I Don't Want to Just Listen!

I have eclectic tastes in music. 

Sometimes I hear jazz and bob my head knowingly in a cool sunglasses-wearing kind of way.  Other times I might be banging my head to some Metallica, although at my age, it just makes my head hurt.  Not the music, the head banging.

Folk music, bluegrass, fiddle, harmonica, the blues, some pop, some rap.  I find some pleasure in all of it.  I’ll sing along at times, tap my foot, do a Polish version of buck dancing, do a Polka (maybe that’s the same thing as a Polish version of buck dancing), dance with a pretty woman across the floor. 

Of course, as with all music, I have my favorite pieces, and classical music is no different.   Bach’s Little Fugue in G Minor , Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik are among my favorites.  So, too, are the soundtracks for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Disney’s Fantasia, the first one not the second one.

I am by no means an aficionado of classical music.  I like it.  But, ask me the difference between an oboe and a bassoon, and you may as well ask me about astrophysics.   Like other music, I like some of it, and some of it I can take or leave. 

In short, I enjoy music, and I like enjoying it. 

But something is missing in a live performance of classical music. 

 

A couple of weeks ago I got to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed by the Kenosha Symphony.  The Ninth is another of those favorites of mine.  Every time I hear it, I want to either cry or cheer, sometimes both. 

The problem with a live performance of any classical piece is that I’m told I can’t applaud in the middle of a piece, I can’t be vocal, I can’t cheer, I can’t get up and dance down the aisles, I can’t swoop up a pretty woman and dance the light fandango with her.  In short I have to sit on my hands and quietly let the music wash over me, maybe sobbing slightly, but not so uncontrollably that I might disturb the person in the seat next to me.

Why can’t I?

I went to a concert to see John Prine in Milwaukee.  Prine, like Beethoven, is one of my favorites.  His concert, however, was filled with hoots and hollers from the audience as they shouted out suggestions for him to play from his 40-year catalog of songs.  They knew his music as well as any aficionado of Beethoven knows every sonata that he penned.  As soon as he strummed the first few notes of a song on his guitar, the audience immediately recognized what was coming and applauded.

Maybe symphony orchestras should perform the same way.  Don’t announce what pieces they are going to play that night.   Imagine sitting in an orchestra hall and just hearing those famous first four notes of that Fifth Symphony and the audience knowing what’s coming and smiling at their own recognition.

Modern music performers are always laughing, talking with others on stage, responding to the audience.  They tell stories about driving down the road, stopping at a bar, meeting a beautiful woman, getting drunk with friends and writing the song they are now about to perform.  Sometimes they tell those stories and then say, “This song has nothing to do with that.”

Maybe classical music conductors could introduce each piece being played that night, tell a story about how they learned it or why they liked it.   Maybe have a little banter with the solo artist if there is one.  Share an inside joke with the first chair violinist, make fun of the percussion guy playing the triangle who has to sit for twenty minutes into a piece before he gets to play. 

I’d like to hear a story like this:

"Mozart was on his way home from a party where he got really drunk.  He fell out of the carriage that he had been riding in and the driver didn’t know it.  So Mozart lay there by the road for several hours.  It was late, so late that the only lights on were coming from the only tavern still open.  Mozart could hear some music coming from the place and in his stupor, staggered over to listen.  Inside the bar, the waitresses were dressed in what can only be described as 18^th century versions of uniforms for Hooters.  On stage was an English tourist with a cittern jamming with three other Vienna visitors who had also brought their own instruments, while the patrons were all harmonizing to the English labor song 'Four Pence a Day.'  

"When the driver discovered that Mozart was missing, he doubled back and found his passenger in the tavern, now even drunker than he had been at the party.  As he helped his rider into the carriage, he heard Mozart mumbling, ‘Aah, a pleasant night indeed.  Some wine, some pretty girls, a little music.  I think I’ll write about it.’  He did.  And we’re going to play it for you tonight.  Mozart called it 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.'"

Another thing that happens at many of the concerts I attend is that awesome solo on an instrument.  For example, in the middle of a song, the performer stops and someone from the band takes center stage and gives a great virtuoso rendition of something on the guitar, or violin, or harmonica, or any number of other instruments.  As the solo ends and the song resumes, the audience applauds or cheers to acknowledge that performance. And after the solo, the song resumes. 

Instead, in a classical performance, the audience dutifully waits until the entire piece is finished.  They sit patiently waiting.  They close their eyes and try to concentrate on just the music.  Sometimes their legs fall asleep because they forget to cross them.  Sometimes they do what normally happens when you close your eyes and actually fall asleep.  Hopefully they know the person who is sitting next to them who can then gently jab at them with an elbow to wake them up, that is, unless they, too, have fallen asleep. 

Again, why?  Why can’t an audience be actively involved in a performance of any music? 

I’ve heard numerous explanations of why it’s frowned upon at classical symphonies.

One of those reasons is that it disturbs other audience members.  I think audience members today sit silently only because everybody else is and not because they really want to.  Music is supposed to move us, and if we’re really honest with our human nature we want to let that happen.  At the very least we want to tap our toes or clap in time.  If we know the song, we want to sing it, too.   And we instinctively know when we are just supposed to listen to that singer or that soloist.  

I fully understand that musicians need to focus and have all those notes to follow in a symphony score.  People who have seen me at open mics know that I place the words on a music stand.  Frank Sinatra had teleprompters on the stage as he got older.  Orchestral musicians shouldn’t be afraid.  It reminds me of pro golfers who complain that a camera click disturbs them.   They want to know what focus is, they should try standing in a batter’s box when a guy is sixty feet six inches away throwing something at you at 100 mph.   And yes, a little noise might disturb the golfer and might make a French horn player lose his place, but that is only because they are not used to it.

Which brings me to that last excuse given for my having to remain passively obedient to the no noise rule.  Supposedly that is the way it's always been.  No, it hasn’t always been that way.  In a lecture to the Royal Philharmonic Society Alex Ross explains that the no applause rule is a relatively new phenomenon, probably starting in Germany in the early 20^th century.  

He also explains, tangentially, that it might be due to the elitist culture that tends to surround classical musical. 

My understanding of Beethoven’s Ninth was that he at least in part intended it for the masses.  In the first performance of the piece in Vienna, supposedly the audience was clapping and cheering so much during the 2^nd movement that the police had to be called five times.  Old Louie was deaf and couldn’t hear any of it, but I suspect he would have been pleased.  

Personally, I react more to the 4^th movement in two parts.  The first is when that famous melody begins slowly with the bass players bowing, joined then by violas and bassoon, then violins, then some woodwinds.  I am so anticipating what is coming, that moment when practically the entire orchestra bursts into the melody in pure unadulterated joy.  It’s that moment when I want to stand up and cheer and dance and scream out “Yeah!” and pump my fist in the air.

The second moment, for me at least, comes after the Turkish march section of the movement when out of nowhere the entire chorus bursts into the melody.   Forget the soloists, although they are essential to the piece.  It’s those two parts where everyone gets going and gets me pumping my fist.

But if I do that, I’ll get kicked out of the concert hall, which brings me to what I think is the real sad reason I have to sit on my hands.

Classical music has many of its roots in the Church and patronage.  I can understand being quiet in a church, but even there, today, people sing hymns along with the choir.  Concert halls and symphonies today are still largely subsidized by the rich and powerful, and their seemingly “better than the masses” attitude permeates the culture of the audience.    And to some extent the musicians, too.  When the men are all wearing tuxedos and the women are all wearing formal dresses it all adds to a highfalutin atmosphere where everyone is expected yo behave like the bourgeoisie who can afford the best seats. 

That is not to fault the musicians.  I truly admire their skills, which far outshine anything I could do with any instrument.  They, too, however, are subject to the same strictures as the audience.  It’s what they’ve grown up with.  Just as those pro golfers who have grown accustomed to silence on the golf course, today’s musicians have grown accustomed to not hearing an audience.

I think they could outgrow it if audiences started making more noise. 

No matter what music I go to hear live, if I don’t like it, I don’t applaud.  If I do like it, I want to be able to let it be known.  Right away, when I feel moved to.  If that means singing along or dancing or hooting and hollering, I want to be able to do that.  Yes, I applaud, too.  And if I really like it, I mean really really like it, I applaud louder and stand up yelling “More!” 

Whether it's classical or rock or anything, I want to be able to tell the musicians: