Over on Flyover, John Stoehr has written a post that asks a question we often contemplate individually about a behavior we never seem to quite challenge collectively: In an age of avant-garde music–by his definition work designed to provoke–how polite should the audience be?
This choice quote from the post got ’em riled around the office today:
During the peak of the avant-garde – during the careers of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Milton Babbitt – there was no concern about the audience. Audiences had always been there and would always be there, except when they weren’t anymore. It’s remarkable to imagine composers wondering why no one’s paying attention to them while at the same time their work’s value is measured by how much they can piss people off.
Rather a broad stroke to paint in terms of composerly motivation, I think, but it’s also a strangely popular theme this week. Over on the other side of the pond, there’s a little fistfight going on w/r/t some similar audience frustrations.
I don’t think it’s extremely challenging music that hurts so much as our silent taking of its punches when they clip our jaw. It’s the middle of July, and yet we passive-aggressively hack like consumptives as our sole expression of irritation. Are concert hall audiences too repressed to riot any more? Polite is waiting till it’s over so you don’t ruin the piece for anyone else. But I would feel a cathartic release and leveling of scales no matter what I was subjected to if, when so moved, I felt at liberty to holler a bit at the end. It would be exciting. Maybe the woman next to me loved it. I would know what she thought; she would know what I thought. In an ideal world, maybe we could have drinks and debate it out afterward–and maybe she would be so excited by the music that she would pick up the check.
More later, but:
-in most musical settings, hollering DURING the music is completely acceptable, and I’ll happily denounce “classical” music until that custom finally hits the genre. There’s nothing ideal about being able to voice your appreciation or distaste for art when you’re experiencing it…it should be standard!
-wasn’t the backbone of Cage’s conceptual music (and conceptual art) actually the inclusion of the audience into the picture? If 4’33” wasn’t conceived for the audience to listen to ambient and incidental sounds, and to reevaluate what constitutes music, and thus to alter their overall perception of sounds, then I’ve had a horribly wrong interpretation of Cage for years.
-as I’ve written before, I think the concert hall itself is highly repressive. I find old architecture, tiny and often assigned seats (seats at all, as opposed to movable chairs/stools/tables), ushers, stage, curtains, etc. etc. etc. largely responsible for the passive, overly formal audiences that listen to music in their midst.
-the claim that new music is all about pissing people off (more accurately, challenging listeners) is highly reductive and, while not completely untrue, only applies to very particular (and I’d say nostalgic/behind the times/masculine/sexually frustrated/etc) sectors of new music. Much of the scene is all about the opposite: working hard to include and legitimize pop elements, which have been (unreasonably) regarded as inferior by the general classical consensus for a long time.
I remember a performance of “Tartuffe” at the Comedie Francaise in the 70s in which Tartuffe was portrayed not as a hypocrite, but as a victim of capitalist society (he ended up falling over with his arms stretched out as if crucified.) The guy sitting next to me stood up and shouted “C’est une scandale, une honte pour la France” and then sat down with a satisfied expression on his face. At the end, the director came out and shook his fist at the audience and accused them of being bourgeois. In short, a good time was had by all. Of course, it wasn’t actually very good Moliere
To give that Joe Queenan piece on contemporary classical music the time of day is to give it more time than Queenan appears to have given the subject thought. It certainly isn’t a fist fight if the initial punch is phoned in.
Queenan apparently doesn’t recognize, given all his talk about atonality and the negative visceral response to aggressive sound, that today’s contemporary composition often focuses not on noise but on silence.
He also doesn’t recognize that many of today’s “warhorses” were fought over or dismissed when they first emerged, just as new work today is by definition in the process of being tested and prodded, pondered and weighed, by audiences.
I feel confident that in 50 years we’ll still be listening to Steve Reich’s phase and percussion pieces, to Scott Johnson’s settings for spoken word, to Pauline Oliveros’ deep-listening ventures, to Philip Glass’ solo piano work, and to Gavin Bryars’ chamber music, especially his electronically mediated work like Jesus’ Blood and Sinking of the Titanic. They will all survive Queenan’s dismissal.
And that’s just to name a small handful of composers — there are many more where they came from — who should have little difficulty charming the tuxedos off the season-subscription set.
Or so I’d hope. Subsumed in Queenan’s piece is a well-observed critique of classical audiences. While Queenan’s attack on new (i.e., current) music is almost willfully uninformed, his depiction of the contemporary audience for classical music’s comfort with received repertoire is all too true.
A visceral and vocal reaction just after a piece has concluded seems to me a welcome addition to the rather Cage-silent-piano-ish splendor of the current range of audience reactions in place.
On the other hand, the ability for thousands of weblogs to express outrage may remove some of the disenfranchisement people might otherwise feel.
If the modern equivalent of Rites of Spring came out today, it could diffuse into the ‘netspheres, and become a fistfight and a revelation, all
with the click of 10,000 mouses.