[Dixielandjazz] How should folks behave at concerts, classical or jazz?

[Dixiejazzdata]

I would go to a Classical Concert that had a Jazz Brass Band as the opening and Closing Act :))

Otherwise I'll be damned if I will get all dressed up go downtown and pretend to be SOMEBODY, and pay to be bored, rather stay home and listen to their recordings  or go out to Golden Gate Park and listen to them for Free in the Band shell where there are other attractions available to walk away from it when the boredom hits.   Besides it's a lot more fun to make love to Jazz than it is Classical music.   ha ha 

 On the positive side I agree with the Director about taking it out of the Concert Hall and to the people, especially in Schools and community events etc where there is an audience waiting to expose it to that has not yet been turned into elitist snobs.    Who knows soon there may be folks up dancing to it. :))  grin

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen G Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: B.B. Buffington <dixiejazzdata at aol.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sat, Jun 9, 2012 9:05 am
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] How should folks behave at concerts, classical or jazz?


Here is the original article by maestro Richard Dare from the Huffington Post. 
He makes a great point, that people, love listening to classical music. They 
just don't like concert halls. eg. We hear it all the time in Movie Scores. Is 
it the same with OKOM? Note also when the audience changed with Classical 
Concerts. Is it the same with OKOM?  Long Article, but some will find it very 
interesting.


Cheers,
Steve Barb one
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


Visiting a popular concert hall for the first time some years ago, I was lucky 
to have a fairly genial host whom I'll call Luddy. He guided me patiently 
through the obtuse and unfriendly ticketing procedure at the "Will Call" window 
where I felt rather like I was visiting a sort of bland theatrical version of 
the Department of Motor Vehicles. When I commented that it hardly seemed the 
promoters wanted to make buying tickets desirable, my guide explained the 
situation away by means of a sort of denial mechanism, never seeming to lose 
interest in pointing out the gargantuan monument to culture the concert hall 
itself represented.

Although I loved the music I heard that evening, I was struck at the time by how 
matter-of-factly my guide dismissed my observation that concerts might not be 
easy to figure out for a first-timer. And he took it for granted that I would 
find the impressive edifice and music itself a satisfactory recompense for my 
troubles. And he might have been right, I suppose, had I at least been allowed 
to authentically enjoy the performance going on inside that hall as I might 
spontaneously appreciate any other cultural pursuit like a movie or a dance or a 
hip-hop concert -- if I could clap when clapping felt needed, laugh when it was 
funny, shout when I couldn't contain the joy building up inside myself. What 
would that have been like?

But this was classical music. And there are a great many "clap here, not there" 
cloak-and-dagger protocols to abide by. I found myself a bit preoccupied -- as I 
believe are many classical concert goers -- by the imposing restrictions of 
ritual behavior on offer: all the shushing and silence and stony faced 
non-expression of the audience around me, presumably enraptured, certainly 
deferential, possibly catatonic; a thousand dead looking eyes, flickering 
silently in the darkness, as if a star field were about to be swallowed by a 
black hole.

I don't think classical music was intended to be listened to in this way. And I 
don't think it honors the art form for us to maintain such a cadaverous body of 
rules.

Joseph Horowitz in his wonderful new book, Moral Fire, describes audiences 
"screaming" and "standing on chairs" during classical concerts in the 1890s. The 
New York Times records an audience that "wept and shouted, strung banners across 
the orchestra pit over the heads of the audience and flapped unrestrainedly" 
when listening to their favorite opera singer at the Met in the 1920s. And Greg 
Sandow provides a brilliant analysis of classical music's average audience age 
over time, showing the form to have remained most popular amongst energetic 
thirty-somethings rather than subdued grey-hairs all the way until the late 
1960s era of Mad Men.

Indeed, even the venerable Beethoven, I am quite certain, would be dismayed to 
find his music performed the way it is today. Not to applaud between his 
movements? Unthinkable! Not to call out during the performance and react to the 
music he'd written? Preposterous!

To begin with, like many living composers, Beethoven was not universally 
understood or even particularly well liked -- nor did he care to be. Of his 
Third Symphony, the Eroica, critics who attended the 1805 premier wrote, "If 
Beethoven continues on this path, both he and the public will come off badly. 
Music could quickly come to such a point that everyone will leave the concert 
hall with only unpleasant feelings of exhaustion."

To his contemporaries, the sheer primal suspense in the Third was deliberately 
jacked up to such an unbearable degree that by measure 394 the first horn 
famously goes berserk, acting out the listener's agony of expectation by 
breaking in on the violins prematurely. So unprecedented and unruly was this 
bold psychological stroke that it was at first mistaken, even by the composer's 
close friends, for a sort of prank. His pupil Ferdinand Ries, thinking a blunder 
had been made, cried out, "Can't the damned horn player count?!" for which he 
came pretty close to receiving a sharp box on the ear.

Beethoven, it turns out, was not a follower of tradition. And no one was 
expected to keep quiet during his performances either. The music was much too 
wild, too complex, too dramatic and demanding. If it was gauche, the audience 
complained or praised at will just as they do today in non-classical concert 
experiences.

Nowadays, however, Beethoven it seems in spite of all his revolutionary fervor 
has along with the whole kit-and-caboodle of classical music become something of 
a rather dull commodity -- so perfect in every way that his music displays not 
really greatness or excitement anymore, but (I am sad to report) only "packaged 
greatness." Smugness, dullness, an over abundance of ritualism ... everything, 
in fact, that Beethoven hated.

What Can We Do Now?

One step therefore we might take to make classical music less boring again is 
simply for audiences to quit being so blasted reverential.

The most common practices in classical musical venues today represent a contrite 
response to a totalitarian belief system no one in America buys into anymore. To 
participate obediently is to act as a slave. It is counter to our culture. And 
it is not, I am certain, what composers would have wanted: A musical North 
Korea. Who but a bondservant would desire such a ghastly fate? Quickly now: Rise 
to your feet and applaud. The Dear Leader is coming on stage to conduct. He will 
guide us, ever so worshipfully through the necrocracy of composers we are 
obliged to forever adore.

The living composers I know though are real people. They bleed just like the 
rest of us -- or more accurately stated, because they are artists willing to put 
their thoughts into action for our review and criticism, they bleed publicly for 
us. They drink beers and feel tired and ride subways and dream about a better 
life. They are human and they want us to share a deeper, richer human experience 
together with them. They want, in effect, the same things Beethoven wanted.


Here are the two most shattering facts about classical music today: First, 
Americans are writing, playing, recording and listening to more orchestra music 
today than they ever have before in history -- mostly in the form of film music 
and video game soundtracks. So we know they like the general sound.

They just don't like listening to it with us, at concert halls. And that is the 
second fact.

Perhaps it's because of trying to keep classical music audiences living in the 
dark, in perpetual fear that they might not understand the secret and elite 
codes of long-term insiders, brainwashing core subscribers into an irrational 
hatred of anyone who dares to disrupt their peace-and-quiet even if 
accidentally, regimenting the experience with a coerced and inculcated rigidity 
that would be abhorrent to any composer worth his or her salt: This is how we 
have made classical music so awful.

Perhaps it's time to tell our own darling leaders to bug off and in place of 
their formalities simply allow ourselves to react to classical music with our 
hearts just as we do when we meet other forms of art. Classical music belongs to 
the audience -- to its listeners, not the critics, to the citizens, not the 
snobs.

Why not reclaim your music today?


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