The iPod Sensibility Enters The Concert Hall

[Note: This post has been updated (4) as of 10:45 PM Eastern on 14 Oct. See below.]

It was bound to happen.

Berkeley's Cal Performances, one of the busiest arts presenters in the country, thinks it may have an answer [to the problem of concert hall acoustics]: It has endorsed the new world of sound enhancement, at least for the coming season, by installing an "electroacoustic architecture system" in Zellerbach Hall, its main venue. It involves lots of microphones and speakers, a supersonic mixing board, computers, and all sorts of digital equipment.

[...]

Robert Cole, the director of Cal Performances (and a widely admired conductor and musician), has decided that the 2,000-seat Zellerbach needs help if it is to offer a uniformly excellent acoustic environment for its wide range of recitals, chamber music, symphonic music, opera, theater, dance, world music and the rest.

Score another victory for pop culture.

O tempora! O mores!

RTW repulsive T here.

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Update (11:51 PM Eastern on 12 Oct): Galen H. Brown, contributing editor at Sequenza21, thinks "It’s been too long since [he] last debunked" my "painfully elitist postings," and writes:

Cal Performances, an arts presenter in Berleley [sic], CA, is installing and state-of-the-art amplification system in Zellerbach Hall, which is designed to compensate for the hall’s shortcomings and enable “a uniformly excellent acoustic environment for its wide range of recitals, chamber music, symphonic music, opera, theater, dance, world music and the rest.” ACD calls this “another victory for pop culture” and “repulsive.” First, I don’t see what this has to do with “the iPod Sensibility” aside from the fact that both use electricity. Second, pop culture has nothing to do with it – they’re not talking about replacing classical repertoire with Justin Timberlake. They’re not even using it to generate a “pop” sound, but rather to make a wider variety of ensembles sound natural [sic!] in one space to compensate for the fact that concert halls are emphatically one-size-fits-some.

[...]

Why is making halls sound better with electronics any different from making them sound better with architecture [sic!]? [...] If your goal is to make music sound as good as possible in the space available, electronic reinforcement is a very useful tool.

Mr. Brown, who "ha[s] yet to hear a persuasive argument that classical music is inherently superior to popular music," could not have better made my point and my case had I hired and paid him to do so (ditto some of the commenters in the comments section of Mr. Brown's post).

Q.E.D.!

Update 2 (5:32 PM Eastern on 13 Oct): Conductor and blogger Kenneth Woods of Kenneth Woods — A View From The Podium writes:

I’m not sure ... exactly what [Berkeley’s Cal Performances' decision to equip Zellerbach Hall with a sophisticated amplification system for their classical music concerts] has to do with iPods, but I’m very glad to see [A.C. Douglas] challenging the assumption that this is somehow a good idea.

As the title of this post declares, what this repulsive business has to do with is the iPod sensibility, not iPods per se. Astonishing (and depressing) to tell, there's an entire generation walking about out there that imagines what they're hearing through their iPod headsets is what music — genuine music; classical music — really sounds, and ought to sound, like. Is it any wonder that Cal Performances imagines there's not only nothing amiss with the electronic processing of acoustical instruments performing classical music live, but that it's a really nifty way to correct for the acoustic deficiencies of a concert hall? And is it any wonder that CP is absolutely certain the overwhelming majority of its audiences will agree with them? For if they weren't absolutely certain of that audience response, you can bet your last bippy they never would even have contemplated such a grotesquely mindless "solution" to the acoustic shortcomings of Zellerbach Hall.

It's that pop-culture-corrupted musical sensibility — of which sensibility the ubiquitous iPod is centrally emblematic — that I've dubbed The iPod Sensibility; ergo, the title of this post.

Update 3 (9:00 PM Eastern on 14 Oct): More on the iPod sensibility here.

Update 4 (10:45 PM Eastern on 14 Oct): Music theorist and blogger Scott Spiegelberg of Musical Perceptions adds his thoughts on this matter wherein he's guilty of the same misunderstanding as David Sucher in his post on this business which post is addressed in my post linked above in Update #3.