I just got back from the San Diego Chamber Orchestra concert and, as I have often noticed during concerts, I am a music snob. I don't know a lot about music, I'm not terribly musical but I did receive an education about listening to music. It seems, though, that no one else in San Diego did!
While there were no paper un-wrappings, for which I am grateful -- they are the worst -- there were several coughs. Now here's the deal people: coughing is done during the applause! That way no one cares.
There was also no applause between movements, the audience actually waited for the conductor to put his hands down. It helped that there were several short pieces but people pretty much coughed at will, without regard to the audience or musicians not to mention the people recording sound and video.
Now, I know what you're thinking. It's impossible to hold back a cough or sneeze, right? Wrong! You can breathe deeply through the nose and stop any cough until the end of the piece. Sneezing can be done into a wadded handkerchief or stifled. But if you really can't hold a cough or sneeze -- if you're actually that sick WHAT IN THE SWEET MOTHER OF PEARL ARE YOU DOING IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE!!?
Candy unwrapping is a minor sin but bag crinkling is a major one. There is a special place in Hell for bag crinklers! There were none at tonight's concert but I'm still upset about an incident that happened to me at the San Diego Symphony over seven years ago. I would like to now address the man who ruined a concert for me:
What in God's name is so important that you have to bring it to a concert in a plastic Vons bag? What also is so important that you have to dig around in the bag all throughout the second movement of the Eroica Symphony? I am sure it was one of those hard candies you idiots are fond of clinking your teeth against throughout the symphony.
Fifteen years ago (no I'm still not over it!) there was a man who insisted he take his former concert-pianist, now paralyzed wife to La Jolla Chamber Music Concerts. She screamed. During the piano solos. She screamed her way through at least five concerts that I worked during. Not a lot (her scream-per-concerto ratio was about 2-1) but enough to put people on edge, off their dinners and me out of my mind. It was the kind of scream that said, "God! If you exist, why did you paralyze me and give me such an asshole for a husband that he takes me to see that which I can never again do!?
Why indeed.
My favorite concert goers are split down the middle. One who was a railroad man in the 30s and 40 who loved chamber music. None of his friends, or his considerably younger wife did but that didn't stop him. His pretty younger wife (she was in her 50 and he his 80s) dropped him off, where he sat stalk still with a smile on his face that was truly angelic.
The other was a great old codger who came to the San Diego Symphony on two canes. He sat in his chair, a cane in each hand like a biker on a chopper, and dozed quietly, peacefully, beautifully as the music no doubt swirled around his brain, body and soul. He, like the railroad man, was truly in a state of bliss.
Neither cared much what they wore. It matched and fit reasonably well. They didn't care about who else was there, who wore what or who was with whom. They cared only for the music. The sweet, beautiful music.
And each one of them shared something with me that I will share with you. A look. I looked each of them in the eye after the concert we attended together and they looked back. The look said: wasn't that beautiful?
Yes, gents. It was. There is no doubt in my mind that you've passed on, so it is my fond wish that you have gone on to your reward and I know that it is a place where the musicians are great, the instruments excellent and the music superb. And that everyone in attendance acts and feels exactly the way you (and I) do around music: awed into harmony with the eternal and quite quiet about the profound experience, which you may, if you choose, relive, comment on or share at a later time. But for now it is just the music.
That, my friends, is how you act at a Classical music concert!
