Disturbing the Peace? Part 2

 

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My previous post was about the recent musical protest at the St. Louis Symphony performance of the Brahms Requiem. I’ve been thinking about other ways that protest and music intersect a lot since I first heard about that incident – this post will address two very different examples.

There was another concert that same week which got some attention – a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall which included the American premiere of a work by Georg Friedrich Haas.

The following is from Anthony Tommasini’s review in the New York Times: “Mr. Haas received a warm ovation, though some lusty boos were mixed amid the bravos. In my experience, new pieces are not often booed. I hope Mr. Haas feels that he was doing something right to arouse such a reaction.”

Mr. Tommasini is right – new pieces are not generally booed nowadays. The sign of disapproval most audiences give now is by walking out during a piece, or by not clapping much when it’s over. But music used to provoke all kinds of extreme reactions – the riot at the premiere of The Rite of Spring (depicted in the caricature above) is the most famous example, but there have been many others – some of them are listed here.

At both the St. Louis and Carnegie Hall concerts, the normally passive concert audience was transformed, however briefly, into active participants, something that is so rare nowadays that it made the papers.

Many people feel the concert hall should be a place of refuge, free from (you should excuse the expression) discord. I disagree completely – great art must challenge us in some way. I think the folks who booed at Carnegie Hall were fully engaged with what they heard, and felt compelled to say, forcefully, that they didn’t like it. Good for them – at least they cared.

These are examples of disturbances in the concert hall which made news outside of it – here’s another kind – the controversy surrounding tonight’s Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’s “The Death of Kinghoffer,” an opera set on the Achille Lauro, a cruise ship hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in 1985.

Since the work’s debut, there has been controversy over Adams’s portrayal of the hijackers  – many feel that he grants them too much sympathy. Some of the current protestors have vowed to continue “until the set is burned to the ground,” and have called the performers “fascists.” You can read an excellent article in Sunday’s New York Times by Zachary Woolfe about the current debate over Klinghoffer, and the long history of the problem of mixing art and current events.

If you think I’m wading into this debate, you’re out of your mind. Like most people (including many of those either protesting or championing it), I haven’t seen the opera, and my only point in bringing it up is to give a current example of a piece of music being controversial – something that used to be much more common. Some more examples from the opera world: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Strauss’s Salome, Berg’s Lulu, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (please add your own examples in the comments).

On a lighter note, there was another recent opera-related controversy last week, regarding a production of Carmen in Australia, which was briefly canceled (and then reinstated) over concerns that it glamorized smoking, which seemed to me an odd thing to be agitated about, given all the of the other bad behavior in that opera. But I digress.

The protests in St. Louis and at the Met are very different in tone, purpose and execution from one another, but very similar in one important way – they depend (and draw) on the great power of music.

The protest in St. Louis was designed to relate closely to the performance at which it took place, and was planned to be only disruptive enough to add context to it (whether you think that was appropriate or achieved is another matter). Had the protestors been outside the concert hall, the impact of their efforts would have been far smaller, I’m sure.

The protestors outside the Met, by contrast, are hoping to be as disruptive as possible – their goal is to get the production canceled entirely. What’s notable is how important the protestors feel the symbolic power of the opera is – to produce it, in their view, is to give something they object to far greater significance than it would otherwise have.

The St. Louis and Met protestors (and the Carnegie Hall ones too, for that matter) understand the great power of what happens in a performance, and for that fact alone, at least, I’m glad. However you feel about any of these protests, if you worry about the demise of classical music, the fact that it still means this much to some people keeps me hopeful for the future. I hope you are one of those who care that much – please post your comments!

 

Disturbing the Peace? Part 1

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Reading about two recent concerts got me thinking again about the “sanctity” of the concert hall and the role of the audience. In one, the performance was “interrupted” by a musical protest by members of the audience, while in the other, the applause after a premiere was mixed with boos, something the review found noteworthy. Today’s post is about the first one – I’ll look at the second later this week, along with some thoughts about my recent experience performing Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, a piece which is all about disturbances, musical and otherwise.

You may have already heard about the first concert – a performance of the Brahms Requiem by the St. Louis Symphony which featured a surprise protest of the death of Mike Brown, the young man whose death galvanized Ferguson, Missouri and drew national attention in August. As the second half was about to begin, members of the audience began singing the protest song “Which side are you on friend, which side are you on?” and “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for all,” while unfurling banners and tossing pamphlets from the balcony.

Can’t see the video? Watch it here.

The demonstration was peaceful and over quickly. There was some applause from the audience and some of the performers on stage, as well as some boos. The protestors then left the hall, and the performance continued.

There’s so much to talk about here – I’m not going to discuss the reason the protestors were there, though. Whatever one thinks about Mike Brown, what happened to him and what followed in Ferguson is not really the point here, though it is without question an important topic – for this forum, I’m interested in the protest itself – its form, and its setting.

Much ink has already been spilled about whether the protest was “appropriate” – I think it was. The performance was not underway, so the music wasn’t disturbed. The singing of the protestors was quite good – clearly, they had practiced. And most important, I think – these folks were protesting a death by singing at a performance of a requiem!

“When we discovered that Brahms’ ‘Requiem’ would be on the calendar, for Mike Brown, it was a beautiful connection that seemed fated,” protest organizer Sarah Griesbach told a local TV station. “A requiem is a song for the dead.”

So the protestors knew their audience and the setting, found the right moment and prepared accordingly. They knew just how far they could go, too – had they actually interrupted the performance or confronted anyone directly, I suspect that very few people would have supported their actions.

I wonder about the protestors’ decision to leave the hall after singing – I think they missed a chance to connect with those they were trying to reach. St. Louis Symphony publicist Erika Ebsworth-Goold puts it well: “Brahms’ ‘Requiem’ was a beautiful piece that was written to really console the people who were left behind during a loss,” Ebsworth-Goold told the TV station. “I think if they would’ve stayed, it would have been healing and cathartic for them.”

Maybe the protestors didn’t want to be asked to leave – surely that would have made more of an incident than they wanted, and undercut the message they hoped to send. There may have been some in the audience who thought they should have been ejected, though I’m not sure that would have happened, and surely would have looked pretty bad. Still, part of me wonders what kinds of conversations might have followed the Brahms had they stayed to hear the rest.

The concert hall is seen as a place of refuge by many in the audience – going to a performance is a chance to escape the world’s unpleasant realities. Though I certainly understand the feeling, I’m not sure this always is a good thing. For those of us who play it, great music feels like life and death – if our audience is not engaged on that level, we’re not doing our jobs, and they are missing out. Classical music’s being completely walled off from the world as a whole does no one any favors, in my opinion.

In St. Louis, the protestors may have helped remind the rest of the audience (and the performers) what the point of Brahms’ Requiem is, and what the goal of any performance should be – to connect with people on the deepest level possible.

So what do you think of all this? Were the protestors in St. Louis right to interject a performance of their own? Was Brahms harmed, or enhanced? Did the audience have a right to a protest-free evening, or is the concert hall a place where real life can intrude? I’m not sure there are easy answers to any of these questions, but they’re worth wrestling with! Please post your comments!