Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner A heckler interrupts a viola performance/Is all sound music?

This article appeared in the NYT last week. A "heckler" who was in fact a professional musician loudly interrupts a performance of contemporary music that gave him ear pain. The composer/performer gets distracted and angry: he throws down his instrument , snapping it, and leaves the stage...
More details below. But the "sempiternel" question of is all sound music raises its ugly head again. John Cage RIP.




The Night the Music Died. Really.
By JEANNE CARSTENSEN
Published: June 9, 2011



Chamber music concerts rarely elicit reactions more raucous than polite applause, but last Sunday, an artistic melee more appropriate for a Metallica show broke out at The Royce Gallery in San Francisco after a heckler interrupted a viola performance.


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Adding to the drama was the identity of the heckler, who turned out to be an 85-year-old highly regarded musician.

About midway through a night of contemporary works, John Eichenseer, who goes by the name JHNO, was performing his “Untitled,” a new piece for viola and electronics, when he heard hissing, then an outburst of clapping intended to disrupt his playing, then another.

“It became distracting to the point that I couldn’t continue,” JHNO said later.

He threw down his instrument and stormed off the stage. The sound of his viola cracking — the headstock had snapped off — echoed through the small theater.

Several audience members quickly rose from their seats to pick up the viola and turn off the sound, which was still reverberating through the speakers. One man, identifying himself as a viola player, shouted praise for JHNO’s performance. Other audience members confronted the man in the front row who had caused the disturbance.

Early intermission was called.

The hubbub “was like the Rite of Spring revisited,” said Pamela Z, the performer and composer who organized the evening, part of her ’Room Series of “avant-chamber” music.

Among the musicians in the audience of about 55 was Joan Jeanrenaud, a former Kronos cellist. She recognized the heckler as Bernard M. Zaslav, a viola player with a pedigree as a champion of contemporary music.

Ms. Jeanrenaud recounted that at intermission, Mr. Zaslav remarked that the piece was “a desecration of the viola,” a quotation that was also captured on a video recording.

She said she was surprised by this reaction and added, “Hasn’t John Cage already proved the point that all sound is music?”

Mr. Zaslav, in an interview from his Stanford home, explained his outburst. “The desecration was to my ears, not to the music,” he said. Mr. Zaslav, who uses a cane and hearing aids, said he had been overcome with pain caused by extreme volume and could not exit the theater.

Mr. Zaslav has since apologized to JHNO and Pamela Z.

Regardless of what provoked the incident, the evening prompted fond memories of past rowdy audiences.

Ms. Jeanrenaud recalled that the Kronos Quartet was booed for its performance of Terry Riley’s “Salome Dances for Peace” in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1986. The response was “invigorating,” she said. Mr. Zaslav remembered audience members’ walking out when he performed Artur Schnabel’s 12-tone system works with the Cleveland Symphony in the late 1940s.

Charlton Lee of Del Sol String Quartet, who played before JHNO, was enthusiastic about Sunday night, saying people’s passions had come out.

As a performer, Mr. Lee said, “the worst is when you pour your heart out and then you get a meek applause.”

So we must listen to excruciating sounds and applaud politely?
Where applause is acceptable, disapproval must be also.

This is rather amusing, because I once went to a performance of contemporary music where something similar happened, and we later found out that it was all part of the performance, and the person in the audience shouting was in face the composer, haha.

all sound is not music, as not all words are lyrics. i present to you Exhibit A:



and the reverse side of the question must be asked -- is all no-sound music? i present to you Exhibit B:



(p.s. -- secret hint: you can play both of the above videos simultaneously for an amazing mashup!)

May I take Exhibit B, albeit on the Weeek EEnd...
As for exhibit A, where have I been????? Thanks for the enlightenment Entheo.

P.S. I like that he shows up with the score (the guy in B).. How does he know that 4'33'' are up? someone from backstage? Does the score indicate how to determine the time lapse? Are you supposed to practice your internal time clock???

in a way ya gotta love it:

yesterday was thursday, thursday
today it is friday, friday
we, we, we so excited
we so excited
we gonna have a ball today
tomorrow is saturday
and sunday comes afterwards

btw, that video tops the list of worst pop song of all time (the top video ;-)

This incident is not that of an audience member rejecting avant-garde chamber music. Rather, the audience member was in real pain, as he was having difficulty with his hearing aid, and was unable to exit the hall. Unless I'm misreading the OP--and I just read it again--that's all that happened. A misunderstanding involving a hearing aid.

But then, a misunderstanding will do.

The avant-garde loves to get a reaction--any reaction--other than the tolerant applause they usually do get. A reaction, especially a negative one, makes them feel that they're still alive rather than dead. As quoted in the OP, "the worst is when you pour your heart out and then you get a meek applause.”

And so they got all excited over a misunderstanding. Some old guy can't get to the volume control on his hearing aid, and they pretend it's the glory days of Arnold Schoenberg.

Tomasino

Correct me if I am wrong, but said hearing aids should be separable from the body or able to be switched off, without much drama.. no?? I have heard of situations whereby a hearing aid may emit a loud noise with its wearer unawares.. But here it would seem that the hearing aid guy was hearing actually, so why storm out rather than do what most of the rest of the audience could not: turn the sound off..
I have a feeling that the hearing aid-equipped musician was embarrassed at having interrupted the performance of a colleague and claimed "extreme pain" post-facto.. But I could be wrong or unaware of some hearing aid property.

Both of those videos are music.

This is the most troubling aspect about the article:



Cage proved nothing of the sort. If all sound is music, then there is no distinction between the two and the logical conclusion that follows from this is that the word "music" necessarily becomes obsolete. A dog's bark then, according to Cage's idiotic philosophy, and a Mahler symphony, for example, simply have no distinction aesthetically.


BTW: I bet someone chimes in, "aesthetic judgments are all subjective and therefore relative." Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.
To these people I would reply, if you think relativism is a good philosophical argument then you need to study more philosophy.

Thank you and I agree!

When I saw some bizarre avant-garde performance that annoyed and perplexed most of the audience, and I noticed it'd been funded by the government I can't help but think they're doing a disservice to music. I can imagine at each performance there will be people thinking afterwards "this is why we should not be funding the arts, let it survive on the free market".

I think you're putting words in Cage's mouth there. He never proved, nor did he intend to prove that ALL sound IS music.

That is more the audience's fault for expecting to be constantly spoonfed the familiar and unchallenging.

What are you talking about? A mahler symphony and a beethoven symphony are both unquestionably music but have many distinctions aesthetically.

And while I'm no total relativist, I do at least acknowledge the grey area between relativism and absolutism in which nearly everything, especially music, exists. Philosophers are too tied to their terminology, just as musicians are often so desperate to decide whether or not something can be called music to realise that it really doesn't matter.

I wonder if a better question than "what is the definition of music?" would be whether the resulting product (music, art, whatever you call it) is GOOD. What does it say to people? Is that message beneficial?

I agree its better to think in those terms, though I wouldn't necessarily use those criteria to judge whether a work of art had any value.

Hey, I KNEW that guy!

Bernard Zaslav was the violist with the Fine Arts Quartet in Milwaukee while I was out there for a few years. I heard him perform very often. He was a fabulous violist, arguably the star of the quartet, which of course is unusual for a violist, and was also very well liked.

I remember that when he performed in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, he was so spectacular that I felt sorry for the violin guy, who was also excellent but (IMO) couldn't match Zaslav.

Of course all of that was a long time ago.

The quartet was based at Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which had an incredible music department, including the piano faculty.

musically that song is no worse than any other pop song, the lyrics make it the worst song ever written.

No, it is far worse than a lot of pop songs. Simple chord structure does not equal bad music.

This may not be the right thread for this argument (among the many new-music threads), but the longer I consider my life in music (especially contemporary music) the criterion I keep coming back to is "How good are your ideas?" That even works for 19th and 18th century music.

The ideas can be anything from "how does the composer handle a development section" to "how interesting is this composer's exploration of acoustic properties of a teapot?"

Ideas. Perhaps that notion was implanted in me when I heard a lecture by Morton Feldman where a student told him "You're full of sh*t," and Feldman responded, "So what are you full of...ideas?"

Yup, I'd go for that :P

Only in the very loosest of associations would I call either of those videos music.

Both of these videos may, in fact, use elements of music, most notably either sound or silence, but just as the use of paint on canvass does not make a painting "art," the collection of sounds or lack of sound does not make those videos music, but a parody of music.

Parodies of art are still art. Use of paint on a canvas makes art. Those videos are both art. The question is whether or not they are GOOD art.

Quoting a relatively famous PW member here...this is totally IMO, right?

I wouldn't say that all paint on a canvas is art, or that all sound is art.

To me, what makes something art is the intent with which it was made. If I spill a can of paint on my canvas, mutter an obscenity, and throw away the canvas, I am not throwing away a piece of art. When my dog starts barking, he is not creating art.

If I spill a can of paint on my canvas, look at it, and say, "A-ha! I have created art!" then the canvas is art. If I record my dog barking with the purpose of calling it art, then it is art.

I would definitely consider the Cage video to be art. The Rebecca Black video, I'm not sure about - my impression is that it was conceived as entertainment, not art (two different goals, although they can and do coincide in many cases). However, I don't actually know anything about Rebecca Black, so I may be wrong - if she considers her music to have artistic value beyond entertainment alone, then I would consider her music to be art.

P.S. And to echo others, just because it's art doesn't mean it's good art - that's an entirely different question.

Yeh sorry I meant the add the caveat about accidentally spilling paint, though if a person found the discarded canvas and hung it on their wall then does that make it art? If it is considered as such by someone other than the creator?

I can't think of an example of entertainment I wouldn't consider art. The way I see it human beings only create three things, art, tools and waste.

Of course it is, that goes without saying.

of course my example videos were quite tongue-in-cheek, vis-à-vis robert benchley, should that need clarification, tho the question posed in relation to the latter is valid enough, to which i would reply that sound is the prerequisite for music, but not art.

altho merriam webster defines music as "The art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion" i would be satisfied to simply define music as the conscious organization of sound. the "beauty" part is then left to the eye (ear, heart) of the beholder.

I think you need to re-read my post. I never even mentioned Beethoven.

You sort of misread what he said....he didn't mean or imply that you had said anything about Beethoven.....

Some years ago I got into a very drunken fight with a friend who was all about 'relative' values. It's all relative, as he said.

Total disaster. My friend Brad told me that any soap opera could be the equivalent of a Shakespeare play, it just depends on what our values are, and what turns us on. Classic example of this type of thinking, but what was I to say?

If someone is deeply moved by a soap opera, good on them, but if any soap opera is greater than Beethoven's 9th, Elgar's Cockaigne , Mahler's 3rd, well I should be pleased to be informed of that. We have come a long way.

We've mentioned both extremes now: the perplexing and the unchallenging. I like to think of music like a language, the purpose being to communicate. That probably makes me something of a traditionalist. I think languages can morph, evolve and be used in creative ways but sometimes I hear music that sounds more like somebody's decided to start from scratch (and then is frustrated when nobody can understand them or wants to hear them).

Okay, I'm willing to accept that (nearly? do we have ANY bounds to give the poor word definition?) anything and everything can be considered art, and that the question becomes whether it's any good...

How do we evaluate that? Some art is created with a purpose in mind, that makes things easier. I know why I listen to music. I like the idea of craftsmanship, the idea that something rare is valuable. I think "my two year old could do that" is a valid arguement, when the craftsmanship that takes years to develop is impossible to fake.

Ummm well....

In that situation, I would consider the person hanging the canvas to be the creator, following the tradition of found art. If I discard my claim on an object, someone else can use it to create their own art, in much the same way I would use paint someone else created to make art if I were a painter. (Hope that makes sense).

Yeh but you would modify it in some way. The point I was making was merely that it is ambiguous.