The downsides of live music
The last few concerts and gatherings I’ve attended have shaken my faith in the concert hall. Not that I was much of a believer to begin with.
First, the observations:
- Miserable, drab locations with poor acoustics and minimal creature comforts hurt most small-scale, ‘intimate’ venues. Anything on the street, or in a mall is drowned out by the pointless cacophony of the background traffic; anything in a poorly designed church deadens the sounds before it even arrives.
- Many performers seem, well, like they could use some more rehearsal time before appearing on stage. This is particularly true in any chamber or orchestral music. Aligning various musical visions takes time.
- Lack of specificity in the programmes detract from the performance. Going to a Mozart concert to hear Random Piece X is not nearly as exciting as going to a Mozart concert to heard the Jupiter Symphony.
- Live performers make mistakes. Part of this ties in with the practice time.
This boils down to value for time and money. If I spend $80 and two hours of time — which can never be returned — on any artist, I would like to get my money’s worth. The live music experience is a luxury in the day of high-fidelity speakers and high-quality recordings. I don’t wish to spend my resources on missed notes and sulky performers and dubious interpretations when I could just as well be home, enjoying definitive recordings from the masters of the last eighty years.
Furthermore, classical music has lost much of its cultural and social relevance. In the day of the great composers, classical music was the dance music (of the middle and upper classes). Operas and major concerts served not only as entertainment, but also as social gathering points. Much of that has been lost in the modern classical music establishment in North America. Most attendees are older couples, perhaps with some children, and these units do not seem to socialize with each other. Somehow classical music is no longer a group phenomenon, but something disconnected and increasingly hard to justify in the present-day world.
![Daniel Chorzempa [Organ] - Mozart: Organ Sonatas & Solos (2 CDs, Vol.21 of 45)](http://classicalwatch.com/wp-content/plugins/ilastfm/cache/10251561.jpg)
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March 28th, 2009 21:41
I tend to agree with you on this. In fact, I haven’t been to a concert in recent memory that was worth the price of admission.
If I had saved all the money I have spent on unsatisfying performances on audiophile gear, I would sadly be much better off. I mean, if a concert gets one out once-in-a-while, that is one thing, but at the end of the day if the orchestras don’t raise their standards the concert hall will be dead.