Klarinet Archive - Posting 000614.txt from 1999/08

From: "Karl Krelove" <kkrelove@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Audience Distractions - A Response
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 22:39:50 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Michael Schmidt [mailto:schmi179@-----.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, August 22, 1999 10:40 PM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: [kl] Audience Distractions - A Response
>
>
> ...we are all human. Humans at
> concerts have a tendency to do trivial things that
> upset others, such as an audience member who
> coughs or a musician who plays the wrong note
> (yes, I heard you). I love to listen to live
> concerts for those reasons; unlike a recorded CD
> performance, it is these disruptions and subtle
> musical nuances that makes each live performance
> unique and interesting.

The performance errors that sometimes happen can in a perverse way
contribute to the sense of adventure in a live performance. I must disagree
that the _loud_ coughing (where no attempt is made to stifle or muffle the
cough) adds anything interesting.

>Besides, when one must
> cough, there is little one can do other than to
> let it out.

Out of courtesy to the other members of the _audience_ one can make some
effort to quiet the cough. The hoarse, loud, full-throated eruption that
some listeners let out seems unnecessary.

> Perhaps you should also understand that we all,
> both musicians and audience members, cough from
> time to time. Perhaps you should appreciate the
> time and effort that it takes for us to battle
> traffic after a full work day to come and listen
> to you make your magic, just as we recognize the
> time and effort that it takes you to do your job.
> Perhaps you should welcome us as we come to listen
> to you; we could stay at home to listen to the
> same CD over and over. Perhaps you should be
> grateful for a cough or two; someday you may look
> out and no one will be there to cough, applaud at
> the wrong time, or to listen to your music.

I must admit that I find the ambient noise level in the audience much more
of a distraction when I'm an audience member. As a performer I'm usually too
involved in what I'm doing to notice. Another distraction, by the way, that
irks me even more than unrestrained coughing is pagers, which people are
asked to turn off as they enter the hall but sometimes don't, and watch
alarms, which nobody mentions, but you can always tell when it's getting
near 9:00 PM at any concert I've attended in the recent past at
Philadelphia's Academy of Music.

Conductors may make a public fuss about noise. I once saw Stokowski stalk
off the stage several times in one concert at the old Robin Hood Dell - an
outdoor amphitheater - because of jet plane noise, as if anyone could have
done anything about it. So perhaps things haven't changed much. But I think
it's more audiences and music writers, not the players themselves, who
complain with some degree of justification about the noise that surrounds
them. The players have other things to worry about.

Karl Krelove

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