The Huffington Post yesterday published a piece by violinist James Ehnes, writing thoughtfully and eloquently about the effects of seeing a young audience member recording his recital on a smartphone.
Ehnes begins:
At a recent concert where I played the Brahms concerto, a young man in the second row filmed my entire performance on his smartphone. When I first noticed him, my reaction was one of surprise and mild annoyance. This sort of thing is prohibited, as a rule, in most if not all traditional concert halls. I stared at him with my best, “seriously?” look, but he didn’t seem phased by that at all. So I just tried to ignore it as best I could. I’m guessing he had no idea that I might find his filming objectionable. He applauded enthusiastically and smiled at me at the end.
This opens the floodgates to a number of conflicting and conflicted emotions and rationalisations. Ehnes mentions the potential negative effects of pirate videos on his livelihood — as well as the potential to make new and devoted fans with it along the way.
It is a beautifully balanced perspective that resolves nothing, but puts the issues into a balanced perspective.
The violinist closes with this thought, which, for me is the most significant issue:
I can’t help but feel that the need to “document” one’s life in every detail is a mania that can subtract from one’s enjoyment of the moment, and, more emphatically, one’s memory of a special event. I can’t know the mind of the young man who filmed my recent performance, but I can say without hesitation that I am glad that the most treasured concerts of my memory were not recorded. Memories can be perfect; live performances never are. As desperately as I might want to relive a certain concert experience, I know that with the second listen, or the third, or the 20th, it would become something different to me. Little infelicities, inconsequential at the time, would become distracting, or even irritating. The linear mystery of the live performance would be lost, as I knew better and better what was coming next. The temptation to “spot listen” to favorite passages would lead to the destruction of the line of the narrative.
What kind of an audience are we becoming exactly?
Please read the full article here.
John Terauds