gnimmel (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} gnimmel) wrote,@ 2006-07-30 20:19:00 |
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Long-lost cousins in the cello section, and other illuminating tales
There is something about the combination of music and endurance -- something that sits rather deep in the human brain, that worms its way into ritual and pop culture and tradition alike. I am at a loss to explain why I would rather stand at most gigs than sit, given that I am not a dancer of any note; or why I have an odd feeling that standing at gigs whilst besplattered with mud, a la festival-goers in the rain, is the desirable way to go about such things. Is it tribal bonding?
If it is, then I guess I was out doing classical tribal bonding last night: that is to say, lured by the promise ofpurplepiano in the chorus and the chance of attending PastyFest (dude!) and talking photography with the incomparable andrewwyld in't morning, I went promming. I wasn't going to do it this year. I was going to be too busy. But ah, the promenade concerts! They draw you in, somehow. With all their peculiar Englishness, their pair of notable queues, their Victorian history, their slight over-fondness for Elgar, their mushroomy ceiling -- they're like the eccentric great-uncle you never had. Unless you did. But anyhow. This is how one finds oneself spending an afternoon in Kensington Gardens, reading the Pilgrim's Progress and idly watching a squirrel trying to retrieve crisps from the end of a stick, before ambling over to stake out a place in a remarkably short queue for a couple of hours. Thence followed an evening full of divers excitements, involving:
1. Being right at the front of the arena, in the middle. Yea, even unto being 3m from the conductor's bum. I generally prom barefoot, and I could feel the vibrations through the floor as Mr. Robertson jumped up and down.
2. The usual collection of glorious eccentrics. Wagner dolls, peculiar beards, alarmingly cute composers, the discovery of long-lost cousins in the cello section, discussions of exactly how many minutes long one likes one's Meistersingers prelude -- that kind of thing. Someone should write an operetta.
3. The usual enormous, forbidding and lumpen soprano (again, extremely close-by) who turns out to have a rather lovely, melting voice.
4. Some rather more unusual stuff: e.g. The Shout, an experimental choir whose members come from all sorts of different singing traditions, and
5. A huge choral piece (in size, not length) involving them and five other choirs of varying sorts. And an orchestra. And words which were a mixture of Caryl Churchill and Sumerian-sounding babble syllables -- combine this with the music, coming in in rhythmic bursts, and you have a vision of a man-made climate apocalypse which is strangely enticing. At this point (the choirs had spilled out into the stalls) I was standing at the focus of a great semicircle of singers, which was pretty fucking incredible...
6 ...and then the conductor gestured to part of the audience, and it turned out that large chunks of the prommers on either side of me were part of it as well, at which point I went slightly wobbly.
7. After that, Prokoviev's Alexander Nevsky was almost a mellow comedown piece. Well, maybe. Being merely quite large and very, very Russian, with its German invaders dehumanised by having them speak jumbled-up Latin fragments, Stalin is me best mate, &c.
So, yes. I stood up throughout, which I guess is a sign of a good prom. I suspect I'm more of a sucker for the artistic endurance event than most, or at least have a poor sense of when it's better to give up, the Ring cycle[1] and Finnegans Wake being cases in point. I suspect this is a harmless habit, if not entirely healthy. Being an human is odd, &c.
[1] Crucially, although the final few minutes of the Ring Cycle are glorious and sublime[2], although the final leitmotif, the one which appears only once elsewhere, just comes in from nowhere and crushes your heart -- they're not nearly as good if you haven't listened to sixteen hours of Norse Gods bickering beforehand.
[2] Opinions on this may differ, yes I know Wagner-the-person was a twat, &c.
There is something about the combination of music and endurance -- something that sits rather deep in the human brain, that worms its way into ritual and pop culture and tradition alike. I am at a loss to explain why I would rather stand at most gigs than sit, given that I am not a dancer of any note; or why I have an odd feeling that standing at gigs whilst besplattered with mud, a la festival-goers in the rain, is the desirable way to go about such things. Is it tribal bonding?
If it is, then I guess I was out doing classical tribal bonding last night: that is to say, lured by the promise of
purplepiano in the chorus and the chance of attending PastyFest (dude!) and talking photography with the incomparable andrewwyld in't morning, I went promming. I wasn't going to do it this year. I was going to be too busy. But ah, the promenade concerts! They draw you in, somehow. With all their peculiar Englishness, their pair of notable queues, their Victorian history, their slight over-fondness for Elgar, their mushroomy ceiling -- they're like the eccentric great-uncle you never had. Unless you did. But anyhow. This is how one finds oneself spending an afternoon in Kensington Gardens, reading the Pilgrim's Progress and idly watching a squirrel trying to retrieve crisps from the end of a stick, before ambling over to stake out a place in a remarkably short queue for a couple of hours. Thence followed an evening full of divers excitements, involving:1. Being right at the front of the arena, in the middle. Yea, even unto being 3m from the conductor's bum. I generally prom barefoot, and I could feel the vibrations through the floor as Mr. Robertson jumped up and down.
2. The usual collection of glorious eccentrics. Wagner dolls, peculiar beards, alarmingly cute composers, the discovery of long-lost cousins in the cello section, discussions of exactly how many minutes long one likes one's Meistersingers prelude -- that kind of thing. Someone should write an operetta.
3. The usual enormous, forbidding and lumpen soprano (again, extremely close-by) who turns out to have a rather lovely, melting voice.
4. Some rather more unusual stuff: e.g. The Shout, an experimental choir whose members come from all sorts of different singing traditions, and
5. A huge choral piece (in size, not length) involving them and five other choirs of varying sorts. And an orchestra. And words which were a mixture of Caryl Churchill and Sumerian-sounding babble syllables -- combine this with the music, coming in in rhythmic bursts, and you have a vision of a man-made climate apocalypse which is strangely enticing. At this point (the choirs had spilled out into the stalls) I was standing at the focus of a great semicircle of singers, which was pretty fucking incredible...
6 ...and then the conductor gestured to part of the audience, and it turned out that large chunks of the prommers on either side of me were part of it as well, at which point I went slightly wobbly.
7. After that, Prokoviev's Alexander Nevsky was almost a mellow comedown piece. Well, maybe. Being merely quite large and very, very Russian, with its German invaders dehumanised by having them speak jumbled-up Latin fragments, Stalin is me best mate, &c.
So, yes. I stood up throughout, which I guess is a sign of a good prom. I suspect I'm more of a sucker for the artistic endurance event than most, or at least have a poor sense of when it's better to give up, the Ring cycle[1] and Finnegans Wake being cases in point. I suspect this is a harmless habit, if not entirely healthy. Being an human is odd, &c.
[1] Crucially, although the final few minutes of the Ring Cycle are glorious and sublime[2], although the final leitmotif, the one which appears only once elsewhere, just comes in from nowhere and crushes your heart -- they're not nearly as good if you haven't listened to sixteen hours of Norse Gods bickering beforehand.
[2] Opinions on this may differ, yes I know Wagner-the-person was a twat, &c.
