SINGING, or playing an instrument, provides self-satisfaction
and fulfilment to those who perform, and there may not be any other
essential purpose than this. The lone milkmaid singing contentedly to
herself in some idealised, bygone rural setting; the solitary pianist
playing a Mozart sonata in his or her drawing-room; the guitarist gently
strumming away to himself in a student bed-sit - all such are musical
performances, yet not specifically addressed to the rapt attention of
others. Much other music, perhaps most, however, seems to be intended
for those who are merely passive listeners.
‘Passive’, though? What exactly is meant by the word?
The proper consideration of what this implies could be the basis of
a whole philosophical debate or furnish good material for a doctoral
thesis in the manner of Bertrand Russell. However, some brief if superficial
thoughts about it might give rise to a casual discussion after a concert:
‘what did you think the audience made of X’s performance of the Y piano
concerto?’ Do audiences really listen attentively? Come to that, do
players listen either? I know one very distinguished professional player
who, on being asked about the concert he has just been taking part in,
generally replies: ‘I don’t know - I wasn’t listening’; or, about a
celebrated guest conductor, ‘I don’t know - I wasn’t watching!’. All
this might be blase, tongue-in-cheek put-down of an over-zealous and
maybe naive listener; sadly, however, there is a grain of truth in such
professional attitudes. This could be brought about by over-familiarity
- the penalty of performing too often. Professionals, who are supposed
to possess a high degree of technical excellence, can become indifferent
to the job in hand (note the prosaic ‘job’). For all their comparative
limitations in matters of technical or interpretative gifts, amateurs
are rarely if ever so bored with the job as to be indifferent: if they
found that their recreational activity had reached this stage they had
best give up and find something else with which to occupy their spare
time.
Enthusiasm is the thing that tends to mark out amateur
effort and not infrequently makes it sound more satisfying than a professional
performance done in a lack-lustre and routine way. For the most part,
though, it has to be said that members of professional orchestras, and
certainly all chamber musicians and soloists, do maintain an essential
enthusiasm - and often nervousness - in performing music to the best
of their ability.
To do all this properly requires some response from
the listener. For the lone performer, playing or singing for personal
satisfaction, this is perhaps not necessary (the presence of a listener,
if there be one, is incidental); but for a public statement in music
the communication with others who merely listen, and their consequent
response, is something the performer really does need. While it may
not be something on which the performer’s musical survival depends,
a response in some form or other is for everyone concerned an essential
ingredient if the total experience is to achieve its full potential.
Years ago I recall being associated with a BBC orchestra
whose general attitude was one of a peculiarly inverted emotional reaction
to a performance: A common remark at the start of the second half of
a public concert whose first half had been broadcast was: ‘Ah, we can
relax now - this part is not being broadcast!’. The implication was
that the ‘on air’ relay of the concert was being heard by tens of thousands
- and probably by the Head of Music who might be listening at home with
a very critical ear - whereas the small ‘live’ audience in the local
town hall did not matter so much.
To non-radio orchestras, however, all public concerts
are, or should be, an occasion. Every performer knows of the acute sense
of disappointment felt when there are many empty seats in the auditorium:
nothing more inspires a highly-charged performance than the sight of
a full house nor proves more rewarding than its warm, enthusiastic applause
at the end. This reception can reasonably be expected to be forthcoming
if several important elements are present a) the music is already familiar;
b) the performance itself is convincing; c) the soloist is competent
(not necessarily ‘celebrated’; the hype of concert-agents is not an
absolute guarantee that the performance will always be distinguished);
and d) the conductor does not, by over-zealous self-promotion of an
exaggerated balletic kind, get between the music and its appreciation.
Other factors, however - unfamiliar music, unknown
soloists or conductors - present imponderables in the winning-over of
audiences; and it is these which exercise such a baleful influence on
promoters of professional concerts in their choice of what is performed
and by whom.
Amateur organisations can generally face less anxiety
over the strictly economic aspects of concert-giving; but they still
need to persuade audiences that what they have paid to listen to is
going to materialise into a worthwhile, even memorable, experience.
Here, programme notes can be of considerable assistance, but there is
an art in writing persuasive notes that effectively help to generate
the listeners’ sympathetic response to a new experience: no matter whether
that experience be of ‘new’ music or of music which while all-too-familiar
to some is new to others (there must always be some who have never heard
Messiah before).
Contrary to what most concert-promoters (and even more
so, concert-agents) think is important in the brochures which they put
out, I believe that the concert-going public is not really all that
impressed by hype about conductors and soloists having been on this
or that foreign tour - having studied under internationally renowned
professors S and T- having recorded on label U - having performed with
orchestras V, W and X - and having won the prestigious Y and Z prizes.
Such PR-speak is usually as meaningless as the messages of glossy brochures
advertising new models of cars or washing-machines. Personal recommendation
is more persuasive, but then we tend to suspend our critical faculties
when we have heard somebody on radio - even more so, seen and heard
that person on television.
At one time, particularly in the more sober but shrewdly
knowledgeable German music circles, programmes did not contain a shred
of all this ‘razzmatazz’ - arty, posed action-photographs of impassioned
’cellists; of conductors apparently deep in profound thought (with eyes
tightly-closed) in the manner of Bernstein navigating some vast Mahler
score. On the contrary, their printed programmes gave the barest essentials,
set in the most restrained type-sizes.
I recall attending a concert in Germany shortly after
the end of the war. ‘Solist Emil Telmanyi (violine). Dirigent - Franz
Konwitschny’ - and that was that: the rest of the programme merely listed
the works to be played, accompanied by a brief, learned dissertation
of the kind so familiar in the introductions to the miniature scores
published by Eulenberg. All this was printed on paper of modest dimensions,
devoid of advertising or other extraneous information. The thing that
mattered was what was performed rather than who performed it.(* see
footnote)
Examples of programmes that were not hyped-up.
