There's No Button To Stop The Shame
The New York Times has a great interview with the culprit behind Tuesday night's debacle during the New York Philharmonic's performance. "The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring interrupted the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9," and it was so bad that conductor Alan Gilbert had to stop the performance. Even after he did that, the ringing kept going and going and going, prompting angry shouts from the audience.
Speaking on background, he said:
The man, called Patron X by the Philharmonic, said he was a lifelong classical music lover and 20-year subscriber to the orchestra who was friendly with several of its members. He said he himself was often irked by coughs, badly timed applause — and cellphone rings. “Then God, there was I. Holy smokes,” he said.
“It was just awful to have any role in something like that, that is so disturbing and disrespectful not only to the conductor but to all the musicians and not least to the audience, which was so into this concert,” he said by telephone.
“I hope the people at that performance and members of the orchestra can certainly forgive me for this whole event. I apologize to the whole audience.”
How did it happen? Well, his company replaced his Blackberry with an iPhone the preceding day. He silenced said iPhone but an alarm on the iPhone went off. Even if your sound is off on your iPhone, alarms still ring.
He was identified by the Philharmonic via his front-row seat and they spoke with him. He asked to apologize to Mr. Gilbert.
So embarrassing.
It does remind me of the time that the mother of my brother's good friend took them to the local symphony. As they were about 8- to 10-years-old at the time, they weren't exactly thrilled to be there. That, and we lived in a very rural place where the music couldn't have been too good. My brother's friend was trying to say something to my brother but he couldn't hear. So he said it louder, "This! Is! Terrible!" he said, just as the music stopped. The mother shot both of the boys a look of horror. I know it's awful, but we still laugh about it.
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Dec '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
A few years ago, I was seated in second row, Orchestra at a Broadway show. In the seat in front of me was a young man who completely ignored the show, as he was busy texting on his iPhone. The light from his phone was, of course, distracting to people all around him, but he was oblivious.
Three times, an usher approached him to ask that he desist. And three times, he just continued.
Finally, I leaned forward and said, "Just wait until intermission. I'm going to beat the pulp out of you."
That got his attention.
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
I have a recording of one of Victor Borge's earlier performances. During a pause, as he prepares to play the next number, several people in the audience cough. Without hesitation, Borge announces, "This is a number during which most people cough. I have seen people cough during this number,..people who have never coughed before in their lives!" He pulled it off perfectly,...and more people coughed, prompting more laughter. But laughter was as much a part of his performance as the music itself.
Nov '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
To play devil's advocate here, audience noise was pretty acceptable right up to the later 1800's. It was Wagner who first decided to force the audience to focus on the stage by leaving them in the dark with all the light on the stage; the advent of electric lighting - which allowed for easy control of audience lighting - in the 1880's made it pretty much de rigueur. Before that orchestras and actors had to compete with the audience for attention, and it took strong performances to divert the audience from its main occupation - socializing, and just checking each other out. Now, even when the performance is really bad, you have to sit in imitation awe (rather than chatting with your neighbors, or even throwing stuff), and when it is really good you can't cheer them into playing the same passage repeatedly. It's no wonder that the classical genre has more or less petered out into a whimper. and is dependent on charity and government grants.....
Mar '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
This Patron X -- you don't suppose his name might have been...
Bartman?
Apr '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Hmmm. Did you really say "pulp"?
:-)
Dec '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Hmmm. Did you really say "pulp"?
:-)
Clever you.
May '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Posts like this are yet another reason I love Ricochet. Thanks for that history.
May '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Here in Ann Arbor, a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion was ruined--right at the moment of Christ's death--by a cell phone.
This was in the early years of cell phones, and this particular phone (as we read about in the local paper days later) was of a type that, once it started ringing, could only be silenced by answering the incoming call. The owner, panicking, decided the best course of action would be to flee the auditorium. From the balcony, we heard the ring tones, then thump thump thump and then the slam of the door. On par with the Mahler Marimba described above, methinks.
May '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Much like pop music concerts today, where the kids spend an astonishing amount of time wandering the lobby. The music is so loud, they can hear it from there anyway.
Feb '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
In a former life I built pipe organs. At the dedication concert for one of our new instruments ,the renowned organist David Briggs was finishing a lovely quiet piece (it's many years, but it may have been a transcription for organ of a Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), when a cellphone began to sound some horrible little melody.
We sat there mortified.
His last piece was to be an organ improvisation for which he is justly famous.
But after the horrid cellphone mess, it just rang like a bell in the church's excellent acoustic, we wondered how he would respond. He is a true gentleman, and he stood up and "thanked" the person, as only a Brit could do, damning them with understanding; and then he offered to improvise an original organ piece on a cellphone ring from the audience. This was when tunes on your cellphone had just become readily available. He ended up doing a 20 minute tour de force based on the theme from the Munsters and the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth.
It is the only time I've ever been glad a cellphone went off at a concert.
Dec '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Percival: This Patron X -- you don't suppose his name might have been...
Bartman? · Jan 13 at 8:07pm
Lucky for Bartman, he doesn't live in da Bronx.
Edited on January 14, 2012 at 6:39amMar '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
EThompson
Percival: This Patron X -- you don't suppose his name might have been...
Bartman? · Jan 13 at 8:07pm
Lucky for Bartman, he doesn't live in da Bronx. · Jan 13 at 9:37pm
Edited on Jan 13 at 09:39 pm
Poor guy needed a police escort out of Wrigley. Heck, he practically needed one out of Chicago.
Jul '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Percival, I was headed there. Poor soul that man. Unintentional.
Oct '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Is it me or does it seem like most of the people who have problems with cell phones are not very tech savvy (i.e., old people)?
Feb '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Is "not very tech savvy" the new euphemism for "senior citizen"? Will we see new menus at diners for the "Simple Set" instead of the "Senior Set"? Instead of pulling out a senior discount card, can we just show the waitress that, not only do we have no idea how to retrieve our voice mail, with our eyes going we can't even see the phone in the first place unless she holds it for us across the room? Lord, how mighty are the fallen...
Oct '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
In one of the Chicago area orchestras I play in (no, not THAT orchestra) a trumpet player would place a call to a particular horn player right before the A to remind her to shut the thing off.
BTW, don't mute silence or whatever the cell phone.
TURN THE SOB OFF, cold, dead OFF!
Thank you
Oct '11
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
I've been around for some amazing mute drops too...
Nov '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Thanks Aaron!
I was browsing around this morning and came across this page on Wikipedia: Classical Music Riot. I wasn' aware that one performance had actually helped spark a revolution. The best known, I think, is the riot that occurred at the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring - fist fights in the audience, police intervention, the general racket so intense that the dancers couldn't hear the orchestra and had to be lead by Nijinsky (the principal dancer) counting the steps from the wings...It wasn't helped by the common practice of both supporters and detractors paying riffraff to sit in the galleries to cheer or boo.
Edited on January 14, 2012 at 4:18pmJun '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Not to be a curmudgeon, but aside from remedial training to address an appalling lack of etiquette brought about by the convenience of mobile technologies, it seems to me there is still such a thing as a power button. Better yet, if planning to attend any event as part of a larger audience, leave the bloody thing in the car.
Okay, maybe I am a curmudgeon. I blame it on the Bartman reminder.
Nov '10
Re: There's No Button To Stop The Shame
Well, speaking as somewhat of a codger myself (age 60), I tend to agree. Let me see if I can explain my philosophy in a tech-savvy way.
Tech-savviness is more on the order of tacit, rather than explicit, knowledge. That means it is more acquired through practice and habit, rather than instructors poking it into your brain (though that helps). The problem occurs in that tacit knowledge takes a lot of time to acquire. Unfortunately, God put us each on a very limited plan, you only get so many minutes, and then, poof, time's up. And when the time comes for the big final exam, do you really want to argue in your defense in favour of all the time spent playing Angry Birds? Wouldn't your chances be better if those minutes were spent engaged with His creation, rather than some software developer's ? Being older (and hence probably closer to the deadline) I tend to go with the former :)