The Spectacle of the Symphony

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THE WHOLE LIFE of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

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IMAGES DETACHED FROM every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life.

The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord
La société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967)
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994)

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To Aberdeen’s down-at-heel Georgian/Victorian concert-hall - The Music Hall - last night for a performance of Sibelius’ 5th Symphony, the concert forming part of the “Naked Classics” series from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra

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http://www.rsno.org.uk/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&Itemid=80&extmode=view&extid=272&date=2011-10-11

The RSNO's successful Naked Classics is coming to Aberdeen for the very first time!
Presenter Paul Rissmann uses an innovative mixture of projections, lighting, on stage demonstrations and interviews with players [sic] to reveal the stories behind musical masterworks and the composers who wrote them. Then, after the interval, sit back and enjoy the work being performed in all its glory by the RSNO.
A distant horn-call, a flight of swans, and copious quantities of vodka – Jean Sibelius got his inspiration from some unlikely places. But when it all came together in his Fifth Symphony, the result was one of the most stirring masterpieces in modern music (and a tune so good that it's been covered by everyone from the Beach Boys to Sinitta). Paul Rissmann and conductor Christian Kluxen take it to pieces and show you how it all works.

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The RSNO’s “Naked Classics” format forgoes the traditional programme of an orchestral concert. The first half of the concert - in which the orchestra usually will play an short overture (opening) piece followed by a concerto (a longer piece, featuring a soloist) is dispensed with in favour of a 45-minute lecture with a sort of son-et-lumière and power-point presentation which tries to explain both the composer and the symphonic work in an informal and entertaining way, the intended aim being to improve the accessibility of symphonic music.

We had serious reservations about this format from the moment we learned that we were to be subjected to it. Firstly, we felt we were being short-changed - we knew we would feel keenly the absence of the overture and concerto. Particularly felt was the lack of a soloist, for often (yes, even here in Aberdeen) we are delighted to be treated to a virtuoso performance from a world-class musician at the very top of their world-renowned talent. But not yesterday. Instead we got a quite boring talk with slides not enlivened even slightly by all the possible bells and whistles of special PowerPoint page-turn and cloud-puff transition effects and the like.

Now, a symphony can be programmatic - which is how the piece is described when it attempts to render an extra-musical narrative or explores a particular thematic subject in linear progression. But more usually the symphonic form exemplifies absolute music which is intended to be appreciated without any specific reference to the outside world. The unity of the symphonic form and its effect upon the listener is enabled by that self-same continuous unmediated single experience which is the symphonic form itself. Other than competent musicians, their instruments, a hall to play in and the score, no other thing is required. It is not textual, it is not pictorial, it is not verbal; it is pure music, it is symphony - the artistic pinnacle of rendered human emotion. So, once the lecture was underway, we were disquieted by the risibly literal interpretations and pat explanations mapped directly one-to-one onto the musical forms and intentions of Sibelius and his work. We were issued a Baedeker, a guide for tourists. We were spoon-fed an insultingly childish sequence of comfortingly primary-colourful pictorial and textual symbols to use as a meaning-eliding gazetteer with which to summarise and contain, categorise and control the abstract and terrifyingly vast depths of unfathomable emotion which are the true content of the monolithic work of genius which is Sibelius' 5th Symphony. The first movement is a bit like a flower opening, apparently. The second is a stream or river - who knew? And the third is exactly like some swans, seemingly. There. Now you know.

So the interval came, and we thought, with relief - good; that’s that then, we can try to forget all about that crap, disconnect from the imposed context, and engage exclusively with the symphony in the second half. But no, the symphony itself was accompanied by powerpoint slides throughout, projected onto a big screen above the audience; the visually intrusive imagery and text referring back to the words and pictures expounded during the lecture in the first half of the evening, reinforcing their asinine associations. It will take all our kung-fu skills and a passive effort of accepting resistance to expunge those hyperrealistic, over-simplistic and literal images and text from their imposed association with this masterpiece symphony. An association where none should exist - uncomplicated words for a complex non-verbal form, unchallenging images for an elaborate non-pictorial artwork - keeping us from a true appreciation of the artwork, quarantining us from the emotional freight which is the true content of the symphony. Not only all that, but the high-intensity digital projector, from which the powerpoint slides were projected, also issued an intrusively insistent and incessant susurration from its position suspended up on high, at the very acoustic focal point of the concert hall. Thus, the unity of the symphonic experience was polluted and rendered into a juddering discontinuity of distraction and false images, caroming over the mutilated surface of a disjointed experience.

So, this “Naked Classics” is a patronising and didactic cheapening of high culture that fails even on its own terms. Rather than bring the audience closer to the music, as is its intention, this “Naked Classics” format does not succeed, for it imposes a cognitive burden of additional and spurious sensory content - redundant barriers which keep the audience at a distance removed from a direct appreciation of the music. The symphony, the highest form of musical composition, should not be presented as a multi-media ‘event’ - it is a single-media artwork. It is not an object to be contemplated from the outside, by external means - for it requires no explanation other than that which is contained within it itself. It requires no representation other than that which it itself offers, directly and personally encountered by the listener’s abstracted perception, a direct intercourse (mediated only by instruments and musical virtousity) between the mind of the composer and the emotional topography of the listener’s consciousness, directly lived in real time. Any further exposition is redundant, a pointless distraction, a misdirection.

We go to symphonic concerts to avoid the Spectacle. We had thought in our idealistic naivety that orchestral music would remain a safe refuge from the common stream. But last night the RSNO - an organisation which should know better; an organisation with a royal warrant to serve as guardians of high culture - took symphony away from us and instead we were spoon fed with the Spectacle of the Symphony.

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>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1.

THE WHOLE LIFE of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

2.

IMAGES DETACHED FROM every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life.

The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord
La société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967)
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994)

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