If you’ve been wracking your brain lately trying to determine just what is the stupidest idea ever, wrack no more, for I have found it. It it summarized in Daniel Levitin’s October 26 New York Times op-ed entitled “Dancing in the Seats”.
Music can be a more satisfying cerebral experience if we let it move us physically. When we hear a chord we like in works by Sibelius or Mahler, our brains want to shout out “Yeah!” When an orchestra builds the timbral mass in Ravel’s Bolero, we want to break out of our seats and dance and show how good it feels. Stand up, sit down, shout, let it all out. As the managers of Lincoln Center contemplate renovations, I say rip out some of the seats and give us room to move.
Yes, Mr. Levitin’s thesis is that music, since the dawn of time has been inextricably linked with dance and jubilation, ergo, it seems unnatural to sit quietly with our hands crossed while listening to classical music in concert. “Most of us would be shocked if audience members at a symphony concert got out of their chairs and clapped their hands, whooped, hollered and danced — as people would at a Ludacris concert. But the reaction we have to Ludacris or U2 is closer to our true nature”, writes Mr. Levitin, seemingly with surprise. Defecation is closer to my true nature, so would that make it okay at a concert?
Mr. Levitin’s op-ed is littered with so many illogical statements it is astonishing that it was published in a major newspaper. His entire irrational argument, however, seems to be rooted in one faulty premise:
Music and dance have also always been a communal activity, something that everyone participated in. The thought of a musical concert in which a class of professionals performed for a quiet audience was virtually unknown throughout our species’ history.
That may be so, but novels and chess and open-heart surgery were virtually unknown throughout our species’ history. That doesn’t mean that the societal conventions that we have established vis à vis those activities are invalid. Cavemen painted pictures at Lascaux in the Paleolithic era, 16,000 years ago. It wasn’t until relatively recently that we hung paintings in public museums. Does that mean we should allow children to take crayons to the walls of the Uffizi? Of course not.
The facts are these: there are some activities for which our culture has prescribed standards of acceptable behavior; classical music is an inherently cerebral art which often requires considered attention be paid in order to appreciate its subtleties.
There is an overwhelming body of music that has been written with the expressed intent of inspiring dance. Enjoy it in whatever way makes you happy. But Sibelius and Mahler–just to cite Mr. Levitin’s examples–didn’t write dance music. Even Ravel’s Bolero–even Ravel’s La Valse–were composed as concert music, to be listened to by an audience seated quietly in chairs, tapping a foot, perhaps. Those gentlemen never imagined that people would one day be able to enjoy recordings in their own homes. For you dancing, hooting-types, shout your hearts out in privacy. But when you’re at a concert, keep still and shut the hell up.
Filed under: Art, Music, Popular Music, Rantings on October 29th, 2007 | No Comments »
I am not a painter, nor do I possess any skill at drawing or sculpting. But I appreciate good art as much as anyone. So it never ceases to disgust me when masterpieces are stolen, and whisked away by masked brigands.
I 