Why I can't enjoy CBC radio no matter how often I beat myself with the scorpion-filled sock
2 Comments Published October 25, 2005 at 1:14 PM.
CBC plays 99% classical music. It's not that I have anything against classical music. I only have everything against classical music.
Okay, some examples of it make me stop and go "hmm, nice I guess". Like I would at a museum. And then I move on. BECAUSE I'M BORED. Because it is like being at a museum. It's music that once was alive, but now is set in lifelike poses.
One particuarly fine example was a concert I attended to see my sister play with an orchestra. She's professional, and I like to see her play because she's very serious and she strikes the piano so hard she bounces in her seat but then flows like water over the keyboard and it's like watching a dancer, really. So that I enjoy. But then comes the filler, where the orchestra plays a few numbers without the soloist. At this point, I know I should get up and go to the lobby, the bathroom, the car, the waffle house down the street, anything to escape the may-cause-drowsiness effect of music that is dead but hasn't been decently buried.
But no, I am hemmed in by Social Obligation Bylaw 3077, which states that any concertgoer, no matter how cramped his legs are in those diddly little seats they designed back when the average patron was a PYGMY, no matter how strong the wafts of Yperite No. 5 from the old ladies in the row behind who apparently SUBMERSED themselves in it before stepping out this evening, no matter how long this sentence stretches out in an attempt to convey the out-and-out buggery tedium of such an evening spent trapped and chafing, the concertgoer in question must remain seated until the bitter end, which shall be signalled by the susurration of many hands striking other hands in a symbolic gesture of appreciation and/or effing relief.
So there I sit, eyes bulging slightly. And the guy who stands up in front of all the other people with a little stick, who is wearing black, and they're wearing black, and it's all as cheery as a Puritan wedding in November down there, he turns around, and I can tell it's time for him to "address the audience". Sigh. Okay. These next pieces, we are informed, were originally conceived and performed as party music. The gentlefolk of the time would get together in these salons, party it up and dance the night away to these lively tunes. And he didn't say it, but you know, also get drunk to these tunes, get laid to these tunes, and generally pass out behind the buffet table after vomiting shrimp cocktail on their manservant. So this is the club music of its day, music to have a good time to. Well okay then.
Not one of the orchestra members smiled while playing this party music. Frowns, mostly. They were serious musicians playing seriously, because ooh, it's classical. And there I was, surrounded by an audience of stiffs, collars tightly buttoned, hands folded in laps, thin lips set primly, and nobody moving a muscle in the dark auditorium, nobody drinking, nobody dancing, nobody vomiting.
It was wretched. We were corpses in a tomb, with a painted wooden diorama of what it was to be alive nailed to the stage in front of us. If you could take that music and play it in its originally intended context, I would probably like it. I like shrimp cocktail. But nobody is going to do that. And most every concert, recital, symphony, opera, you name it I have ever been to, has similarly suffocated with a stale lifelike-but-not-quite-alive feeling because the music has been preserved, stuffed, put behind glass, museumed. So I hate it.
Thank chthulhu for P.D.Q. Bach.
I sort of have to say sorry to all the members of my family, both sides, who love their classical music and have a right to defend it. Are we not to love the sinner, but hate the sin? I love you, family. You just gotta give that bad stuff up.
Okay, some examples of it make me stop and go "hmm, nice I guess". Like I would at a museum. And then I move on. BECAUSE I'M BORED. Because it is like being at a museum. It's music that once was alive, but now is set in lifelike poses.
One particuarly fine example was a concert I attended to see my sister play with an orchestra. She's professional, and I like to see her play because she's very serious and she strikes the piano so hard she bounces in her seat but then flows like water over the keyboard and it's like watching a dancer, really. So that I enjoy. But then comes the filler, where the orchestra plays a few numbers without the soloist. At this point, I know I should get up and go to the lobby, the bathroom, the car, the waffle house down the street, anything to escape the may-cause-drowsiness effect of music that is dead but hasn't been decently buried.
But no, I am hemmed in by Social Obligation Bylaw 3077, which states that any concertgoer, no matter how cramped his legs are in those diddly little seats they designed back when the average patron was a PYGMY, no matter how strong the wafts of Yperite No. 5 from the old ladies in the row behind who apparently SUBMERSED themselves in it before stepping out this evening, no matter how long this sentence stretches out in an attempt to convey the out-and-out buggery tedium of such an evening spent trapped and chafing, the concertgoer in question must remain seated until the bitter end, which shall be signalled by the susurration of many hands striking other hands in a symbolic gesture of appreciation and/or effing relief.
So there I sit, eyes bulging slightly. And the guy who stands up in front of all the other people with a little stick, who is wearing black, and they're wearing black, and it's all as cheery as a Puritan wedding in November down there, he turns around, and I can tell it's time for him to "address the audience". Sigh. Okay. These next pieces, we are informed, were originally conceived and performed as party music. The gentlefolk of the time would get together in these salons, party it up and dance the night away to these lively tunes. And he didn't say it, but you know, also get drunk to these tunes, get laid to these tunes, and generally pass out behind the buffet table after vomiting shrimp cocktail on their manservant. So this is the club music of its day, music to have a good time to. Well okay then.
Not one of the orchestra members smiled while playing this party music. Frowns, mostly. They were serious musicians playing seriously, because ooh, it's classical. And there I was, surrounded by an audience of stiffs, collars tightly buttoned, hands folded in laps, thin lips set primly, and nobody moving a muscle in the dark auditorium, nobody drinking, nobody dancing, nobody vomiting.
It was wretched. We were corpses in a tomb, with a painted wooden diorama of what it was to be alive nailed to the stage in front of us. If you could take that music and play it in its originally intended context, I would probably like it. I like shrimp cocktail. But nobody is going to do that. And most every concert, recital, symphony, opera, you name it I have ever been to, has similarly suffocated with a stale lifelike-but-not-quite-alive feeling because the music has been preserved, stuffed, put behind glass, museumed. So I hate it.
Thank chthulhu for P.D.Q. Bach.
I sort of have to say sorry to all the members of my family, both sides, who love their classical music and have a right to defend it. Are we not to love the sinner, but hate the sin? I love you, family. You just gotta give that bad stuff up.
I could say so many things about this, but I won't bother, since I know Rachelle enjoys classical music and has probably said it all. About CBC, you are clearly as unfamiliar with it as you are with real classical music, since there are several CBC stations, only one of which plays 99% classical music. On CBC Radio One, you'll hear some really weird music (e.g. Definitely Not the Opera) and lots of discussion (e.g. The Current), but only in the very early morning and very late at night do they have classical music. Somehow I get the idea you haven't tried it any more than beating yourself with a scorpion-filled sock. ;)
Whoops, didn't mean to be quite so anonymous; that just seems cowardly. Retaliation can be aimed at Fawn, perhaps through my blog @ http://spaces.msn.com/members/fawnfritzen.