Is there some kind of significant difference between listening to classical music at a concert and listening to it in a recording? What does going to a concert offer above a CD? Do you listen to most of your music at concerts or at home?

I'm reading something about Andre Bazin and he's making a point about how radio isn't a creative medium, saying how "the ease of physical access that radio allows to works of art is at least as antagonistic to the nature of these works as any tampering with their form." He says "the Fifth Symphony is no longer Beethoven's work when you listen to it while in your bathtub; music must be accompanied by the ritual of attending a concert, by the sacrament of contemplation." So does "attending a concert" mean something more? Can't one contemplate the music while at home just as well?

While I think that at least some of his attitude is elitist BS, I have yet to hear a recording that matches the audio quality of attending a symphony concert. Being there also allows you to focus on a specific section or instrument in a way impossible to duplicate when just listening at home. Seeing the power of a symphony can be breathtaking. There is so much more to music than just a guitar and drums. Of course, the anticipation of attending any event usually adds to the total enjoyment.

We in St. Louis are very fortunate to have a magnificent symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra , winner of six Grammys, and the second-oldest symphony in the US. One long time director, Leonard Slatkin left us to become director to become the director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, and went on to become the principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. His replacement, Hans Vonk* had conducted at La Scala in Milan. He had to resign due to ill health. The current director is David Robertson, was the first individual to serve simultaneously as Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon and Artistic Director of Lyon's Auditorium. He has recently been mentioned by many (including the Chicago Sun-Times and by some influential Chicagoans) as a potential successor to Daniel Barenboim as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as to Lorin Maazel at the New York Philharmonic.

* During his first year here, bumper stickers appeared all over in St. Louis - "Honk If You Vonk".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

A recording done in a studio captures the best technical playing, going so far as to piece together different takes. Fine and dandy. What is lost is the ambience of the concert hall. I attended the final recital of Jascha Heifitz decades ago. Not only to be there, but to have Gregor Piatagorsky sit directly in front of you, and Ashkenazy to your right in the same row. Man, you can't beat that. And then to have the master himself play the Praeludium from the Bach Partita as an encore. I've been to heaven people, and didn't have to die to get there.

I could not agree more. I saw Artur Rubinstein on several occasions and not one of his many recordings comes even close to the breathtaking excitement of hearing him 'live'. And on the one occasion when I saw Sviatoslav Richter my feet subsequently did not touch the floor for the next several days...
We need recordings because we need recordings. Live concerts are fantastic one-offs. Toto in concert are ten times the band that Toto on CD are...but just try to wrest my CDs of Toto from me...you'll be sorry...

Ah, I see. The idea that a recording doesn't play the whole experience, only a filtered kind of experience, makes sense to what Bazin is saying. Thanks everyone.

Ritz, I didn't know you were a Toto fan. Kind of an odd pick. I don't hear too many Toto fans. Of all the bands from that era, they aren't your favorite are they?

I hope Bazin is speaking only of music when he says that radio isn't a creative art. Some of the plays presented on radio were excellent, and, until CGI, created images in the mind's eye that couldn't be duplicated on film or the stages. In fact, some of what radio did was superior to most CGI movies. Nothing is more visual than the human imagination. Hearing Stan Freeberg's description of Lake Michigan filled with hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream from dump trucks, and then topped with a cherry flown by a Royal Canadian Air Force plane to cheers of thousands is something that simply cannot be done well, if at all, outside of radio...and your imagination.

DG makes an excellent point: decades ago radio forced people to imagine...what all was in Fibber Magee's closet? What did the Shadow look like? Since then, there has been no need for imagination, everything is seen, not thought. Too bad.

Justin, to get a better understanding of ther power of radio and human imagination, read about The War of the Worlds, a radio adaptation based upon H. G. Wells' classic novel, performed by Orson Welles' Mercury Theater.

Here is a downloadable mp3 of not only Welles' program, but many other radio programs. Programs like this are also available on cassette tape, and, I assume, CDs. I have quite a few old radio broadcsts on mp3.

I think he's just talking about things that are adapted to radio. Adaption of art is the subject. But really, he still is probably not thinking of the imagination. I agree with that.

Yeah, I know about the War of the Worlds radio panic. It does prove that imagination plays a big part. I didn't realize that Orson Welles and H.G. Welles were actually connected though.

H.G. Wells and Orson Welles were not related. Wells wrote his novel, "War of the Worlds", in 1898. Orson Welles' radio adaptation based upon H. G. Wells' classic novel, was performed by Mercury Theatre on the Air as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938.

I don't think there is a connection between Orson and HG other than the broadcast.

I understand what the guy is saying. I understand how it could be taken as elitist but I do think he has a good point. With rebroadcasts of any type of music, there is a tendency to not connect to the nature of the people actually playing the instruments and the interaction of the music. The overall quality of the music changes when it is edited and put into the mixer to make it all the right volume and all nice and neat. It strips it of the emotion and passion that comes across listening to a performance live.

Sometimes I have fallen in love with music that I formerly didn't like because of seeing it live. Music becomes flat and less lively when recorded and replayed.

I think that this is especially the case with Jazz. I can only stand to listen to it live because you can see the instruments, the players and the interaction. The different volumes of the live instruments and the varying degrees to which the musicians have to strain to make it work do not come across in a recording. Recorded jazz just has no life to me.

Going to see jazz greats live on the otherhand is a totally different experience.

I suppose a lot of it has to do with what you are familiar with though. I typically go to see a lot of concerts and have changed my opinion of bands after seeing them live - some for good and some for bad.

I don't think the guy was saying that radio, as in old radio shows, isn't creative. He is just trying to say that there is a real change when listening to recorded music and people should experience the music live... especially kids, IMO.

Yeah, I think you're right, Ami.

What he actually says is "radio is not quite an art like the cinema: it is first and foremost a means of reproduction and transmission." So I guess he thought original shows weren't the primary part of radio. It was written in 1948, and it's definitely true today, anyway.

In 1948, most Americans had a radio, but not a TV. Much of radio was original material, drama, comedy, serials, etc. at that time. (Much of early TV was carried-over shows from radio.) It was like that until at least the mid 1950s.

Hmm, then that does seem like something weird to say.

DG, several major TV series over here began life as radio programmes, over the past 30 years or so. And ironically many people in the UK are unaware that this is the case! Very few here listen to serious radio drama, preferring to use the radio either at full tilt, blaring out non stop rock, or else turned low, using the medium merely as aural wallpaper.

I have been a great fan of radio drama all my life and never use the radio as background noise. Either enjoy the silence or actively choose to listen to a particular programme, is my philosophy.

I do not know the Stan Freberg sketch to which you refer (it sounds marvellous!) but when much younger (around 45 years ago!) I would listen to him, Bob Newhart and others in surreal, hysterically funny monologues (anyone remember 'The Driving Instructor'?)

Radio drama requires no scenery, we provide that, and we all do it differently. It is an absolutely marvellous medium. One wonders about the Bazin comment. Over here, a skilled and talented individual will often give a long interview, outlining his philosophies clearly and carefully. The gutter press will then abstract a 'quotable quote' from the interview and publish it quite out of context (remember the classically lifted quote of John Lennon 'We are more popular than Jesus' and the damage that lifting those words out of context did to the Beatles?)

It seems impossible that a man of Bazin's pedigree would not have thought through that particular statement, without clothing it richly in a context embracing a much larger and comprehensive overview.

Jusork, there are many bands whom I have loved and respected over the years, and my tastes in these matters have changed, as they have in so many other ways. Toto, Miami Sound Machine, Steely Dan, are three very different bands whom I enjoy greatly, if occasionally, these days.

quote:

Originally posted by juanruiz:
A recording done in a studio captures the best technical playing, going so far as to piece together different takes. Fine and dandy. What is lost is the ambience of the concert hall. I attended the final recital of Jascha Heifitz decades ago. Not only to be there, but to have Gregor Piatagorsky sit directly in front of you, and Ashkenazy to your right in the same row. Man, you can't beat that. And then to have the master himself play the Praeludium from the Bach Partita as an encore. I've been to heaven people, and didn't have to die to get there.

All true.And in British concert halls you get the added benefit of noisy coughing between movements (In Britain we don't applaud between movements, so the coughing fills in the silences ) Last night at the Proms it was interesting to note how the audience responded. We get quite a number of foreign visitors at the Proms. At the very first break between movements there was silence until a few foreigners clapped.At the next break rather fewer did. At the first break in the next concerto, taking the hint, nobody applauded at all ! However the coughers coughed just the same. It must take considerable practice to hold your cough for a whole opening movement and then do the same for each one thereafter.

Whether they always do this I know not but when the Salzburg orchestra resumed after the interval the members threw sweets into the audience. These sweets were seemingly mints but may (and we do hope so, because it would be a nice joke) have been cough sweets.

quote:

Originally posted by Ritzmar:
Radio drama requires no scenery, we provide that, and we all do it differently. It is an absolutely marvellous medium. One wonders about the Bazin comment. Over here, a skilled and talented individual will often give a long interview, outlining his philosophies clearly and carefully. The gutter press will then abstract a 'quotable quote' from the interview and publish it quite out of context (remember the classically lifted quote of John Lennon 'We are more popular than Jesus' and the damage that lifting those words out of context did to the Beatles?)

It seems impossible that a man of Bazin's pedigree would not have thought through that particular statement, without clothing it richly in a context embracing a much larger and comprehensive overview.

It's possible I missed some kind of context, although I'm not sure how. I'll see if I can put it in context. The essay is about the way books are transformed into movies, an entirely different form, but still keeps ideas and themes, recreating them in different ways. He then explains that some movies are faithful to the spirit of the original and equal in value to the original, and some are like a condension of the characters and plot. He says, "to be sure, one must first know to what end the adaption is designed: for the cinema or for its audience." Then "the problem of adaption for the audience is much more evident in the case of radio. Indeed, radio is not quite an art like the cinema: it is first and foremost a means of reproduction and transmission. The digest phenomenom resides not so much in the actual condensing or simplification of works as in the way they are consumed by the listening public. The cultural interest of radio is that it allows modern man to live in an environment of sound comparable to central heating." And that's most of the main point about that part. It doesn't come up again. The radio part is still a little confusing. Does it more sense now to you?

quote:

Originally posted by jusork:
"The cultural interest of radio is that it allows modern man to live in an environment of sound comparable to central heating." And that's most of the main point about that part. It doesn't come up again. The radio part is still a little confusing. Does it more sense now to you?

No, rather less, if anything...

Radio is a massive area. Bazin is focusing on one tiny angle of one tiny part. Only by comparing central heating to using MOR music as aural wallpaper can I make any sense at all of that analogy.

Take DG's classic, if extreme example about HG Wells' radio version of 'War of the Worlds'. The central heating would have to be approaching the temperature of fusion in a nuclear reactor to mirror the public reaction to that broadcast at the time...and rightly so. Bazin is being naiively simplistic and, so it would appear to me, has not on this occasion really thought through the full implications of what he is stating.

I listen a lot to radio, particularly R4 in the UK when I have the opportunity, and presently am dividing my time between the 'Today' programme and typing this. I do not need to see the faces of the politicians being interviewed to follow the threads of their arguments, radio works fine for me, here.

Areas where, for me, radio totally fails include natural history programmes and geological programmes in the field, amongst others. TV does these kinds of documentaries so much better that I often find myself turning off the radio, say, where someone is watching a badger at close quarters, or describing how a particular chain of stalactites was formed 20 million years ago, when I cannot physically see what they are describing.

Quiz shows, comedy, drama, news reports, religious discussions, Reith Lectures, etc. all work perfectly well for me, on radio. Thus I can, as now, use the freedom from visual captivity to walk around whilst still listening intently and make a cup of tea (it being rather too early for the Lagavulin at this time of day, even for me...!)

...A quick 'PS' for Fred. As a child I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. The central and most important part of the Mass is the consecration (transubstantiation of bread & wine into body & blood of Christ). The explosion of coughing and sneezing after this most sacred event has been got out of the way has to be experienced to be believed. When younger I used to contemplate the irony of pneumonia and tuberculosis being simultaneously created in the congregation as transubstantiation took place...

Yeah, I agree with you. He does mention some of the radio programs that he watches though. Most are talk, I think. Maybe he's never tried to listen to radio shows.

This was a great question, so I wanted to help keep it alive.

Hands down, nothing is ever as good as being there.

A lot depends on the acoustics of the venue itself, the size of the venue, and where you're sitting, and what's playing. But at a venue with great acoustics, Beethoven symphonies are especially amazing.