I’ve just returned from a very interesting experience. My wife and I went to a concert at Bradford’s civic performance venue, the St. George’s Hall. The performance was by the Chamber Orchestra of the European Union–of which more anon. The thing that struck me as much as anything else was the fact that the musicians performed standing (with the natural exception of the cellists, of course). I have never seen that before, and was startled by the difference this makes to the entire experience of attending a concert.
Never before had I appreciated the extent to which seating players must inhibit their movement, and its expressiveness. By being able to move their feet the players were able to alter the entire posture of their bodies, and even to move forward and backwards together. By freeing them from their normal chairs even the upper bodies became far more mobile and expressive. This heightened for me the entire experience of attending to music, as it broadened the event well beyond one of merely listening to the music, and became a matter of experiencing the music.
The degree of dynamism that resulted from this reminded me (rather irreverently) of a famous “party piece” among folk music players–the “duelling banjos”. It is much more characteristic of the relationship between performers in a rock concert. I really came to appreciate for the first time the difference between listening to music on the radio, or in recorded form, and being in the presence of players. We agreed, as we drove home, that we must do this again.
The same comparison holds, I suppose, between attending the theatre and listening to a play on the radio. Beyond a very limited range of possibilities, however, I can’t see that the same might be said of painting, which is not a “performance art”. It does prompt me to ask, however, whether we might free ourselves up a bit in relation to the circumstances in which people view painting. I’ll have to think about that one.
I was impressed this evening may the ironic contrast between the naming of the concert hall after England’s patron saint, which increasingly is associated with a rather unpleasantly xenophobic nationalism, and the fact that we were listening to the Chamber Orchestra of the European Union. On this occasion inter-national hospitality and warmth clearly won out, and offered a suitable rebuke to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU.