as a mode of social interaction, embedded within specific socio-cultural contexts. Sociological analyses of music have provided valuable insights into broader themes such as social organization, interaction, and stratification.

This paper explores the Artworlds perspective of Howard Becker, to understand music as a collective social product. Drawing from the account of Gandharv Mahavidyalaya in Pune, the paper seeks to throw light on how musical meanings are socially constructed rather than being inherent in the music itself.

The paper has addressed following research questions –

1. How do institutional networks and practices contribute and shape the musical artworld?
2. How shared meanings are collectively produced and what is the role of social conventions in shaping a collective musical milieu?

The research has used tools of focused and informal interviews and participant observation to collect inputs from teachers, students, administrative staff, performing artists and audience of music programmes at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya. The paper attempts to trace how music is meaningfully produced and consumed in a context of collective social organization. By exploring the Artworld of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, the paper seeks to investigate how peculiar musical meanings are constructed and contested, how music is configured through the ways in which it is performed and heard.

Art, Culture, and Society

The sociological examination of music is grounded in broader inquiries into the interrelations among art, culture, and society. The sociology of art, in its simplest formulation, investigates the socio-cultural contexts in which artistic production and consumption occur. Both sociology and art history emerged during modernity’s epistemological shifts, which led to a separation between the humanities and natural sciences. Concurrently, art was undergoing a transformation, gaining increasing autonomy from religious and political institutions. Sociology, as a discipline, functioned as a mediating force between the arts and the sciences, with both sociology and art history engaging in analyses of transformation within the emergent sphere of civil society.

However, by the late 19th century, art history shifted towards an aesthetic orientation, focusing on the interpretation of artistic meaning rather than explaining art as a product of social action. Art history sought not to explain art or objects as products of actions but to decipher aesthetically given meanings (Tanner 2003:10). This disciplinary divergence led to sociology and art history adopting distinct approaches to the study of art. Since the 1980s, however, sociological perspectives on art have gained broader acceptance, reinforcing the understanding that artistic forms, including music, must be analysed within their social contexts. The sociological perspective on music aligns closely with cultural sociology, examining music as an artistic practice deeply embedded in its cultural milieu. Music is understood as a carrier of cultural meanings, reflecting the ethos of the society from which it emerges. Early sociological approaches to culture, influenced by structural-functionalism, focused on European civilization. Marxist traditions, in contrast, emphasized the relationship between class interests and cultural production, particularly the commodification of cultural artifacts within capitalist systems. The works of theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Antonio Gramsci have been instrumental in understanding culture’s role in power relations and legitimation processes.

The evolving sociological understanding of culture has significantly influenced perspectives on music. Contemporary sociology of music is shaped by two dominant themes: an emphasis on aesthetic superiority of Western classical music and debates surrounding mass culture. As pointed out by Peter Martin (1995), the sociology of music should regard such debates and aesthetic conflicts as themselves the topic for investigation rather than take either side. Sociology should treat such aesthetic conflicts as subjects of inquiry rather than aligning with one perspective.

Sociological Perspectives on Music

A diverse range of scholars—including Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Theodor Adorno, Howard Becker, and Pierre Bourdieu—have contributed to sociological understandings of music. The pioneering effort towards development in this direction of a genuine sociology of music is done by Max Weber. The appendix titled ‘The Rational and Social Foundations of Music’ in his book ‘Economy and Society’ published in 1921 has laid the foundation of a systematic sociological perspective on music. Weber’s pioneering work looked at music as an object, as a product of an institutionalized system of tonality. Weber delineates the distinctively modern sense of tonality along with its characteristic mode of hearing as a result of the ‘progressive development of modern technical inventions and compositional innovations’ (Kemple 2009:194).

Max Weber’s pioneering work set the tone of sociology of music by emphasising empiricist or rationalist orientations while theorizing music. The empirical sociological studies engaged in showing how music is created as an object and how music parallels a social structure.

For George Simmel, the sound patterns per se are devoid of any meaning unless they are perceived asconveying learned emotive content. Thus conceived, different musical styles associate with social group difference. As pointed out by Etzkorn (1964), by looking at music as ‘characteristic of the character of a people’, Simmel draws attention to the social processes which differentiate between the access that individuals have to the sources of artistic traditions. By stipulating that in order to become great art, music must embody national or social group characteristics, Simmel seems to have made the beginning of theorizing the relation between taste and social group.

These early studies have treated music as a generic resource for sociological writing is very important. But at the same time it is important to note that these studies shifted a thrust on what caused music rather than what music caused. Rather than taking up the issue of music’s power, these studies pose music as a medium that reflects or parallels social structure. Traditionally, the sociology of music has positioned itself in opposition to aesthetics. Theodor Adorno is credited to have re-shifted the theoretical focus on music’s powers. He is the most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology in the past century. He placed music at the centre of his critique of modernity and raised some of the most important questions about the role of music in contemporary society.

Adorno looks at art as social not only because it derives its material content from society, but because it stands opposed to society.

‘Art will live on only as long as it has the power to resist society. If it refuses to objectify itself, it becomes a commodity. What it contributes to society is not some directly communicable content but something more mediate, i.e. resistance. The mystery of art is its demystifying power. Its social essence calls for a twofold reflection: on the being-for-itself of art, and on its ties with society. This dual essence of art comes out in all artistic phenomena; they change and contradict themselves’ (Adorno 1984: 321-322).

While some scholars, such as Adorno (1979, 1984), emphasized the intellectual and autonomous dimensions of music, sociological perspectives have generally sought to critique claims of musical autonomy and aesthetic judgment. Instead, sociologists have examined the historical and social determinants of aesthetic experience. Scholars[1] such as Merriam (1964), Collier (1981), Ballentine (1984), and Shepherd (1987) have posited that musical structures reflect the social structures in which they originate. As Simon Frith (1983) notes, the sociology of music has often relied on reflection theories, interpreting musical forms as homologous to the social groups that produce them. The concept of “structural homology,” which posits parallels between musical and social organization, has long dominated sociological discourse on music. However, contemporary approaches increasingly interrogate music’s active role in shaping social life rather than merely reflecting it.

The interdisciplinary turn in cultural studies, film studies, feminist theory, and Marxist critiques of art history has significantly transformed the sociology of music.

The field of Cultural Studies has further problematized hierarchical distinctions in musical taste, questioning the legitimacy of the classical tradition as a dominant form. Works by Peter Manuel (1986, 1993) and Simon Frith (1987, 1996, 2007) have highlighted how categories of “art” and “popular” music are socially constructed, reinforcing existing cultural hierarchies.

The works of scholars such as Howard Becker (1982), Bourdieu (1984) and Tia DeNora (2000) stress the need to incorporate questions of power and stratification while analysing music. These works have helped to examine both, the institutional arrangements and networks within which music is created and also the subjective perceptions and meanings shared by individual actors producing and consuming music. Given this article’s focus on the collective creation of meaning in Indian classical music, a brief overview of sociological studies on Hindustani classical music is warranted. Early sociological inquiries in India, conducted by scholars such as D. P. Mukerjee (1945), Radhakamal Mukerjee (1954), O. P. Joshi (1985), and Vinayak Purohit (1988), examined music’s role within broader social and cultural functions. Ethnomusicological studies since the 1980s (Neuman, 1980; Powers, 1980; Wade, 1984) systematically analysed how musical forms achieve recognition as “classical.” Subsequent scholarship on the colonial history of Indian music (Leppert, 1987; Farrell, 1997; Allen, 1998) has explored the East-West dynamics shaping Indian music under British rule.

Since the 1990s, interdisciplinary studies have expanded analyses of how art forms, practices, and contexts interact. Recent research on the social history of music (Bakhale, 2005; Weidman, 2005; Subramanian, 2009; Niranjana, 2006, 2013) has examined how Indian classical music was reconstructed as part of nation-building projects. These studies illuminate how categories such as community, tradition, and modernity were mobilized under colonial rule to shape the classical music canon. Furthermore, they reveal how musical categories functioned as ideological tools of social differentiation.

Artworlds approach of Howard Becker

As noted earlier, an interpretive paradigm aiming to investigate ways in which musical styles are developed deal effectively with the question of how society got into art.

Howard Becker is amongst the most influential scholars who have the interpretive paradigm to understand art.

Howard Becker’s (1982) account of art as collective action presents social order as an outcome of the actions of individuals and groups as they pursue their interests within institutional context. This ‘art worlds’ approach derived from symbolic interactionism, offers a useful analytical framework for sociology of music. This approach is consistent with Max Weber’s notion of ‘comprehensive understanding’ and strongly opposes the positivist belief in an external world whose characteristics can be simply generalized. By viewing artistic work as ‘collective action’, Becker dissolves the distinction between work of art and its social context. He looks at the production of artwork as collaboration of a number of people. The emotional effect of the art work is possible only because of the shared knowledge and experience of artist and audience.

According to Becker,

‘Every art world uses, to organize some of the cooperation between some of its participants, conventions known to all or almost all well-socialized members of the society in which it exists’ (1982: 42).

The conventions or customary agreements dictate the form, content, style and dimensions of the art work. They synchronize the relations between artist and the audience. These conventions are immensely useful for artists in getting expected emotional responses from the audience.

Music as Collective Action

Following Howard Becker’s framework, this paper examines how shared meanings are collectively produced within the art world of Indian classical music. Specifically, it explores the ways in which Indian classical music is appropriated as the most legitimate form of musical expression, with a focus on the role of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya (GMV) in Pune. Through its institutional networks, pedagogical practices, and key actors, GMV has nurtured a distinct style of music as superior and legitimate. This paper analyses the socially shared world of GMV, where participants construct their musical identities within an institutional context. The everyday routine is positioned as a conventional setting in which shared meanings of music are continuously constructed and negotiated.

Gandharva Mahavidyalay[2] was established in Pune on May 8, 1932, by Pt. Vinayakbua Patwardhan in honor of his Guru, Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, who pioneered institutional music education by founding Gandharva Mahavidyalay in Lahore in 1901. Prior to this, classical music was transmitted primarily through oral traditions. Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar revolutionized this practice by introducing it into a formal classroom setting, thereby transforming a Gurumukhi Vidya into a modern institutional discipline.

For Vinayakbua, himself a renowned musician of the Gwalior gharana, the objective of GMV was clear: to disseminate classical music among the educated class and elevate the social status of musicians. Through a structured pedagogy, GMV institutionalized the Gwalior gharana tradition, ensuring its survival and adaptation to changing musical milieus over the past 93 years. This institution’s evolution reflects its transformation from a reputed music school committed to classical traditions into a key player in shaping Pune’s classical music art world.

Institutionalized Pedagogy and Music Education

GMV’s pedagogy is characterized by a structured, examination-oriented approach combined with elements of the traditional gurukul system. The classroom-based education is time-bound (with lessons typically lasting 45 minutes per batch), follows a fixed curriculum, and utilizes concise books with notations and theoretical details such as vadi-samvadi swar and aroha-avaroha. Over the years, an increased focus on written materials has led to a system in which music education is largely defined by what is included in textbooks and evaluated in examinations. This shift has led to a more ‘systematic’ and ‘scientific’ understanding of music, reinforcing GMV’s reputation as an institution that imparts structured knowledge of classical music.

The dual system of education at GMV caters to both general music learners and aspiring professional musicians. While its institutional design provides access to music education for a broad student base, special attention is given to students with exceptional talent, ensuring the cultivation of future performing artists. This combination of accessibility and selectivity has allowed GMV to sustain itself through challenges such as teacher turnover and fluctuating student enrolments.

Invocation of Tradition in Music Education

As Becker suggests, social conventions play a crucial role in creating a shared artistic experience. At GMV, the production and consumption of music are deeply shaped by social conventions that continuously reinforce a sense of shared musical tradition. GMV’s modern infrastructure and institutional framework remain rooted in the Paluskari parampara, derived from the Gwalior musical tradition.

Between 1932 and 1942, GMV gained prominence not just as a music school offering degrees and certificates but as an authentic center for Gwalior gharana gayaki. Dedicated students received specialized coaching, were exempted from fees, and were provided residential facilities. Even today, this dual system ensures a steady influx of students while simultaneously nurturing artistic talent.

GMV’s pedagogy is also informed by values such as self-discipline, physical fitness, and reverence for tradition. Rituals like students bowing to their teachers, maintaining the classroom environment, and observing Guru Poornima are integral to GMV’s philosophy. The significance of tradition is further emphasized in the institutional space itself, with concert halls named after Vishnu Digambar and Vinayakbua, symbolizing continuity and reverence for past masters. The prayer Jai Jagadish Hare, composed by Vishnu Digambar, remains a part of institutional memory, reinforcing GMV’s ideological framing of music as a medium of worship.

Adapting to Changing Times

As per Becker’s theory, artistic production is a collective activity involving multiple actors, including artists, educators, critics, distributors, and audiences. GMV’s journey reflects this interplay of forces shaping the classical music ecosystem in Pune.Since the 1980s, classical music has seen significant growth in India, driven by an increase in festivals, workshops, recordings, and digital media. The emergence of a ‘culture industry’ has positioned classical music as a refined art form, reshaping its production and consumption. Institutions like GMV have had to navigate these changing dynamics while maintaining their traditional foundations.

GMV has successfully balanced commercial imperatives with its foundational values. While it engages in creative fundraising initiatives, it maintains moderate fee structures for students and ensures competitive salaries for teachers. Notable events like the 1997-98 centenary celebrations of Vinayakbua Patwardhan featured a Gharana festival, a Guru-Shishya tradition festival, documentary screenings, and various music showcases, enhancing GMV’s reputation and visibility.

Since 1999, the Vivida music festival has been a flagship event, commemorating Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, Vinayakbua Patwardhan, and D.V. Paluskar. This platform has featured performances by eminent musicians and has provided opportunities for emerging artists.

In 2006, GMV inaugurated a new campus, featuring nine classrooms, the Vishnu Vinayak Swar Mandir concert hall, a well-equipped library, guest accommodations, and modern office spaces. The new facilities have reinforced GMV’s status as a key institution in Pune’s musical landscape.

GMV has demonstrated remarkable flexibility in adapting to contemporary musical trends. In response to technological advancements, it has embraced digital learning, offering online music classes since 2010. Students from countries such as the United States, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand now access its courses remotely.

One of the most significant transformations at GMV is its departure from the rigidity of the pathadi system. While traditionally associated with the Gwalior gharana, GMV has adopted an inclusive approach, incorporating various musical forms such as folk, devotional, and light music into its curriculum. The introduction of Kathak dance classes in 2006 further reflects this shift.

GMV today is not merely a center for music education; it is an evolving cultural institution responding to the growing commercialization of music. While concerns persist about the future of classical music in an era dominated by reality shows and fusion genres, GMV actively capitalizes on the increasing interest in music, ensuring its relevance in the modern world.

Concluding remarks

The sociology of music continues to evolve, integrating insights from interdisciplinary fields while challenging aesthetic and cultural hierarchies. By examining the social construction of musical meaning, particularly within institutional and historical contexts, sociologists contribute to a more nuanced understanding of music’s role in social life. This paper underscores the necessity of viewing music not merely as an autonomous art form but as a socially embedded phenomenon, shaped by historical contingencies and collective interactions.

The paper throws light on how music is constituted by practices, actors or things which may have very little directly to do with the actual musical performance. GMV represents how music is produced and consumed in a context of collective social organization, how musical world is created not just by artists but through cooperation and collaboration of audience, accompanists, critics, technicians, sponsors and so on.

Gandharva Mahavidyalay’s legacy exemplifies the collective action that shapes artistic worlds. Its ability to balance tradition with modernity, maintain a structured yet adaptable pedagogy, and foster a committed musical community ensures its continued significance. By anchoring classical music within an institutional framework while embracing change, GMV remains a pivotal force in the art world of Indian classical music.

REFERENCES

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FOOTNOTES

[1] The account of the interplay between musicological and sociological positions is derived from Peter Martin’s path-breaking work (1995) of assembling central themes and perspectives that lay at the foundation of Sociology of Music.

[2] The documents at the field, such as annual reports, Minutes of meetings, and special publications are used as a source of qualitative information throwing light on the role of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in projecting a modern image of Indian classical music and creating a mass base for it.