[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”cybmj5APWYlvIbPh5rKDH7ECM2aVCjJt”]
Here’s a followup to my last blog post, about music, excitement, and another frontier for classical performance .
The post was about an exciting performance the National Symphony did in a Washington, DC club, for an audience of around 2000 people who don’t normally go to classical concerts. Younger clubgoers, to judge from how they looked.
On the program were classical pieces, and also some marvelous things — which easily held their own with the classical works — aimed at the club audience. One of them was a take on the prelude to the first Bach cello suite, written by and featuring Wytold Lebing, an ireeistible electric cellist.
And if you love the thought of an engaged audience, you’ll love what happened at one point in this piece, which was a rising passage taken straight out of Bach, performed exactly as Bach wrote it. It’s this one. (I’ve excerpted the classic old Casals performance, which — for its easy, compelling musicality — still stands for me as one of my touchstones for how music ought to go. I’m talking about all Casals’ cello suite recordings, not just this one.)
When Lebing got to this, the audience cried out in excitement, with a rising cry that mirrored the rise in the music. I loved this, and I think it’s a lesson for all of us. Because, if you walked around in the club, as I did, you might not think people were paying close attention. Some were talking, some were dancing, some were on their phones. But then came the exictement of the rising passage, and the excited shout. There are many kinds of listening.
And so here’s a challenge — a next frontier — for our normal classical performances. Can we make people shout like that? I know we value silent listening, etc, etc., etc. But that — in the long history of classical music — is a relatively recent development. Handel, Mozart, and Verdi would have found the shout from the club audience entirely familiar. And completely welcome. Because, in their world, people who didn’t make noise during a performance would be showing that they didn’t like the music.
I doubt our existing, older audience will shout when it’s excited. But when we get younger people in, shouts will show we’ve really hooked them, and entered their world.
For some accounts of audiences making noise during the music, in past centuries, see some anecdotes about classical performance in the past, which I prepared for the course I’m teaching at Juilliard right now, about the future of classical music. And also Mozart’s letter to his father, about how he got the audience to applaud during the music, at the premiere of his Paris Symphony.”
And you can also hear a rippple of applause from an Italian audience in the 1950s, right in the middle of a high note from Maria Callas, during a performance of Norma.
To facilitate that shouting Greg, the performances would HAVE to be amplified, as this one undoubtedly was. This is perhaps the largest remaining mental hurdle for classical to become CLUB classical; a hurdle I’ve embraced as inevitable since launching the Detroit chapter of Classical Revolution. (Smoking was the first major hurdle.) The tradeoffs are both apparent (no artistic control of tone, balances, loss of subtleties) and surprising (audience talks louder, so volume continues upward). But anything truly worth doing requires great sacrifice — and this is one. It lets them participate, at least verbally, like at a rock concert. Since orchestras ALWAYS amplify outdoors, we should be ready to let go of this requisite not only in orchestra concerts, but even as chamber groups in club and even restaurant settings.
Do we want to coax newbies to listen silently in a spirit of meditation to acoustic music? Certainly. But if we want to draw a LARGE and truly diverse crowd of young people, we’d best occasionally meet them halfway FIRST. We play plenty of traditional concerts. Let’s balance classical music with a truly wider community, validated with respect (better yet appreciation) for their own cultural norms.
AWESOME! I love hearing about this. For 20 years I’ve been telling my audiences “clap when you want to, cheer and whistle when you want to: it’s the only way we know we did something well that you liked!” More room for some informality and noise, please, in the appropriate environment (I’m pretty sure the March in Mahler 1 arouses more introspect than cheering). Context and environment are essential for enjoying live [classical] music and participants should not be stifled into submissive silence. I wonder if sitting in rows vs. standing at high tables has any influence…
I both love and loathe this ‘news.’ I love it because FINALLY orchestras are paying attention to what some bands that mix classical and rock have been doing for the last 20 years,but loathe it because it appears that orchestras still have this mindset that they have to get ‘gutter’ with their venue and music to capture a younger audience yet FAIL to bring that exciting music to the actual hall…it is not genuine and it wont work. Why NOT bring the electric cellist to their actual venue and ‘allow’ audiences to actually get excited, serve beer and encourage visceral responses? Why must this only happen in a club? Anyone who knows of symphonic metal will tell you that audiences for the last twenty years have been getting excited about classical music played in a way that is complementary to the sounds of today…Aesma Daeva has been metalizing Mozart arias for 15+ years, Transsiberian Orchestra has been selling out arenas doing the same. Therion in Sweden has been cooperating with symphonies for big concerts for 10 years. and guess what…they are doing it in orchestra halls over in Europe. This isnt news, this is showing yet again that classical organizations are late to the ball.
Before we pat the backs of an orchestra FINALLY paying attention but really not being genuine about it, let’s look to the history of this and ask why this is only now happening, and why they aren’t then taking this sound and atmosphere back to their orchestra halls? They won’t get the audience to follow to their ‘real’ venue simply because they ‘tricked’ them into liking Bach by using an electric cello and therefore they have new ticket buyers. They have to really mean it by programming their legit concerts likewise (and I dont mean doing a pops concert…sorry, but yawn). Otherwise this only plays out like trying to trick the audience into coming to their ‘real’ venue. I’ll happily eat crow if the National Symphony looks at the success of this and genuinely transforms their regular concert experience…but I kind of doubt they will, or be able to.
I was at the performance. As a trustee of a classical music festival I have been arguing for this kind of audience engagement. As you aptly state, there are many ways to listen.
I think the older existing audience might appreciate something fresh with a new beat. They may not shout, but they may dance to it. Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyPDQpel8bI
The existing older classical music base demographic liked big band swing and Elvis as well as classical music. Perhaps we should ask them what new stuff they want to listen to. We may be surprised.
Hi Greg — thanks for sharing. This is an exciting happening! It reminds of Benjamin Zander’s TED talk about guiding audiences in falling in love with classical music. I imagine you’ve already seen it, but just in case, here’s the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion?language=en#t-376699
Television is the only modern-day medium that has the kind of reach to make that possible.
I’m just wondering if we also forgot the basic element of music and life. Emotions. As in, FUN. Just look at the age range of the audience in this video and what a blast they are ALL having!
http://youtu.be/1B7QAQ0ItX8