Sounds in Social Space: Topology and Their Audience as a Subculture

Abstract

This article considers music as a social practice involving audiences and performers, times and places, sounds and spaces, in order to better understand how and why particular groups of human beings in particular times and places come together to form temporary communities – subcultures – around musical style and shared values. The audience is understood as active participants, and not as end-consumers: being a member of the audience for a particular genre of music is an act of indirect communication that places the individual in an imagined community. The article uses the example of the Brisbane-based ensemble Topology to show how contemporary chamber music can be understood as a subculture, and the contemporary chamber music concert, as described in this article, can be understood as a subcultural ritual.