[Dixielandjazz] Why do people love bad art?

[Steve Barbone]

CAVEAT: Not really OKOM, but a fun read which asks and answers the question,
Why do people love bad art using the popularity of the Edinburgh Band, the
"Really Terrible Orchestra" as an example.

A heartening message to all of us really terrible players out there is that
there is indeed a niche out there for us if we do it right. <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Lousy Is the Best They Can Ever Be
NY TIMES - By MICHAEL WHITE - August 26, 2007 - LONDON

THE Edinburgh Festival may be one of the world¹s great arts fixtures, but
its Fringe festival has always operated like a national freak show, opening
nonjudgmental arms to anything that could be said to pass as entertainment.
Proust on Rollerblades, Ibsen in drag, your favorite Wagner moments whistled
by a chorus in gorilla suits: old-timers will have seen and usually passed
by it all. And being passed by is the shared experience of Fringe events.
They tend to play obscurely, in church halls and basement rooms to audiences
of 16, barely noticed, instantly forgotten.

That said, the Fringe does have its star acts that either get seized on by
TV talent scouts or at least acquire cult status and return year after year.
One of the most spectacular of the cult items, not quite ready for prime
time but expectant, will be playing Edinburgh¹s sizable Canongate Church
next Sunday. All seats are sold, and lines for returns will undoubtedly
stretch around the block.

This hottest of hot tickets is an Edinburgh band called the Really Terrible
Orchestra. And were you to ask what it does, the answer would be that with
true Scottish candor it lives up to its name, or rather down to it: an
orchestra that plays terribly.

³We are indeed quite bad,² the principal bassoonist admitted. The standard
varies from player to player, he added, noting that he himself had passed
Grade IV, the British examination level normally taken by schoolchildren
around age 12.

³But I have trouble with C sharps ‹ a design fault of the instrument, I
think ‹ which means I don¹t play them,² he said. ³And some of our members
are really very challenged. We have one dire cellist who has the names of
the strings written on his bridge. Otherwise he can¹t remember what they
are.²

The fascinating thing about the Really Terrible Orchestra, though, is that
its appalling players are in fact eminent in other walks of life. They are
politicians, bankers, judges, surgeons, senior academics. And the principal
bassoonist who doesn¹t play C sharps happens to be the polymath law
professor and best-selling writer Alexander McCall Smith, the author of
(among many other things) the No. 1 Ladies¹ Detective Agency books, which
are now being filmed for international release.

A genial, donnish figure who lives in the most genteel of Edinburgh suburbs
and now ranks among the most popular literary figures in Britain, Mr. McCall
Smith was one of the founders of the orchestra eight years ago. He likes to
say that it was set up with no other reason than to give hopeless amateurs a
chance.

³There were a number of us with children in school orchestras who fantasized
about being in an orchestra ourselves,² he said. ³And as there was no
likelihood of ever being accepted into an existing ensemble, we decided to
create our own. There¹s a concept of asylum in the R.T.O. It¹s therapy.²

It¹s also something that could easily have turned into a standard amateur
ensemble like a thousand others. But where standard amateurs may be
incidentally bad, the Really Terrible Orchestra is fundamentally bad. Its
random ability to play the right notes at the right time, or at all, is part
of what the orchestra chairman, the lousy clarinetist Peter Stevenson, calls
³our entertainment package.²

³We knew there was no market for a good amateur orchestra, because a poor
professional one would always be better,² Mr. Stevenson said. ³But there is
a market for the R.T.O. And that our concerts sell out in advance, to
audiences who just love to hear us scrape through easy arrangements of Bach
or the last 40 bars of the Œ1812¹ Overture ‹ the rest is far too difficult ‹
is proof. There¹s always thunderous applause, especially if we¹ve got lost
in something and ground to a halt. Always a standing ovation. And it¹s not
just because we have our friends and family in the audience. People
genuinely thrill to it.²

All of which raises the question: Why? Why do people love bad art? Why is
there a cult museum near Boston proudly dedicated ³to bringing the worst of
art to the widest of audiences²? And why does history afford a special place
for the creatively incompetent, from poets like William McGonagall (the
immortal versifier of ³The Tay Bridge Disaster²) to singers like Florence
Foster Jenkins (whose inability to sing packed Carnegie Hall) and, more
recently, the ³American Idol² reject William Hung (whose inability to do
anything of artistic note has turned him into a celebrity)? Why, in fact, is
so much latter-day TV obsessed with celebrating cultural failure?

One answer is that it¹s a variant on classic banana-skin comedy; or, as Mr.
McCall Smith prefers, ³simple schadenfreude, a pleasure in the misfortune of
others that¹s all the sweeter with the R.T.O. because so many of us are
otherwise well established in our lives.²

³Our clarinetist chairman is a typical example,² he added, ³tremendously
successful in investment banking, reached the very top. But now he¹s at the
very bottom of the orchestral ladder and, alas, will probably stay round
about that level.²

But there¹s another reason, surely, for the cult of bad art, and it has to
do with liberation: the anarchic pleasure of disorder, the repudiation of
established rules of judgment. Bad art is an invitation to escape the formal
boundaries of adulthood and be a child, delighting in the rude and raw.

In this respect the Really Terrible Orchestra has interesting precedents.
Back in the 1960s a maverick figure of the British musical avant-garde,
Cornelius Cardew, created what he called the Scratch Orchestra; like the
Terrible, it was an ensemble of players who couldn¹t play, or at least
couldn¹t play the particular instruments they had selected for Scratch
Orchestra Concerts, a proviso that allowed the involvement of bona fide
musicians like Michael Nyman and Brian Eno.

For some, especially the newspapers, the Scratch Orchestra was just a grand
joke; and much was made of its intuitive response to the ³music² specially
composed for it by Mr. Cardew, which was written representationally, not
with notes and staffs but with pictures and poems.

For Mr. Cardew and company, however, it was no joke. There was a
philosophical basis to it all, founded in the work of John Cage, who had
declared that there was ³no room for the policeman in art.² The Scratch
Orchestra had profoundly humanist objectives concerning music as process
rather than product, and with them came a sociopolitical agenda: initially a
broad and fairly friendly swipe at cultural elitism but fossilizing into a
hard-line Marxist-Leninist debate that hijacked the whole venture and
brought it to a messy end.

But before it died, the Scratch Orchestra spawned a 1970s offspring in the
Portsmouth Sinfonia, which involved some of the same personnel, including
Mr. Nyman and Mr. Eno. Again there was an underlying philosophy; and it was
eulogized in serious terms, not least by Mr. Nyman, who played the cello in
shambolic performances of Grieg¹s ³In the Hall of the Mountain King² and
compared the results to Charles Ives. ³The combination of everybody¹s
individual errors,² Mr. Nyman wrote, ³built a musical structure that was
incomparable.²

Mr. Eno, who played clarinet in the Sinfonia and produced its early
recordings, similarly declared that what you heard in its performances was
³a number of approximations of how the piece should be played,² and that
they collectively amounted to beautiful music.

But for most of its audience ‹ which was considerable, thanks to discs like
³Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics² and concerts in places the
size of the Albert Hall ‹ the joys of the Sinfonia were less elevated.
Enthusiasts cherished the sagging intonation, the dubious conductors (one of
whom managed unintentionally to conduct the ³Blue Danube² waltz in 4/4) and
such priceless occasions as when the soloist in Tchaikovsky¹s B-flat minor
Piano Concerto failed to turn up, and the orchestra played it without her,
transposed down to A minor because, as a spokesman explained, ³sharps and
flats tend to unnerve us.²

Perhaps the height of the Sinfonia¹s acclaim came when it was threatened
with an injunction by the publishers of Richard Strauss on the ground that
its performances of ³Also Sprach Zarathustra² were rearranged without
permission. The case never reached court, to the chagrin of the Sinfonia¹s
manager, who replied that the music had not been rearranged: ³It¹s just that
we don¹t play it very well.²

That is exactly the kind of response one could imagine coming from Alexander
McCall Smith, were any publisher foolish enough to take a similar line with
the Really Terrible Orchestra. There is an undeniable, and entirely
mischievous, vagueness about its objectives, and it falls in line with the
unclear intentions behind so much of the bad art of history. To what extent
were the perpetrators in on their own joke? And to what extent was their
badness deliberate?

William McGonagall is generally thought to have had genuine belief in his
own worth as a poet; Florence Foster Jenkins, likewise as a singer. They
weren¹t trying to be awful. How much, you might fairly ask, is the Really
Terrible Orchestra trying to stink?

³Not at all,² Peter Stevenson insisted, sounding slightly hurt when I asked
to attend an orchestra rehearsal if it had such things.

³It¹s unkind of you to think we don¹t rehearse,² he said, ³because we do.
And some of us even take lessons, as I am at the moment, from a serious
teacher. I can¹t pretend that no one ever plays deliberately badly. It¹s
usually the trumpets, and they make me angry when they do. But for the rest
of us, we are actually doing our best. And that¹s the tension in which we
operate. On the one hand, we¹d like to get better. On the other, we know we
won¹t.²

Locked in this quandary the Really Terrible Orchestra has otherwise
progressed from strength to strength. It made what Mr. McCall Smith called
its ³first world tour² to Pittenweem in Fife. ³We went down terribly well in
the village hall,² he added, ³playing to an audience of fishermen who got a
free glass of wine ‹ well, several glasses actually ‹ for coming. Gave us a
marvelous reception.²

The second world tour is due to hit London in November. ³I fear they¹ve
heard of us down there,² Mr. McCall Smith said, slightly concerned that they
might also have heard a pernicious rumor that, thanks to persistent
practice, the orchestra was less bad than it used to be.

³It¹s not true,² he insisted, ³and I don¹t see how it could be. We¹re only
too happy for people to practice. I do myself, but it will never make a
difference. No one good is ever going to join us. And if they did, they¹d be
hugely outnumbered. Children would raise the standard, but we don¹t let them
in for that reason. It would be too embarrassing. And though people say we
have ambitions, what is ambition? When a piece speeds up, it¹s ambitious
enough for me.²