Schutz and Becker on making music together: A note on their ... blob:https://journals.sagepub.com/f6f40d9d-e6d1-4493-b4b0-...

Journal of Classical Sociology

Volume 20, Issue 1, February 2020, Pages 64-79
© The Author(s) 2019, Article Reuse Guidelines
https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X18807592

Research Note

Schutz and Becker on making music together: A note on

their respective contributions to the sociology of music

Sandro Segre

Abstract
This article compares the sociological writings of Schutz and Becker on making music together.
Schutz laid stress on the We-relationship resulting from face-to-face performance of music, in
which every listener participates with the other listeners, the performers, and the composers.
Becker emphasized the existence of taken-for-granted conventions on which cooperative
relations between performers are based, in conjunction with other members of the music
subcommunity with whom they are engaged in a communication flow. The involved actors may
participate in several reciprocally connected worlds of shared experiences, which if jointly
considered constitute the art world. The theoretical and conceptual differences between Schutz
and Becker, which concern their sociological writings on music, are related to analogous
diversities between Phenomenological Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism. Finally, Weber,
Honigsheim, and Adorno’s contributions to the sociology of music have been here considered
for comparative purposes.

Keywords
Making music together, Phenomenological Sociology, shared experience, Symbolic
Interactionism, We-relationship

Università di Genova, Italy

Corresponding author(s):
Sandro Segre, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università di Genova, Piazzale E. Brignole, 3a canc., Genova (GE)
16125, Italy. Email: Segre@unige.it

Introductory statements
The sociology of music has been under the shadow of Weber and Adorno to this day. Other
authors however, such as Becker and Schutz, have contributed to this field of studies from
different viewpoints. Their contributions have so far drawn limited scholarly attention concerning
their writings on the sociology of music; still, they are noteworthy as they bear on the same
subject –making music together – from the distinct but complementary perspectives of
Symbolic Interactionism and Phenomenological Sociology. We shall here briefly present the
sociology of music as a field of studies; we shall next discuss whether there was any influence
of either of these two authors on the other one, in general and insofar as this particular subject
is concerned. Then, the discussions of this subject on the part of Becker and Schutz will be

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presented and compared. The question will be also considered as to whether and how the
writings of Becker and Schutz might be related to those of Weber, Honigsheim, and Adorno.
Discussing this question will involve a condensed presentation of the latter authors’
contributions to the sociology of music.

The sociology of music as a field of studies

Music can be sociologically defined and considered either as an object or as an activity. As an
object, music is an institutionalized system of notations and tonalities but is also a commodity
for which there is a market, as is the case of commodities in general. As an activity, the study of
music dwells on music performances. Relations between performers, or between performers
and their audiences, are accordingly pertinent in this case. In both cases, the sociological study
of music differentiates between genres of music, such as classical and popular. The sociology
of music has stimulated the scholarly interest on the part of contemporary sociologists such as
Bourdieu, DeNora, Dowd, Roy, and Becker himself. In this connection, we shall point to the
distinctive ways in which the contributions of Schutz and Becker are related to this sociological
field of studies. First, however, we shall supply essential information on this field of studies (cf.
Dodd, 2007; Roy and Dowd, 2010, for introductions to the sociology of music).
Distinctions between musical genres, and the establishment of hierarchies between them,
are a social construction. Such distinctions may be, and have been in fact, challenged. They
have nonetheless stimulated some noteworthy pertinent literature. Bourdieu, in particular, has
investigated the relation between social class and genres of musical consumption (Bourdieu,
1984). Music has often been, moreover, a constitutive element of identities and has been
accordingly a source of meanings for individuals and collectivities. Meanings do not reside in
either of them separately but rather “in the interplay between audiences and content” (Roy and
Dowd, 2010: 190). Individuals, and collectivities such as organizations, may be jointly involved
in producing and performing music, often in conjunction with other actors such as private and/or
public institutions.

Schutz and Becker as sociologists of music

We shall focus here first on Schutz and Becker separately. Their contributions to the sociology
of music will be considered against the background of their body of sociological work, which will
be here briefly outlined. As for Schutz, who was born in Vienna 1899 and who died 60 years
later in New York, his work deals with the intersubjective structures of meaning and the
constitution of the life-world with its distinct domain of relevance, or finite provinces of meaning.
Each province of meaning has symbolic boundaries which separate it from all the others and
constitute a shared communicative environment. Each province, moreover, is connoted by
specific forms of experience and sociality, and is bestowed with a cognitive style and accent of
reality of its own. The subjects address attention to one or the other province of meaning, which
they jointly interpret and to which they confer a common meaning.
By doing so, albeit in various degrees and according to circumstances and to their own life
experiences, they constitute a “common intersubjective world of communication and social
action” (Schutz, 1962: 230). In the life-world, accordingly, “intersubjectivity is no problem,” as
“the individual takes of others for granted” (Wagner, 1970: 31). Face-to-face relations are
necessary to the constitution of a shared communicative world, for only these relations make it
possible to “the self of my fellow man appear to me in its unbroken totality … in the vivid

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present.” “Any other social situation is derived” from this one (Schutz, 1976: 33; see also p.
178). Accordingly, the face-to-face relationship constitutes “the paramount situation” (Schutz,
1976: 178).
Howard S. Becker (not to be confused with sociologist Howard P. Becker) was born in 1928
in Chicago, and is still alive and productive. He has lived between San Francisco and Paris for
the most part of his life. Becker sees music as a part of an organized art world. The art world is,
in keeping with Becker, a form of collective activity whose products are conventionally defined
as art. Insofar as participants in art worlds “share experiences, interpretations, and predictions
vis-à-vis the censors,” they “constitute an art world” (Becker, 2008: 160–161). Becker shows
interest in joint performances of music, as we shall presently see, but as a case of
experimenting with new possibilities of communication and thus participating in a particular art
world (Becker, 2008: 34–35, 320–321). The metaphor of art world refers to others with whom
members of this world communicate and cooperate, and from whom they are separated by
means of symbolic boundaries.
It refers, more specifically, to people who develop “their lines of activity gradually” by taking
into account what other people do in response and by adjusting their actions accordingly
(Becker, 2008: 226, 320, 375). Becker’s concept of world, more in general, is formulated in
accordance with the symbolic interactionist perspective. In such a world, he writes, “all sorts of
people develop their lines of activity gradually, seeing how others respond to what they do and
adjusting what they do next in a way that meshes with what others have done and will probably
do next” (Becker and Pessin, 2017: 94). In keeping with this conception of world, in the music
world, and in that of the jazz music in particular,

everyone has to be alert to what the others are doing, and continually adjust what he does in the
light of what the others are doing, and continually adjust what he does in the light of what he hears
(and occasionally sees) them doing.

(Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 185)

Making music together: Schutz and Becker

The joint performance of music is a distinctive instance of such a common intersubjective world.
In this regard, Schutz (1996a) has authored an unfinished manuscript, which bears the title:
“Fragments toward a Phenomenology of Music” (pp. 243–275). In this earlier manuscript,
Schutz has formulated some theses, which he also put forward in his essay on Making Music
Together. As Schutz has made clear in the former essay, sharing

in vivid present the Other’s stream of consciousness in immediacy … is possible because making
music together occurs in a true face-to-face relationship – inasmuch as the participants are sharing
not only a section of time but also a sector of space.

(Schutz, 1976: 176)

As he has further stated,

the system of musical notation is merely a technical device and accidental to the social relationship
prevailing among the performers … Making music together is an event in outer time, presupposing
also a face-to-face relationship, that is a community of space, and is this dimension which unifies
the fluxes of inner time and warrants their synchronization into a vivid present.

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(Schutz, 1976: 177)

The Schutz scholar Lester Embree (1998), in his Editor’s Introduction to Schutz’s writings on
the Sociology of Literature, has made a similar point in a concise form: “Those who perform
music together experience an identical flux of inner time.”
Thus, making music together is both an inner and an outer time experience, but only the
latter presupposes a community of space and a face-to-face relation. As Schutz (1976) has
maintained in the later essay, the work of music “can only be recollected and grasped … by
reproducing mentally or actually its development from the first to the last bar as it goes on in
time” (p. 248). Resorting to the language of Husserl’s phenomenology, Schutz (1976) has
written in this sense that the work of music is constituted “polythetically,” that is, step by step
(pp. 248–249). In this connection, he has distinguished between inner and outer time. While the
latter is objective and therefore measurable, the former is not as it refers to individual streams
of consciousness. As Schutz (1996a) has written, all musical experience takes place “as an
indivisible unity, as a single impulse, as long as he lives within the flux of the ongoing music,”
and originates “in the flux of inner time, in the stream of consciousness” (pp. 260, 270).
Musical communication, according to Schutz, involves “the sharing of the ongoing flux of the
musical content.” This may occur “merely in the beholder’s recollections,” or by virtue of a
person’s “reading the score,” or “with the help of audible sounds” (Schutz, 1976: 174). Music,
when collectively made and therefore constitutive of a jointly lived and meaningful experience,
produces an almost simultaneous “interplay of recollections, retentions, protentions, and
anticipations which interrelate the successive elements” (Schutz, 1976: 170). Making music
together implies, according to Schutz, a particular mode of experiencing music, which differs
from passive and individual listening; as in the former case every listener participates with the
other listeners, the performers, and the composers (no matter if the latter belong to different
times) in “the ongoing flux of musical content.” This is so in spite of “all variations of intensity,
intimacy, and anonymity” (Schutz, 1976: 174).
Schutz published in 1951 in the journal Social Research, which was issued by the New
School of Social Research, an article on Making Music Together (Vol. 18, No. 1, March 1951,
pp. 76–97). This article was then reprinted in the second volume of Schutz’s (1976) Collected
Papers (pp. 159–178). We shall refer here to this edition, which will be considered in
conjunction with an earlier (1944) and unfinished manuscript on the phenomenology of music
(cf. Schutz, 1996a). In both these writings, Schutz dealt with the subjects’ individual musical
experience when performing together. Schutz holds that his analysis of making music together,
conducted from a phenomenological viewpoint, involves a Thou or a We relation. This obtains
in all sorts of music and performances, including “the improvisations at a jam session of
accomplished jazz players” (Schutz, 1976: 177). This point is relevant here as establishing a
link with Becker’s writings on music and paving the way for a comparison between their
theoretical perspectives.
Comparisons are usually made in the social sciences for the purpose of investigating
“specific historical sequences or outcomes and their causes across a set of similar cases”
(Ragin, 1987: 13). In this case, however, the comparison concerns two theoretical perspectives
(cf. Smelser, 1976: Chapter 5): Phenomenological Sociology (Schutz) and Symbolic
Interactionism (Becker). These interpretive perspectives may display their distinct usefulness
when applied to a specific theoretical case, such as making music together. If music is jointly
performed, the performers establish among themselves a “we-relationship” by sharing “the flux

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of inner time” (Schutz, 1976: 176), the “vivid present” of the Other’s stream of thought (Schutz,
1962: 174). We-relations presuppose a direct experience of others with whom face-to-face
relations occur.
In Schutz’s (1996c) own words, a pure We-relation is “a social relation in which the
consociates share a community of space and time and are mutually ‘tuned into’ each other” (p.
63). A common stream of experiences follows accordingly (cf. Schutz, 1976: 26). In this
relationship, as in symbol relations in general, “I experience the Thou as if it too experiences a
duration which is similar to, nay, simultaneous with, mine” (Schutz, 2013: 124). The experience
of the Thou is not dissimilar from the We-relationship: “in the We-relationship among
consociates the Other’s course of action, its motives … and his person … can be shared in
immediacy” (Schutz, 1962: 25). “All our knowledge of the social world,” Schutz (1962)
maintains, “is based upon the possibility of experiencing an alter-ego in vivid presence” (p.
175), even if this knowledge concerns remote phenomena diverse types of social communities.
As he remarks in his essay on Mozart and the Philosophers, Mozart has succeeded in
“bringing about a simultaneity between the stream of consciousness of the persons on the
stage and that of the beholder.” He thus establishes a community of intersubjectivity between
the two, since both participate in the same flux of inner time (Schutz, 1976: 198). Making music
together makes it then possible to overcome the intersubjectivity problem, which besets
Husserl’s phenomenology. The music experience is temporal rather than spatial and may be
apperceived not in the course of the music performance (in the “vivid present”) but only later, by
virtue of recollections, which make this experience reemerge in the consciousness
(“remembrance of things past”). In Schutz’s own words, a pure We-relation is “a social relation
in which the consociates share a community of space and time and are mutually ‘tuned into’
each other” (Schutz, 1996c: 63). Listening to music – at least, to “the Western [classical] music
of the last 250 years” – involves a change on the listeners’ level of consciousness.
Schutz (1996a) referred to this change as “a leap,” in the sense that the listeners are no
longer engaged in their daily routine work with their customary spatial and temporary frames,
but rather they “accept the guidance of music in order to … surrender to its flux … which is that
of their stream of consciousness in inner time” (p. 258). Listeners sharing the “ongoing flux” of
the musical experience then experience the performance as “an indivisible unit” (Schutz,
1996a: 270). They set apart this experience from all other experiences as a distinct and
separate province of meaning. Listening to music involves, accordingly, a community of time, to
the effect that “there is a common specious present which the consociates share.” Participation
in an ongoing action implies then “a community of space and time.” While face-to face relations
constitute a community of space, a community of time implies the retentions (the apprehension
of what is immediately past) and protentions (the anticipation of the next moment, yet to be
perceived) of the other’s action (Schutz, 1996c: 63).
Accordingly, the listeners’ attitude while following the flux of music involves their awareness
that all musical elements constitute “a meaningful unity” (Schutz, 1996a: 275; see also Skanda
1982). Becker has dwelt – like Schutz – on jazz music as an instance of face-to-face musical
performances on the part of “localized groups of various sizes” (Becker, 2008: 320). Becker has
cited Schutz in this connection, stressing the similarities between Schutz and himself insofar as
their respective analyses of making music together are concerned. The common notion of
mutual tuning as necessary to all communication, whether musical or otherwise, has been here
emphasized (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 190), while differences between their studies, and in

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general between their perspectives, have been disregarded. Unlike Schutz, in particular, Becker
considered his various musical involvements as a profession. As a former jazz player, he had
directly experienced working with orchestras and performing music with others in many
Saturday night groups in Chicago since his student days (Becker, 1963: 84; cf. also Pessin,
2017: 20).
In Becker’s own words, entering “the music business” involves for a musician “entering a
profession which encourages his breaking with the conventional behavior patterns of his
family’s social milieu” (Becker, 1963: 115). The requested knowledge and skills vary according
to the site (whether it is a large or a small city) and the sort of music organization (whether
performances take place in a big band, a night club, a radio studio, or in large conventions)
(Becker, 1963: 113). Thus, according to Becker, entering the music business involves becoming
a professional musician, irrespective of where and with whom music is performed. Making
music one’s way of life, possessing and displaying the necessary skills, and making a livelihood
out of them are for Becker the necessary and sufficient requirements to designate it as a
professional occupation (Becker, 1963: 102–114). Unlike other professions, the “music
business” is a deviant occupation that involves an unconventional lifestyle and career pattern
(Becker, 1963: 115–118).
There are, moreover, no professional closures or formal qualifications, as is the case with
established professions. Still, in the 2009 book he has authored with Faulkner, Becker
considers the “music business” not only as a profession but also as his own past profession (cf.
Faulkner and Becker, 2009: ix, 195). Becker lays emphasis on several and distinct “set of skills”
(Becker, 1963: 113), which are gained not only through practice but also with training. As non-
professional musicians do not have such skills, they experience severe limitations of their
musical performances (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 23). Jazz musicians must possess the
necessary skills to obtain professional prestige in a variety of different settings and to make a
living by exploiting it. These same requirements hold for professions in general, which advance
specific knowledge claims they deem necessary to perform the requested tasks (Leicht, 2005:
603).
These claims, it has been remarked, have been taken to be self-evident, and have not been
accordingly subject to “dispassionate judgment” (Parkin, 1979: 103). All in all, then, considering
music as profession, as Becker does, may be objectionable on some grounds but does not
seem to be untenable. Other differences between Becker and Schutz are also noteworthy.
Becker showed no interest in what occurs in the performers’ individual consciousnesses; rather,
in contrast to Schutz, he concerned himself with specific features of their identities and
activities, which he considered from an interactionist viewpoint. More specifically, in Outsiders,
Becker dwelt on the musicians’ identity, namely, how they view themselves and their colleagues
(Becker, 1963: 85–91). Subsequently, in Art Worlds, Becker (2008) dealt with “the continuing
adjustment of the cooperating parties to the changing conditions in which they practice” (p. 59).
As he stated elsewhere, conventions provide guidance and regularity to their conduct while
preserving “openness and possibility” for those who prefer to do otherwise. In the Western
tradition, music performers play “on the basis of shared conventional understandings” (Becker
and Pessin, 2017: 98–99), which they and everyone else in the music world take for granted.
As for the identity of professional jazz players, Becker observed that they consider themselves
as creative artists, for they like to see themselves as a very peculiar sort of people who benefit
– differently from ordinary people, whom they despise as narrow-minded and conventional –

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from the gift of understanding music. They desire to perform as they please and are prone to
follow an unconventional lifestyle free, as much as possible, from the social constrains affecting
others. They have nonetheless to accept compromises in order to make a living. They must
therefore also perform commercial music in order to please their audiences, no matter how
contemptible they are in the performers’ opinion.
Becker’s description of music performers – both jazz and classical music – in Art Worlds
complements these statements on professional jazz players. This time, emphasis is laid on the
different tasks, which jazz musicians or other sets of people have to carry on while they perform
music, or when they are engaged in other face-to-face activities. Musicians and artists in
general necessarily partake of a network of cooperative relations with others if they wish to
accomplish their tasks (Becker, 2008: 25, 59–60, 292–293, 320). Composing and performing
involve different tasks for music performers and artists in general. However, while in modern
times these two tasks mostly occur separate in the case of classical music, this is not so either
in rock or in jazz music; as in jazz performances are more important than compositions,
whereas in rock music these two activities while separate may be conducted by the same
person (Becker, 2008: 10–11). Aside from this particular case, the existence of different tasks
makes the joint performance of music a cooperative activity that involves a division of labor
between the performers.
Conventions facilitate their cooperation, as they form “complexly interdependent systems”
(Becker, 2008: 32). Conventions would be conducive, if existent and enforced, to continuous
adjustments of “the cooperating parties to the changing conditions in which they practice”
(Becker, 2008: 59). In other words, artists need establishing “cooperative links with the people
who furnish resources, both material and human” (Becker, 2008: 70). By cooperation, Becker
and Pessin (2017) means any activity “encompassing anything people do together in which
they also take into account and respond to what the others involved are doing” (p. 101).
“Extremely standardized conventions” are instrumental for artists “to coordinate their activity
under the most difficult circumstances” (Becker, 2008: 58). “Other means of communication are
available to scattered experimenters who know each other,” if face-to-face communication is
impossible (Becker, 2008: 320).
Irrespective of whether face-to-face communication is possible or not, by virtue of forming
communication subcommunities the involved actors may participate in several reciprocally
connected worlds of shared experiences. If jointly considered, these subcommunities constitute
the art world (Becker, 2008: 160–161). The term “world,” as Becker uses it, refers to

all sorts of people, who are in the middle of doing something that requires them to pay attention to
each other, to take account consciously of the existence of others and to shape what they do and
adjusting what they do next.

(Becker, 2008: 374–375)

In a world, so defined, what people do combines with “what others have done and will
probably do next” (Becker, 2008: 374–375).
An art world, like any other world, constitutes an interlocking and stable network, which is
based on reciprocal trust and recommendations (Becker, 2008: 87). Besides face-to-face
contacts, which restrict relations “to the immediate vicinity,” communication may avail itself with
other means, such as “networks of suppliers, distribution facilities, and collegial groups,” which
are constituted for the purpose of discussing and evaluating aesthetic questions (Becker, 2008:

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320). As an alternative but equivalent definition, an art world is therefore “an established
network of cooperative links among participants.” Their cooperation rests on conventions that
regulate their activities and ways of life; conventions also set and maintain the boundaries
separating participants from others (Becker, 2008: 34–35).

Any respective influence between Becker and Schutz?

The answer to this question should be negative. There is no question as to whether these two
authors knew of each other personally. According to Helmut R. Wagner, a student of Husserl
and phenomenological sociology who was a former pupil of Schutz (cf. Psathas and Bittner,
1991: 225), the arrival and permanence of Schutz in the United States were conducive to an
intellectual exchange with American sociologists, not all of whom were exponents of Symbolic
Interactionism (Wagner, 1970: 49). Herman Van Breda (1962), another prominent Schutz
scholar, has likewise written that Schutz following his arrival in New York in 1939 pursued his
investigations “in a dialogue with American philosophy and sociology” (p. x). However, despite
his extensive readings of American authors and sociological journals in the course of his stay in
the United States, Schutz did not concern himself with Howard S. Becker.
As for Becker, the absence of references to Schutz in Outsiders (Becker, 1963) and Art
Worlds (Becker, 2008), or in most of his numerous other books, with the exception of a brief
citation in Do You Know …? (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 190), is noteworthy, considering the
previously mentioned mutual acquaintance and intellectual exchange between these authors.
This citation is inserted into a broader discussion of how “a gradual fitting together of individual
lines of action” is conducive to “a coherent collective act” (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 190).
Along with Schutz, Becker also refers here to Mead and Blumer. It is therefore apparent that
Becker has quoted Schutz in the context of his favorable appraisal of interpretive sociological
perspectives. Symbolic Interactionism, in general and also applied to performing music with
others, is, however, preferred to any other perspective. Symbolic Interactionism, insofar as
relevant to the performance of music, is implied by his thesis that “meaning arises contextually”
by virtue of significant gestures and looks that take place in the course of interactions between
performers (cf. Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 154–155).
Becker extensively published, already in the 1950s, on a number of different subjects,
notably sociology, in prestigious journals such as the American Journal of Sociology and the
American Sociological Review, and corresponded with several social scientists, Americans as
well as émigrés (cf. Barber, 2018). Still, he paid no particular attention to Schutz as a person
and author. The secondary literature on Becker likewise omits, generally speaking, to discuss
his intellectual relationship with Schutz, if it is granted that there was any relationship at all (cf.
Peneff, 2014; Pessin, 2017).1 All in all, then, one may infer that at least in the field of the
sociology of music, but quite possibly in sociology in general, Becker and Schutz did not exert
any reciprocal influence in spite of their being in good personal terms. The scantiness of
reciprocal citations in their scholarly production points to the low degree of their mutual
awareness. This is so especially in the sociology of music, which was a common field of studies
for these two authors, but whose contents, theoretical references, and conclusions differed
significantly.

Schutz and Becker compared

We shall condense here into a few comparative statements the positions of Schutz and Becker

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on the sociological relevance of making music together. While the first statement underlines a
common element of these theoretical positions, the second and the third statements call
attention to their differences:
1. Face-to-face relations are necessary (Schutz) or conducive (Becker) to establishing
cooperative relations between music performers.
2. Making music together involves a temporally shared mental experience, which is meaningful
to all participants (Schutz). Or rather, it involves a communication flow between all those
involved in music performance, whether or not they are situated in the immediate proximity
(Becker).
3. Music performers have no outside relations for the duration of the performance, since others
cannot share in the performers’ own stream of consciousness while performing (Schutz). Or
rather, relations with a variety of outside actors, and their related worlds of shared
experiences, are necessary to obtain the symbolic and material resources that are required
to establish communication networks, both between the performers themselves and with
others (Becker).
These statements make use of different key concepts, such as mental experience and
communication flow. Still, they make clear how Phenomenological Sociology (Schutz) and
Symbolic Interactionism (Becker) are related. For both, these sociological perspectives have
been considered as interpretive approaches, which share some traits but otherwise differ in
some important respects. With reference to Ethnomethodology, a perspective that originated
from Phenomenological Sociology, it has been similarly observed that this approach and
Symbolic Interactionism are “two clearly distinguishable approaches, whose roots lie in
competing strands of modern philosophy” even though they as “interpretive approaches” have
“certain points in common” (Joas and Knoebl, 2009: 124).
Among such points, both perspectives make use of the notions of meaning, interpretation,
understanding, and definition of the situation. They employ, however, different concepts such as
– among others – typification, order of relevance, finite provinces of meaning
(Phenomenological Sociology); symbolic abilities, mind, self, and conversation of gestures
(Symbolic Interactionism) (for a presentation of and comparison between these perspectives,
cf. Segre, 2006; Turner, 1982: 398–399). These three foregoing statements are in keeping with
an interpretive sociological approach, whether Symbolic Interactionism or Phenomenological
Sociology. They will be mentioned and recalled in the remaining part of this article as having
theoretical relevance.
The writings of Schutz and Becker can be referred, respectively, to the former and to the
latter sociological perspective. Schutz is generally considered a qualified representative of
Phenomenological Sociology. This is a sociological perspective, which he himself has founded
(cf. Ferguson, 2006: 90–99; Wolff, 1978: 515–520). As for Becker, his work has been viewed as
that of a representative of the Chicago sociological school and of Symbolic Interactionism (cf.
Joas, 1993: 40; McCall and Wittner, 1990: 69–70). Becker has constantly objected to placing
his work into predetermined categories (cf. Peneff, 2014: 96–98). However, he has written
sympathetically and competently on this sociological perspective (cf. McCall and Becker, 1990),
and has made specific references to Park, Blumer, and Hughes as authors whose writings may
be relevant to the study of the organization of the art worlds and of the music world in particular
(Becker, 2008: 370–371, 2009: 189–190). What is more, Becker’s work on the Art Worlds has

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been viewed as a major contribution to the development of Symbolic Interactionism (Gilmore,

1990: 148). The following questions deserve attention: How the contributions of Becker and
Schutz should be considered in the theoretical framework of the sociology of music?
Furthermore, how do they relate to the investigations, which Weber, Honigsheim, and Adorno
have conducted in this field of studies?

The contributions of Becker and Schutz to the sociology of music

As mentioned, Becker has laid stress on cooperative relations between music performers
themselves, and between them and a variety of other actors, as necessary for such
performances. According to Becker, music is a collective activity even in the case of solo
performers, for musicians belong and contribute to a world of shared experiences, which they
themselves constitute and maintain while performing. Mutual knowledge of the musicians’
“knowledge and abilities,” which have been gained in the course of their performances, is
instrumental to creating “a sort of community” among them (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 173). It
is, furthermore, an important source of individual and collective identities. Becker has paid
some attention to music as an institutionalized system of notations and tonalities and, therefore,
to music as a formal object of study (cf. Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 20–24, 126–130).
However, he has preferred to emphasize his view of music as a cooperative and negotiated
activity, which conventions – in the sense of “deeply conventionalized agreements regarding
musical roles and actions” (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 122) – guide and facilitate. Negotiations
on the part of groups of performers may concern “what they play, taking into account what
players do know or can play without knowing.” Those two conditions – the authors observe –
“limit the working repertoire” (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 85). His sociology of music has
considered especially jazz as a form of music that involves the existence of communication
networks linking performers with other actors, which participate in the world of that form of
popular music. Jazz musicians, like other musicians, make use of repertoires in their joint
performances of music (Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 82).
Repertoires are here defined as routines available to them “as they assemble and choose a
list of possible behaviors.” Repertoires originate from “the flow of trivial, ordinary interaction in
which the minute-to-minute decisions that create an individual or a group repertoire happen”
(Faulkner and Becker, 2009: 193–194). Differently from other sociologists of music (cf.
Honigsheim, 1989: 118–120), Becker has not stressed social status or class as relevant
variables for his sociological investigations of music. On the other hand, Becker has attentively
considered how collective performances, ongoing negotiations between the performers, and
market considerations impinge on the musicians’ selection of repertoires and self-definitions,
and on how their personal identities, and the size and structure of their communication
networks, are thus affected.
Schutz has likewise considered music as a collective and cooperative activity, neglected to
study how composition and performance are related to social classes and modes of
consumption, and viewed music performance as a source of collective identity. Unlike Becker,
however, Schutz has not investigated how music relates to personal identity, since he has
focused exclusively on the creation of such an identity on the performers’ part – a We-identity,
as he has called it – through the very act of performing music together. Schutz and Becker’s
sociology of music is mutually consistent and to some extent complementary. However, their
contributions do not deal with issues that are relevant to this field of studies according to current

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conventional definition.
In particular, they do not dwell on different music genres, such as the distinction between
classical and popular music, nor do they consider hierarchies in music, such as ranking
“serious” and “light” music differently. Rather, they have been formulated in accordance with
their specific theoretical perspectives. While these perspectives are consistently interpretive,
they have been nonetheless conducive to different research questions, such as the following:
How are music performances related to the performers’ identities, whether personal (Becker) or
collective (Schutz)? Furthermore, how and to what extent (if at all) are face-to-face relations
between performers conducive to their music performances as cooperative and negotiated
activities? The purpose of this comparison has been precisely to bring into light how different
theoretical perspectives, if applied to a particular subject such as making music together,
suggest distinct and complementary research questions.

The alternative formulations of Weber, Honigsheim, and Adorno

It may be worthwhile examining how Schutz and Becker’s sociology of music relates, by
contrast, to other contributions that deal with this subject. The contributions of Weber,
Honigsheim, and Adorno to this field of studies are relatively well known and should therefore
be briefly dealt with here. Weber’s unfinished essay on the sociology of music2 is devoted to “a
demonstration that contemporary music is more rational than music known from other times
and other places” (Etzkorn, 1989: 14). In this essay, as in his oeuvre in general, Weber’s central
concern is “the drive toward rationality, that is, the submitting of an area of experience to
calculable rules” (Martindale and Riedel, 1958: xxii).3 “All attempts for a really principled
rationale are most problematic” (Weber, 1958: 124), as Weber has written in his work on the
sociology of music, with reference to the historical development of Western musical theory.
Moreover, as he has written in a following page, “The specific conditions of musical
development in the Occident involve, first of all, the invention of modern notation” (Weber, 1958:
133). Weber has accordingly laid emphasis on internal rationalization of music and on its
sociological consequences, insofar as music performance is concerned, and has underlined the
importance of mass markets for spreading the use of this instrument among the bourgeoisie as
a status group (Stand).
We shall for the moment leave aside the theoretical and epistemological differences
between Schutz and Becker, and consider them jointly. The following statements may then
recapitulate the differences between Weber, on one hand, and these two authors, on the other.
As for Weber, communication flows between music performers are necessary to successful
performances but extend only to members of the same status group and to members of the
market community. Weber’s music sociology, moreover, has not dwelt on the performers’
stream of consciousness or communication flows, but has preferred to underline different
sociological concepts, such as the internal rationalization of musical notation and the existence
of mass markets. The writings of Paul Honigsheim, another music sociologist, also deserve
attention here as indebted to, but nonetheless different from, Weber’s.
Honigsheim had had a personal knowledge of Max Weber, of whom he translated and
published several essays (cf. Honigsheim, 2017). His sociology of music was, moreover,
indebted to Weber’s especially insofar as the subject of the influence of religion on music is
concerned (cf. Etzkorn, 1989: 34–36). Honigsheim was also familiar with Becker’s writings,
including those dealing with jazz music (cf. Etzkorn, 1989: 50). The absence of references to

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Schutz on Honigsheim’s part suggests, rather than inadequate familiarity with this author,4 lack
of consideration or attention to his essay on making music together. While Honigsheim cited
both Weber and Becker quite a few times, he never produced a discussion on these two
authors, if jointly considered (cf. as for Weber, Honigsheim, 1989: 14, 35, 38, 42; as for Becker,
pp. 9, 43, 50).
As for Adorno, he was not interested, unlike Schutz and Becker, in the face-to-face relations
which jazz musicians or musicians in general establish with their colleagues (Schutz), or in their
relations with the outside world (Becker). His contribution to this field of studies should be rather
considered as integrative to the texts of these two authors (cf. Honigsheim, 1989). Adorno’s did
not engage in any sociological exchange with Schutz, even though – it has been remarked (cf.
Bielsa, 2016: 377–378) – Schutz’s essay on the homecomer might have been relevant to
Adorno. Rather, Adorno’s sociology of music is mainly interested in “the social deciphering of
musical phenomena,” to wit, in obtaining insights into “their essential relations to the real
society” (Adorno, 1984: 194). The appropriate subject matter of music sociology should
therefore concern “the perspective of problems of social structure”.
Adorno considers all music, which fails to conform to this requirement, as an instantiation of
the culture industry, jazz music being a case in point. Jazz music thereby performs an
ideological function by its support of capitalism. This is the case of most contemporary music,
and of all popular music, Adorno (1984) maintains (pp. 50–52, 63, 70, 172, 205). For, its claim
to represent freedom and the spirit of the times notwithstanding, jazz is in fact, according to
Adorno, “a captive of the culture industry and thus of musical and social conformism” (Adorno
1984: 33–34). We shall not elaborate here on the reception of Adorno and of the Frankfurt
School in general, which has been oftentimes critical in one way or the other (cf. Bottomore,
1984: 72–73; Calhoun and Karaganis, 2001: 190; Hohendahl, 1984: 222–223; Jay, 1973:
186–187; Witkin, 2000: 159–163).
The question remains, however, of whether and how Adorno paid attention to the activity of
making music together in the ambit of his critique of jazz music as a manifestation of the culture
industry. Adorno’s position downgrades any relevance that may be imputed to face-to-face
relations between the music performers, irrespective of whether these relations are necessary
or merely conducive to having cooperative relations between them. It also plays down whatever
temporally shared mental experience, or communication flow, performers may share. It
completely disregards, moreover, the question as to whether performers share their own stream
of consciousness among themselves, or rather, they do so with a variety of other people with
whom they set up communication networks. Stress is laid on questions set at a higher
abstraction level, concerning – it will be recalled – problems of social structure, namely,
problems concerning capitalism and the relations between the social classes.

A few words by way of conclusion

Acceptance on the part of Schutz and Becker of the conceptual and theoretical framework,
which Interpretive Sociology has provided, and personal good relations between these authors,
has not made the theoretical and conceptual differences in their scholarly works less relevant.
The fundamental differences as to how they have dealt with the very same subject of making
music together corroborate this conclusion. It has been here shown that these differences
originated from their abidance by the related but distinct theoretical perspectives of
Phenomenological Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism. This subject has been focused upon

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as deemed instrumental to clarify how these perspectives are related by means of some
common assumptions, and how they differ in terms of their vocabularies and theoretical
traditions. As it has also been shown here, the contributions of Weber, Honigsheim, and Adorno
to the sociology of music do not overlap with either of these authors. Rather, they have dealt
with a variety of other themes, such as the processes of internal rationalization of music and –
in the case of contemporary classical music – its strong and manifold relations to the
bourgeoisie as a status group (Weber), the social and cultural factors involved in the production
and performance of music (Honigsheim), and, finally, the decisive influence of the capitalistic
culture industry in the production and diffusion of music (Adorno).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1. Roy and Dowd (2010), however, mention Weber and Schutz, along with a few other prominent
sociologists, for having “offered an important vantage from which to understand music, the people who
do it, and its effect on people” (p. 184).
2. We shall refer here to the 1958 English edition of Weber’s (1958) work on the rational and sociological
foundations of music; this edition contains the introduction by Martindale and Riedel (1958). The
original German text, which originally came out in 1921 with Drei Masken Verlag as its publisher, was
reprinted separately and republished in 1972 (Tuebingen: Mohr 1972).
3. Martindale and Riedel (1958) have written the most detailed and extensive introduction, as far as I
know, to Weber’s sociology of music. Readers who prefer more compact introductory texts may be
referred to Etzkorn (1989: 14–15) and Kaesler (1979: 169–171). Turley (2001) has produced a critical
assessment of Weber’s contribution to this field of studies.
4. Honigsheim held a teaching position at Michigan State University, while Schutz – as mentioned – was a
faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York. The two authors shared with
several other foreign scholars in the United States a condition of émigrés, and between themselves, a
deep interest in Max Weber’s sociology (cf. Scaff, 2014: 287). Whatever familiarity Honigsheim may
have possessed with Schutz as a person, or with his work, cannot be easily ascertained. It was not in
any case conducive to an intellectual exchange between them, as mutual references might have
indicated.

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Author biography
Sandro Segre is retired professor of sociology and sociological theory at the University of Genoa (Italy).
Some of his recent publications are: Business Groups and Financial Markets: A Weberian Analysis (2016,
Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers); Contemporary Sociological Thinkers and Theories (2014,
Oxford: Routledge); Introduction to Habermas (2012, Lanham, MD: University Press of America); Talcott
Parsons: An Introduction (2012, Lanham, MD: University Press of America); “On Wolfgang Schluchter’s
Interpretation of Weber”, Max Weber Studies (2012); “Jeffrey Alexander on Weber and Democracy”, Max
Weber Studies (2010, 10(2): 235–249); A Weberian Analysis of Business Groups and Financial Markets:
Trade Relations in Taiwan and Korea and Some Major Stock Exchanges (2008, London: Ashgate);
“Durkheim on Rationality”, Journal of Classical Sociology (2008, 8(1): 109–144); “A Weberian Account of
Social Norms and Trust in Financial Markets”, Max Weber Studies (2005, 5(2): 339–369);
“Ethnomethodology in Italy”, Sociological Theory (2004, 22(4): 647-661); “A Durkheimian Network
Theory”, Journal of Classical Sociology (2004, 4(2): 215–235).

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