Sonic backgrounds: Obloquy to the message.
I thought I would say something really important. After listening to yet another performance of Götterdämmerung, and I hasten to add lest already I have given the wrong impression, that it was a very good performance apart from the ‘Bravo’ hurled out at the end. The voice, by the way, which penetrated the air was very similar to that which resounded at a different, and much reduced, performance in the promenade concerts many years ago. It seemed that the utterer of that earlier bravo may have listened to the rebukes of his peers at the quite untimeliness of the oral intrusion of his voice on the earlier occasion, ah, but me! I have been distracted and consequently left unfinished, an error which my better grammaticastic friends will not let me forget, a sentence which now lacks both a subject and a verb. Let me start again with what I really intended to say. Just for the sake of distraction: Did you notice the importance of the second comma in this paragraph?
Whilst listening, or perhaps more accurately, watching and listening to an audio visual presentation I realised why I do so much dislike the presence of music in the background. It was that that prompted me to think of yet another performance the closing moments, well only about ten minutes worth actually, of the same opera. I remember reading many years ago of one man, Bruckner his name, who on going to the performances of Wagner’s operas only went for the background music. His biographer concluded that had Anton ever opened his eyes during a performance he would have never entered the theatre again. I understand that, I have a similar view, as good as the story may be in itself – and perhaps a few of them are but most can be summed up in three words two of which are power and money and the third is the only one needed for opera buffa – the story is only a hook on which to hang even better music, so when going to the opera, I take quite a similar view to Anton. Audio visual performances consist of two parts, audio and visual. Now whilst the audio part can be split into many tracks, it behoves the engineer to ensure that they produce a homogenous, appropriate and pleasing mixture. I need to return to the point.
Perhaps some, or even many of you, have been to a performance of St Anthony’s chorale, in one of its many forms, by a junior school orchestra. If so you will know exactly what perfect fifths should not sound like. If you have never been to such a performance, may I suggest you keep your ears open for one, or indeed any junior school orchestra concert for despite the impurity of the fifths, such orchestras are well worth the listening for the quality of the musicianship will still be appreciated and from which the real music shine, perhaps better sound. Technique can be learned and improved even by the long ears of Mozartian disdain, musicianship is much harder to obtain.
So, to the point, I remembered during this other audio visual presentation listening to a world leader speaking of the overcoming of the will, behind which Götterdämmerung was being played. Whether it was a particularly good performance is neither here nor there, Wagner is almost at his best in this work and the music is captivating even when played badly, more so than St Anthony’s. It was most interesting. It was really quite a clever marketing device, but there was a canny media director managing the public face of the government as one might expect. The music is quite engaging, which is perhaps somewhat of an understatement, but also quite provocative. The speech is also. What struck me though was that though I had been impressed I had completely missed what had been said. For all I knew it might have been a description of antics of the teddy bears at their picnic except that a few phrases did stand out such as ‘They must be careful’, which of course would be true if you are on a picnic playing near water and ‘Don’t play with trifles’, which again surely must be a warning both to those who would fill their bellies before they came to the picnic and to those who simply wanted a custard pie fight, or had already eaten far too much, like most ten year old boys at a picnic, and who really did want to eat the trifle but simply could not manage to swallow another spoonful. The use of background music had this rather unfortunate effect of distracting you from what is actually being said, which if you had heard, rather like Anton you would not want to ever hear again.
It was finding myself distracted by some very well performed, unlike the St Anthony’s, but completely inane, unlike the St Anthony’s, trivia to which my ears had become attuned and which as a consequence caused them not to listen to the words which then themselves became the background, it was that that reminded me of the matter of the overcoming of the will, and why background music is, well abhorrent. In some circumstances of course the use of this phenomena is completely intentional. If you listen to ‘Einstein on the Beach’ then you may realise after a time, if you ever thought that this was in some way akin to opera or rap where the words do have meaning, and so tried to listen to the words being spoken, despite the constant shifting of the repetitive patterns in Glass’s music, that the words are really quite inconsequential and a reading of ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ would have sufficed. We have in Einstein what is a wonderful inversion of the idea of background music, which gives the impression that the music is there simply to provide a foil for the words. The reality is quite the opposite. If you are a lover of Glass then you may, feel free to, disagree with my conclusion, I shall not be offended nor inclined to think otherwise for reasons which I have already set out.
In the audio visual presentation which is the subject of this report, it was the words that mattered, the music was merely incidental, and not incidental take note. Much incidental music is quite consequential as Midsummer Night’s Dream or the Peer Gynt suite, which are worthy works in their own right. The presence of the merely incidental sounds here, was both unnecessary and distracting. Now, it is as true that if one of the auditors was distracted then it must be the case that others were too, as it is that if in class you have a question someone else shall too, and therefore you need to speak out because the other person is too shy to do so. But it has become the ‘norm’, would that it were ‘Norn’ instead, to underlie many oral presentations with this kind of thing. Even news reports will be adulterated by background noise. I wonder whether the producers ask themselves whether the music that has been chosen for them is appropriate for that report. Prokofieff and Korngold may have been able to write background music appropriate for a film scene, but for a real life report? HItchcock knew the value of getting the music right. Do the even more ephemeral news reports have the budgets to produce just the right underlying sounds? If not, why add these sounds and alienate your auditors from what is actually being said, unless all you really want is for your auditors to have a good feeling about what was said, as in the overcoming of the will, and so return for more of your news.
Perhaps the ephemerality of the news reports is the only reason that no-one really cares. Tomorrow no-one will remember that all they heard was the background and the real message, as they say, went in by one ear and out by the other.
If the message matters, speak the message not something else. And of course, you will say to me, Physician, heal thyself! And quite rightly too for this note, article, post, report or whatever else you may wish to call it contains much that is neither relevant nor important, having nothing to do with the conclusion or message I wished to convey, and which you will no doubt not remember, so to conclude then with the message of the message:
If the message matters, speak the message.
From which what do you conclude about this message?
