Well david, your countryman Lebrecht has the answer for you. Check it out here : It is a combination of ignorance and mortification. Apparently the poor man's name is now known (he is a long term subscriber)!!!!

Thanks for this Andromaque! Very interesting explanation, though perhaps still leaving one a bit mystified, as one of the comments on Lebrecht's post points out.

By the way, and totally OT, your name always reminds me of the character Andromaque in Berlioz's opera "Les Troyens". The scene in which she presents her son Astyanax to Priam the king, after her husband Hector has been killed, is to me one of the most moving in all opera. It seems as though all the sorrows of war are in it. And she doesn't sing a note.

Here in the sticks, we call it family.

But apparently it is now known that the man had a new iphone and switched it off but was not aware that the alarm was on etc. (discussed a few posts above).
I wonder if he will be outed.

I think it's worth noting that the idea that this cell phone was ringing an alarm, due to its "persistent nature" is merely the opinion of the conductor who was irritated by it. The truth is he would have no idea whether it was an alarm or not. You can assign any tone to any function on most phones. If the user had his voice mail turned off, the phone could easily ring out until it was answered. I don't use voice mail and my phone will ring out for well over a minute if I don't pick it up. It's actually the network which determines how long a phone rings unanswered before it self-cancels.

I believe the guy was receiving a phone call and was hoping the person calling would hang up but they didn't. If he had an alarm that wouldn't stop, he would have rushed to turn it off because he would know that it wouldn't stop until he canceled it. The man's behaviour is consistent with an embarrassed man hoping the caller would quickly hang up and he could pretend it was somebody else. Unfortunately for him, his caller was quite determined!

My impression is quite different. I think he froze, a la the deer in the headlights. He did not know what to do when the alarm went off because he didn't understand the phone. Silly technophobe.

I know that's quite a speculation, but it's as good as any other, given the "facts" as they are known.

In any case, I'm not going to blame the conductor here. I think I would be more than irritated in his case.

What's the big deal? He got a call, he had a new iphone, so it rang though he had the right intentions (he thought he had put it on silent, etc). It rang, the conductor being a d*** stopped the concert. The distinguished members of PW in addition demand that the guy be "outed". I really don't have a clue why. The world is a strange place.

IMO, I don't think calling the conductor a d*** is really called for..I mean, think about it. You listen to almost the entirety of an entire symphony, at almost the very end of the piece, when it gets super quiet, a cell phone goes off. Then the cell phone keeps ringing. I think it's perfectly understandable to not want to end the entire piece with a ringing phone. I'd argue that almost nobody here would want to do that as well - and would agree it's valid to stop the piece and try again. Regardless of whether you agree with how the audience member was addressed by the conductor, I think that you would agree the action of choosing to stop and try again is probably the best action, given the situation.

The NYT just published an interview with "Patron X" :

"Actually, Patron X said he had no idea he was the culprit. He said his company replaced his BlackBerry with an iPhone the day before the concert. He said he made sure to turn it off before the concert, not realizing that the alarm clock had accidentally been set and would sound even if the phone was in silent mode.

“I didn’t even know phones came with alarms,” the man said.

But as Mr. Gilbert was glaring in his direction, he fiddled with the phone as others around him did, just to be sure, pressing buttons. That was when the sound stopped. It was only in the car going home that his wife checked the settings on his phone and found that the alarm had been set."

“You can imagine how devastating it is to know you had a hand in that,” said the man, who described himself as a business executive between 60 and 70 who runs two companies. “It’s horrible, horrible.” The man said he had not slept in two days.

The man, called Patron X by the Philharmonic, said he was a lifelong classical music lover and 20-year subscriber to the orchestra who was friendly with several of its members. He said he himself was often irked by coughs, badly timed applause — and cellphone rings. “Then God, there was I. Holy smokes,” he said.

“It was just awful to have any role in something like that, that is so disturbing and disrespectful not only to the conductor but to all the musicians and not least to the audience, which was so into this concert,” he said by telephone.

“I hope the people at that performance and members of the orchestra can certainly forgive me for this whole event. I apologize to the whole audience.”

The distinguished members of PW in addition demand that the guy be "outed".

Yea..you're right. Being a d*** had nothing to do with stopping the concert, that was probably the right thing to do. Then addressing the audience member in the way he did was what I find a problem with. I would probably be pissed off too but I would just restart and apologize to the audience (and justify starting over again citing musical reasons. That was unprofessional behavior on his part.

The people on PW are also being unreasonable by wanting to know his identity. I don't understand for what purpose. You should all go back to practicing the piano and stop maligning somebody you don't even know.. nobody even knows the exact details of what happened that day. If it really was an honest mistake (new iphone, etc), that guy doesn't really deserve any of these discussions devoted to him on the internet (including people making comparisons with child molesters!! WTH?!). So I find some of the posts here more disgusting than what happened that day at the concert.

Some more from that recent NYT article, enough to make you feel really bad for the guy:




And... here is surely the best reaction tweet.

-J

Who wants to know his identity? Who cares? I don't see anyone asking to know WHO he is. Why am I not the least bit surprised that you of all people would take the stance you have?

Good for him for owning up to it. He understands, unlike some people here.

Here in the sticks, we call it family. I don't feel a pressing need to be available 24/7 and consider it one of the evils of modern technology that I'm expected to be.

Ever since I discovered, to my astonishment, that the alarm on my phone could ring even if it was switched off, I have made a point of never using the alarm on the phone. I would be too worried that the alarm might just be set to ring during a concert.

Now hang him, says PW.