An Epitome Of The iPod Sensibility

In response to a thoughtful, 30 December article by New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommasini, a commenter in a lengthy comments thread to a post in an online publication devoted to so-called “New Music” (a thread, by the way, in which Yours Truly was indignantly declared a racist and a sexist for defending the right of a private organization — in this case, the Wiener Philharmoniker — to be as discriminatory as it sees fit in granting membership in its organization no matter how stupid the decision, and for refusing to prima facie condemn such organizations as racist and sexist) had this to say (we leave the commenter nameless and the thread unlinked as we don’t want our comments here misconstrued as a personal attack):

Tomassini [sic] makes a compelling argument that classical music demands extended and concentrated listening. So, why are so many contemporary pieces getting shorter? If concert goers are ultimately supposed to cultivate the concentration to take in an entire Mahler symphony or Prokofiev piano concerto, what are they being asked to learn to hear in ten or fifteen-minute seemingly obligatory contemporary pieces? More importantly, what is the abbreviated average length of the contemporary concert offering forcing composers to learn how to do? Like it or not, there's a difference between spinning out a theme over thirty minutes versus condensing a three section piece down to ten minutes.

So far, so sane. There then followed this which we at first thought an ironic riff, but soon discovered was written in dead earnest:

Part of my solution to this conundrum involves selective listening. What if concert halls provided a more casual space in some other part of the building in which the concert were transmitted via video projectors and speakers? People opting for this sort of indirect listening could dress casually, bring or buy food and drink, even talk with their companions about what they were hearing. There have been times when I would have much preferred to comment on a piece as it was being performed without worrying about disturbing the silence in the hall. This permissive commentary would obviously have to be checked at some decibel level, else folks would find it difficult to hear the music intently. Which brings me to my next, more radical listening option.

The standard concert involves a collective audience sitting silently for the duration of a performance. My second option involves a smaller group of people who could come and go, talk quietly during the projected performance and make it a more personalized event. My third listening option is the most private of all; it involves the construction of cubicals meant for individual listeners who would be given headphones and some sort of video screen with which to take in the performance. Unlike the realtime [sic] concert experience and the equally realtime casual listening experience I propose, this solitary listening option would allow the individual listener to rewind, fast forward, skip and repeat portions of movements, movements or entire pieces. This would encourage score perusal while listening, quite humming to track melodic and contrapuntal developments and other beloved introverted activities usually frowned upon at concerts.

[...]

In the past, concerts fulfilled an absolutely practical need, that of getting pieces heard by the largest possible audiences that could be crammed into a given physical space. With the advent of recordings, the physical space could be at once intimate and mobile, as long as the clunky phonograph could be moved from house to house. The obvious sacrifices with early recordings involved audio fidelity and length. But now, I'd likely prefer pristinely recorded audio to the acoustical limits of a concert hall.

If people can take home a chef's realtime creation to be enjoyed in bed with DVD movies or cell phone conversations, why shouldn't they be able to choose how to take in realtime performances? If newspapers can now be read online and in print, why must concerts still be taken in according to outmoded practices? Let the concert be streamed into people's homes for a fee. Let friends get together at the concert hall, rent a room upstairs, have food brought in and dig the sounds on a state-of-the-art audio/video transmission. If that's too collective, let them take in the performance in a cubical with headphones, monitor and open score. And, for those who still like sitting in silence for interminably long pieces, there will always be the traditional concert.

The above was written not by some Gen Y prole airhead but by someone who is himself a composer of concert music. What he wrote is a veritable epitome of what we’ve previously called the iPod Sensibility, and coming from a composer of concert music as it does could not be sadder or more dismaying.

What hope for the classical music concert when composers themselves are thinking in these terms?

The question is rhetorical, but all concerned ought to be thinking about the answer.