Trouble at t'Proms

[Mr Pee]

I'm giving serious consideration to a boycott of any premises that sell Jerusalem artichokes. And I shall, of course, turn off the TV on the Last Night when the audience are about to sing THAT setting of THOSE words by Blake.

[Serial_Apologist]

Really? It's NEVER just music?? How sad that you can never enjoy music as an art form without loading it with external connotations.

You obviously listen in a completely different way to me. Just as one example-when I fell in love with the music of Wagner way back when, I had no idea of the controversy surrounding the composer. It was just music. That's what I heard, and that's what I loved. The music transcends any context, whether cultural or political. If you want to drag any external connotations onto it, that's your perogative, but equally one should be able to just listen to the music without burdening it with any excess baggage.

As for the review, yes, I do agree with pretty much every word. And I think your anti- Israeli sentiments are pretty clear, so I don't require much in the way of psychic ability to deduce your viewpoint.

Art for art's ske can still be enriched by finding out about the composer, and the circumstances of his or her life. When one finds out about e.g. Wagner's views about jewish people, one can then query what it must be in his music that so attracts or repels one, or at least makes one feel ambivalent about it.

Why is pop music so unfulfilling to so many who have been introduced to and then prefer more challenging music? You have to understand the circumstances of its creation and its target audience to see why so much of it is so ephemeral and banal. No music exists in some vacuum.

[MrGongGong]

Really? It's NEVER And I think your anti- Israeli sentiments are pretty clear, so I don't require much in the way of psychic ability to deduce your viewpoint.

What anti-Israeli sentiments ?? thats a bit of an assumption (not unsurprising though )

It's not a case of "loading" music
even the most "abstract" electroacoustic music that I enjoy isn't divorced from a context, which is not the same as saying that Wagner is all fascist !!!

Music cannot transcend context, it can create a new context (which has happened to Wagner ) but (and I would part company with Pierre Schaeffer on this) it can never simply be a collection of "objet sonore" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Sear...Concrete_Music)

[Mr Pee]

Art for art's ske can still be enriched by finding out about the composer, and the circumstances of his or her life. When one finds out about e.g. Wagner's views about jewish people, one can then query what it must be in his music that so attracts or repels one, or at least makes one feel ambivalent about it.

Why is pop music so unfulfilling to so many who have been introduced to and then prefer more challenging music? You have to understand the circumstances of its creation and its target audience to see why so much of it is so ephemeral and banal. No music exists in some vacuum.

I agree, and I have found much interest and added enjoyment by reading about composers lives, especially that of Wagner, and the differing views as to how much his political views are reflected in his music dramas.

But Mr GG said that's it's NEVER just music, a statement which I find extraordinary. And a little depressing.

[Mr Pee]

Music cannot transcend context, it can create a new context (which has happened to Wagner ) but (and I would part company with Pierre Schaeffer on this) it can never simply be a collection of "objet sonore"

So....if the music creates a new context....then that context is all about the music.....therefore it IS all about the music.

At last. We are in agreement!!

[Serial_Apologist]

What anti-Israeli sentiments ?? thats a bit of an assumption (not unsurprising though )

It's not a case of "loading" music
even the most "abstract" electroacoustic music that I enjoy isn't divorced from a context, which is not the same as saying that Wagner is all fascist !!!

Music cannot transcend context, it can create a new context (which has happened to Wagner ) but (and I would part company with Pierre Schaeffer on this) it can never simply be a collection of "objet sonore" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Sear...Concrete_Music)

Eddie Prevost wrote a book entitled "No Sound Is Innocent" - which I think just about sums it up. To suggest otherwise as Mr Pee wants to is rather like saying we can uninvent knowledge of nuclear physics, or hear speech depleted of the meaning therein. Meanings are inescapable. As a certain MrGongGong once said, it's all about context. Hmm - wonder what happened to him??

(Someone I lent my copy never gave it back, and I forget who!

[MrGongGong]

So....if the music creates a new context....then that context is all about the music.....therefore it IS all about the music.

At last. We are in agreement!!

Sorry, you have to decide (and I know many find this difficult as they think that Cage and friends were a bit of a "joke") what you mean by "music", do you mean (as Schaeffer) that music is to do with a collection of "Sound Objects" or do you think (alongside Christopher Small et al) that "Musicking" encompasses a wider definition (which is why he came up with the word !). ?

"Music" includes the act of listening and (obviously very importantly at the Proms and Reading Festivals !) the sense of being part of a group listening together in the same physical space............... it also inevitably includes a set of cultural and contextual aspects which could be considered "political" (which is obviously NOT the same as saying that everyone who enjoys Death Metal is a Satanist or everyone who likes Tippet must be a pacifist !)

you beat me to it Serial ........"No Sound is Innocent" is a fascinating read !!!!

[Serial_Apologist]

Sorry, you have to decide (and I know many find this difficult as they think that Cage and friends were a bit of a "joke") what you mean by "music", do you mean (as Schaeffer) that music is to do with a collection of "Sound Objects" or do you think (alongside Christopher Small et al) that "Musicking" encompasses a wider definition (which is why he came up with the word !). ?

"Music" includes the act of listening and (obviously very importantly at the Proms and Reading Festivals !) the sense of being part of a group listening together in the same physical space............... it also inevitably includes a set of cultural and contextual aspects which could be considered "political" (which is obviously NOT the same as saying that everyone who enjoys Death Metal is a Satanist or everyone who likes Tippet must be a pacifist !)

you beat me to it Serial ........"No Sound is Innocent" is a fascinating read !!!!

This could run and run - I am absolutely convinced that these issues lie right at the heart of musical and aesthetic disagreements in general.

[Lateralthinking1]

Number 2,000. Blimey. I would like to use this opportunity to ask the BBC to do the following:

1. Review with RAH the security arrangements. They are obviously not very good.
2. Review the handling of this protest. Had that been the late Brian Haw - it wouldn't have been because he had dignity - he would have been ushered out of there immediately.
3. Ask the police to investigate the incident fully.
4. Play the concert as fully as possible with the protest edited out.

I accept that ordinary protesters against Israeli government policy - I am not in favour of it either - would like responses to them to be nuanced. That distinction between being against Israel and being against Jewishness. That is entirely fair.

However, measure and logic suggest that they should accept that there are nuances too among their throng. Some don't want Israeli occupation. Some don't want Israel to exist. And some want to compare the Israeli situation to the German situation many decades ago. Oh dear. An opposition that is not attracted to aggro and bullying would seek anything from history but that example to support its arguments. The German thing tends to be an absolute giveaway of an individual's true character.

It is noticeable that the specifics are frequently avoided by some activists. One is left to conclude that those people - perhaps the few - would like to see millions forcibly moved to the US or Europe, whatever the human costs to them and the economic costs to us. If that occurred, it would be an abomination way beyond anything that occurred in Germany then or Palestine now. I would probably immediately become Jewish on principle.

Such people are clearly round the twist. You would find them just as easily defending the rights of travellers not to be moved from camps in Essex. I am surprised actually that on the night, the average age of those involved appeared to be somewhat advanced. Most of the people in the SWP I was aware of at university quickly became Conservative MPs and councillors.

[Anna]

The IPO was founded in 1936. It's an orchestra, it doesn't dictate Government policy or get involved in politics, it plays music, it is just about music. This is from an interview with Zubin Mehta three days ago.

The orchestra has played with several Arab soloists but there is still not a strong body of Arabic musicians versed in Western classical music that the IPO can call on, though that is changing. "We have an Arab training programme in the north, in the town of Nazareth – they are not yet ready to join the orchestra but that is my dream. There is talent. It will take a few years. When they are mature enough in their technical command of the instrument we bring them to our school at the Tel Aviv University where we train young musicians to play in the orchestra. That's not to say that these players, when they emerge, will get any special treatment at audition, we have never hired any one out of pity, it is only about music."

On the subject of the protestors, by all means demonstrate outside, hand our leaflets, try and persuade people to boycott but if that fails, don't force your beliefs on people who merely (whether or not they are pro or anti-Israel or couldn't care less) went to hear a concert. I don't see what purpose the protest served except as Lat says, it's an excuse for anti-Semetic behaviour

The suggestion of moving Israel wholesale which Lat has brought up was, if I recall, made by some barking-mad Iranian President some years back.

[DracoM]

Does the East-West orchestra get protests as well so badly as to get organisations to pull them?

[Serial_Apologist]

Number 2,000. Blimey. I would like to use this opportunity to ask the BBC to do the following:

1. Review with RAH the security arrangements. They are obviously not very good.
2. Review the handling of this protest. Had that been the late Brian Haw - it wouldn't have been because he had dignity - he would have been ushered out of there immediately.
3. Ask the police to investigate the incident fully.
4. Play the concert as fully as possible with the protest edited out.

I accept that ordinary protesters against Israeli government policy - I am not in favour of it either - would like responses to them to be nuanced. That distinction between being against Israel and being against Jewishness. That is entirely fair.

However, measure and logic suggest that they should accept that there are nuances too among their throng. Some don't want Israeli occupation. Some don't want Israel to exist. And some want to compare the Israeli situation to the German situation many decades ago. Oh dear. An opposition that is not attracted to aggro and bullying would seek anything from history but that example to support its arguments. The German thing tends to be an absolute giveaway of an individual's true character.

It is noticeable that the specifics are frequently avoided by some activists. One is left to conclude that those people - perhaps the few - would like to see millions forcibly moved to the US or Europe, whatever the human costs to them and the economic costs to us. If that occurred, it would be an abomination way beyond anything that occurred in Germany then or Palestine now. I would probably immediately become Jewish on principle.

Such people are clearly round the twist. You would find them just as easily defending the rights of travellers not to be moved from camps in Essex. I am surprised actually that on the night, the average age of those involved appeared to be somewhat advanced. Most of the people in the SWP I was aware of at university quickly became Conservative MPs and councillors.

I accept everything you have written in tnis post, Lat; but you too have I feel to accept that many point the anti-semitic finger to coiver up their own apologetics for Israeli policies. The fact is that these have gone on for decades, tacitly and indeed explicitly supported by the West, and unchallenged by other than the secular PLO. That organisation came close on several occasions to an accommodation for a two-state solution being the only solution. Isolated, the PLO degenerated into intra-factionalism and corruption, leaving Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank with no one to turn to but Islamofascists with anti-semitism at the heart of their agenda to "drive Israel into the sea". This is where history can lead when injustice festers, and eyes are averted until truths are brought home, as happened last night.

[Flosshilde]

I'm very much with Igor Toronyi-Lalic of the Arts Desk here:-

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4454:bbc-proms-shaham-israel-philharmonic-orchestra-mehta&Itemid=27

He makes some excellent points I think.

Which are?
His first few sentences read -
" ... It meant only one thing. Jews were performing at the Proms. Here we were in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2011 witnessing a stage of musicians being barracked and abused for having the gall to be Jewish. Last year, four more Jewish musicians, the Jerusalem Quartet, had the cheek to perform and broadcast a recital at the Wigmore Hall. They were again heckled and hounded off air. No, not a portrait of Europe in the early 20th century, but Britain in the 21st. I wonder. In a few years, will Jews be able to make music publicly in Britain at all?

The answer to his last question is Yes, of course they will, just as they do now. He seems to be entirely ignorant of the fact that not all Jews are Israeli, or even support Israel - its government, the state, or the basis on which it was founded.

"Mehta and his musicians came out on stage looking deflated? The continued protests must have demoralised them

[Lateralthinking1]

s_a

"Many point the anti-semitic finger to cover up their own apologetics for Israeli policies".

Perhaps but beyond the proclivities of the more extreme elements of the Jewish lobby, and the ineffectiveness of international diplomacy, I am not so sure. Maybe I don't mix in the relevant circles but I haven't met anyone who thinks that the current policies of the Israeli government are "a good thing".

The last wedding that I attended was a traditional Jewish one. Fascinating, educational and very good fun it was too. I loved the music and dance. He had recently spent some time on a kibbutz. She was excelling in my Government Department. Everyone couldn't have been more welcoming to me there. There was so much spirit and heart. Such things influence feelings. Oh, and both while being very proud of their heritage hated the word "Israel" being mentioned, not because they hated the country but they felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed about the Israeli government. So given that was North London, I'd say it was pretty typical.

[ahinton]

Also, one can't help wondering if this demonstration would have gone ahead if the programme had been devoted to composers who perished in the Holocaust. Perhaps it's time now to consider such a programme?

Perhaps so - but what I had in mind (in theory, that is) was a programme of music by composers who have worked since the inception of the state of Israel; Josef Tal is one of the first to occur to me.