The function of live music

A few years ago, BBC Radio's "Reith Lectures" were given by the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

He has devoted his life to music; both as an end in itself, and as a means of bringing people together who might otherwise be separated by ethnic and/or political conflict.

Predictably then, his position is that the "Muzak" impulse in our culture has devalued it to something which simply comes out of a hole in the wall, saving us from the terrifying prospect of silence. The word "Muzak" of course derives from the Muzak corporation, one of the first organisations to promote the use of pre-recorded background music, now so endemic in our public spaces.

In general, the more of anything we have, the less we appreciate it. When I was in school, an elderly music master could talk to me of a time when most people did not have a phonograph. The first time he heard the symphonies of Beethoven was by playing them himself from versions scored for the piano. So, when he went to his first orchestral concert, it was a very big deal. We might take a reductive position and say that everything is relative, the world is as it is, and everyone will have their own ideas about what has changed for the better or for the worse. But hang on just a moment before we allow ourselves to be swept away in the self-satisfaction of our consumate realism.

Appreciation is a basic human need. Most people don't get it, certainly not enough of it, whether they're looking after their family, collecting our garbage, or, as I witnessed recently, singing their heart out (not referring to me, I was in the audience).

I'm a performing musician, so I have to declare an interest. In my experience, because of Muzak culture, shortening attention span bequeathed to the world by bombardment with rapidly moving images, or just lack of common courtesy, the only way you can get people to shut up in the presence of live music is to get them to buy tickets and sit down in rows in a hall. From the point of view of the performer on stage in a pub or club, it often seems that the function of the music is to make, or enable, the crowd to shout louder., to enhance their feeling that they're having a great time. Now these good people have probably paid to get in, and the club is not a monastery with a vow of silence, and they're not in the presence of some musician who thinks he's the voice of God or something, warranting total attention. But, biased or not, I do think things have got a bit out of wack here. These people may have paid, but they don't own me. I can't quite resign myself to the fact that my music is merely a commodity. My emotional investment in it may matter to nobody else, but it matters to me. Sure, I have the choice not to work in this field, and play exclusively for myself at home. But the fantasy of sharing it with someone who actually gets it dies very hard, and I think audiences often miss a lot by letting music just wash over them as part of a general social experience, (see my previous post).

I think Barenboim was right to the extent that we probably gain more by appreciating other people's efforts than we lose by proving that we can tell a joke audibly over the band. People do respond to appreciation, and I think all of us, whatever we do, deserve it.