This thesis seeks to explore the possibility of identifying ideas about audience common to Western art music and Communications studies in order to establish an interdisciplinary method of musical study based on human relationships. This study focuses on the role and empowerment of the audience in terms of their relationship with the artist, and explored alongside changing ideas about the audience in Communications through the twentieth century. The audience relationships of three prominent composers whose art may be considered to have expressed their distinct attitudes about audience –
Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, and Laurie Anderson – are explored in order to demonstrate how Communications theory can provide an interpretive framework for the extended study and understanding of music.