Life Hell Hath No Fury Like the Seattle Symphony’s Pacific Northwest Community Orchestra Scorned
posted by on April 16 at 9:56 AM
Sent this morning to I, Anonymous.
To the vast majority of those who attended the April 15 morning session of the Seeds of Compassion conference: When the hundreds of us who had been sitting in front of you for two hours, silently holding our instruments and choir books, began to perform Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” for you, why did you immediately turn your backs on us and head for the exits? Why did you talk loudly throughout our performance, some of you just a few feet from us, including special guests and crew? Why did you ignore us and all of our efforts as if we weren’t even there, as if we were some recording piped into an elevator? Seconds after the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu made their final remarks about suffering and compassion, why did you choose to make us suffer your rudeness? Please ask yourselves this, and think about it.
Because they didn't like the music?
Because they didn't come to hear a musical performance?
So why not ruin it for everyone else!
@2: I would agree with you except that the performance was listed on the program, so the people that came knew they were coming to hear a musical program.
@2: I would agree with you except that the performance was listed on the program, so the people that came knew they were coming to hear a musical program.
Maybe because Ode to Joy is BORING and everyone has heard it a million times? If they wanted to be noticed, they should should have played a piece that commands attention.
Because the majority of folks in attendance were huge fucking hypocrites.
Cuz they were dave matthews fans and realized you werent the dave.
an american audience (who had already attended a 2-hour event that was, in all likelyhood due to the doddering, pointless presence of archbiship tutu, boring)betrayed an ignorance of classical music concert etiquette? i'm SHOCKED!
blame the programmers. you should have played first & then packed it up.
#6 they should have layed some Shostakovich.
Judging from the ferocity and passion exhibited in this letter, I'm simply shocked they didn't have the audience's rapt attention.
Anyone else actually fucking there? 'Cause I was, and I sat there with my free box lunch in my lap, amidst a noisy crowd, in the venue with the worst goddamn acoustics ever...and had a truly transcendent musical experience. And it was largely *because* I wasn't sitting in a dead-quiet symphony hall surrounded by dead-quiet, nearly-dead white people. I had never seen a classical performance in such a strange context, and it was great.
So to the I, Anonymous poster: you guys fucking wr0cked the house! I appreciated the hell out of the performance you gave and stood up on my chair clapping and screaming my head off like it was an M's game when you finished.
My sincere thanks for the experience -- you touched me.
Any Protestant church-goer (even if you only went as a kid) knows that when the music plays, it's time to head out. We've all been well-trained. And it's just not good programming to put a massive musical piece at the END of the night, when people are tired -- stick it in the middle somewhere.
after last friday's shindig when i tried to get past a women she commented that "you think people would be more compassionate". as if seattle wasn't passive aggressive enough.
Bah, nobody has any respect for live music anymore. It's as though getting it pumped into our heads 18 hours a day through our fucking iPods has made music just another valueless commodity, like water.
@10: Good call.
Because Ode To Joy is a recessional?
@6: The Ode to Joy is one of the best works of music ever created, and I say that as someone with tastes that run more to old school punk than classical. Any live performance of the Ode to Joy, even one with a too-large chorus fighting bad acoustics, deserves a listen. The people who left early are cretins worthy of contempt.
@18,
It is? That's news to me. I've always found it boring. Give me any of Beethoven's other symphonies, especially his 7th.
They'd have stayed if it were a hymn.
Takes a lot of time to push away the nonsense
Take my compassion...push it as far as it goes
My interest level is dropping, my interest level is dropping
I've heard all I want to, I don't want to hear any more
Yeah - Beethoven is so 19th century - what with "Für Elise" crackling out of half the world's cellphones as an aural irritant that puts Stravinsky to shame. Of course, the people who got up and left have that right - just as they have the right to text message at the movies.
And clearly to not understand the gravitas, background of "The Ode to Joy" is just 21st century dumbed-down pathetic. What piece was played at the fall of the Berlin Wall? Not Dave Matthews.
Kudos to the musicians and singers who did show up and did perform. Music even hath charms to soothe the blogger's breast.
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