concert mania
May. 15th, 2006 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacpatioboe alluded to this, but today's paper made it explicit: a wealthy egomaniac paid $15,000 for the privilege of leading Symphony Silicon Valley in a private performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with an audience of a thousand of his closest friends (it didn't say how much he paid them to be there) looking on.
Of course, as patioboe points out, conducting stunts of this kind have been pulled before, but no rank amateur has ever paid to play the oboe part in Beethoven's Fifth. So how difficult can conducting be, anyway? Well, the vicissitudes of SSV's last season proves that it's not difficult to be a mediocre conductor, but it's still rare to be a really good one.
It's like writing. Any literate person can write, but that doesn't make great writers any more common or less valuable than great painters or great musicians or other things that relatively few people can do.
What struck me, though, was that conducting was this man's dream. I love music, but I wouldn't want to conduct. In a work I know, I can hear ahead of the music as a conductor must, but what a conductor has that I don't is the mind-hand coordination to express that physically. This is also why I'd never go on Jeopardy: I can respond to the clues well enough, but I wouldn't be able to press the buzzer at the right moment. Amateur conducting also requires a breed of egomania I don't have. I enjoy giving scholarly talks to audiences - I'd like being a professor, I'm sure - but I don't otherwise like being the center of attention. I was once randomly hauled up on stage from the audience to be the shah at a belly-dance performance. I sat on a cushion and they fed me grapes, and it was supposed to be luxurious but all I wanted was to get out of there. But if I'd walked off it would have made an even bigger fuss over me, you see?
If I had thousands of dollars free to spend on a whimsical artistic project, here's what I'd do. I'd go to SSV but I wouldn't ask to conduct. No. I'd offer to underwrite a full regular concert, their choice of conductor, they could sell tickets and keep all the extra revenue. I would just sit in the audience anonymously like everybody else. What I'd want for my money is the right to choose the works played. And what I'd choose are works I love on record but have never heard live and never expect to.
This would be my first choice, an all American music concert:
So, what artistic project would you spend thousands of dollars on, if you were given the money and instructions to use it for that purpose? Nothing virtuous now, no donating the money to schools for arts programs or anything altruistic like that. We're talking self-indulgence here.
Of course, as patioboe points out, conducting stunts of this kind have been pulled before, but no rank amateur has ever paid to play the oboe part in Beethoven's Fifth. So how difficult can conducting be, anyway? Well, the vicissitudes of SSV's last season proves that it's not difficult to be a mediocre conductor, but it's still rare to be a really good one.
It's like writing. Any literate person can write, but that doesn't make great writers any more common or less valuable than great painters or great musicians or other things that relatively few people can do.
What struck me, though, was that conducting was this man's dream. I love music, but I wouldn't want to conduct. In a work I know, I can hear ahead of the music as a conductor must, but what a conductor has that I don't is the mind-hand coordination to express that physically. This is also why I'd never go on Jeopardy: I can respond to the clues well enough, but I wouldn't be able to press the buzzer at the right moment. Amateur conducting also requires a breed of egomania I don't have. I enjoy giving scholarly talks to audiences - I'd like being a professor, I'm sure - but I don't otherwise like being the center of attention. I was once randomly hauled up on stage from the audience to be the shah at a belly-dance performance. I sat on a cushion and they fed me grapes, and it was supposed to be luxurious but all I wanted was to get out of there. But if I'd walked off it would have made an even bigger fuss over me, you see?
If I had thousands of dollars free to spend on a whimsical artistic project, here's what I'd do. I'd go to SSV but I wouldn't ask to conduct. No. I'd offer to underwrite a full regular concert, their choice of conductor, they could sell tickets and keep all the extra revenue. I would just sit in the audience anonymously like everybody else. What I'd want for my money is the right to choose the works played. And what I'd choose are works I love on record but have never heard live and never expect to.
This would be my first choice, an all American music concert:
- Michael Torke: Ash
- Henry Cowell: The Seven Rituals of Music (Symphony No. 11)
- Alan Hovhaness: Saint Vartan Symphony
So, what artistic project would you spend thousands of dollars on, if you were given the money and instructions to use it for that purpose? Nothing virtuous now, no donating the money to schools for arts programs or anything altruistic like that. We're talking self-indulgence here.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 05:59 am (UTC)Were I invited to attend such a concert, then no matter how much I loved the man holding it, I'd attend more for reasons of curiosity than hope of artistic merit. In fact in situations such as this the musicians usually play the work by rote, while the "conductor" is just waving his hands to the music whether he realizes it or not. It takes knowledge and experience to imprint your concept of a work on an orchestra.
Your idea of paying a stipend to a good author has a distinguished history. The question of how to get the prickly and independent Sam Johnson to accept such a stipend occupied several philanthropic minds for some years before they came up with a successful plan.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 07:10 am (UTC)Well, Pat Hodgell is the non-prickly (anti-prickly would be too much). Howard Waldrop, on the other hand, for such a swell all-around nice guy, could teach mules a few things about stubborn.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 02:23 pm (UTC)K.