Troubadour Phenomenology: On Being in the Audience

In this creative essay, I attempted to use take a phenomenological apporach to understanding troubadour performance, with particular regard to the experience of the audience member. I put secondary sources in conversation with my own observations of our group as an audience during the musical performances, lectures, and guided visits we went on this trip. My central argument was that the audience plays as active and critical of a role in constructing a performance as the performer does. The performance space allows for an access to simultaneous subjectivity and objectivity, and it is this inhabiting of multiple perspectives which creates the meaning for each individual who takes part in a performance.