Klarinet Archive - Posting 001193.txt from 1999/07

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Rationality [and rant in manners]
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 16:32:57 -0400

>On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Bruce Keplinger wrote:
>> Etiquette exists for a reason -- it's many Americans' general lack of
>> it that causes the French to dislike American tourists, for instance.

Hope this isn't getting too off-topic, but I'm curious whether music really
is the universal language or whether musicians experience awkward moments
when they get together with musicians from cultures other than their own.
Let's eliminate two big variables by taking as given that Europeans,
especially Germans, tune higher than North Americans, and that the music
itself is familiar repertory to everyone involved -- that we're not talking
about, say, a Western clarinetist sitting in with a Japanese koto ensemble;
although that's been done (Steve Roach's "Structures from Silence"). But,
for instance, when clarinet players on this list have taken jobs in foreign
(to them) bands and orchestras, do they notice differences in the way
musicians in various counties treat a conductor, a section leader or each
other? Do southern Europeans set up rehearsal chairs closer together than
North Americans? Etc..

I'm thinking of the way North Americans often notice that visitors from
abroad "back us across the room," sometimes literally up against the wall,
because people in the U.S.A. give each other a great deal more personal space
than people from southern Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia. That's
the reason for those dinner table faux pas in France that Bruce mentions,
when North Americans lean back and talk too loudly by French standards.
Leaning forward to speak softly across a typical restaurant table places
North Americans' faces uncomfortably close together. (Friends or business
colleagues may wonder, as they back off in increasing anxiety while the
Frenchman or Latin American keeps crowding in relentlessly, closer and
closer, "What's he doing? Trying to seduce me? Get out of my face!") Are
there similar cultural differences in specifically musical manners that make
travelling musicians and their hosts uncomfortable?

Lelia

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