My father took me to my first classical music concert when I was 10. Sheffield City Hall, which had a regular Friday night series, featuring (but not exclusively) the Hallé orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli.
It was a rare treat, perhaps 2 a year, involving a late night (for me) drive home over the dark moor.
I don’t remember the programme of that first concert in detail, except for Till Eulenspiegel & an impressive piano concerto from Paul Badura-Skoda.
I remember most vividly the crush I developed on the first cellist (or was he only second fiddle?) which inspired me to make a hopeless attempt to learn to play the instrument myself, with a loaned instrument & a peripatetic teacher generously provided by the County Education Authority.
My small rural Grammar School organised regular trips to the same concerts. Only interested 4th & 5th formers were invited – plus 6th formers of course: but since most children left school at 16 they very nearly did not count.
I was still only in the 2nd form (age 12) when the school music teacher told me that since not all the tickets had been taken for the next trip, I could take one, if I liked & my parents would give their permission.
And so I did, sitting at the front of the bus under the protective eye of the teachers, away from the teenage shenanigans at the back.
The concert opened conventionally enough with a Beethoven overture. But it got better after that.
As we made our way back to the bus the music teacher asked me if I had enjoyed the evening . Yes, thank you.
You liked it? Yes.
Even the last piece? Yes (a bit surprised).
You didn’t find it strange? Difficult? No (really puzzled now).
Oh! Lots of people think it’s too modern, not music.
I felt I had failed in some way, but it had certainly seemed less ‘difficult’ than the Beethoven; to this day his orchestral music is something which belongs more on the endurance than the enjoyment side.
It was some time later that we were taught about the initial reception to the Rite of Spring. Sacre du printemps.
And so this poem by Siegfried Sassoon strikes lots of chords with me
Concert Interpretation
The Audience pricks an intellectual Ear …
Stravinsky … Quite the Concert of the Year!
Forgetting now that none so distant date
When they (of folk facsimilar in state
Of mind) first heard with hisses – hoots – guffaws
This abstract Symphony; (they booed because
Stravinsky jumped their Wagner palisade
With modes that seemed cacophonous & queer;)
Forgetting now the hullabaloo they made
The Audience pricks an intellectual Ear
Bassoons begin … Sonority envelops
Our auditory innocence; & brings
To me, I must admit, some drift of things
Omnific, seminal, & adolescent.
Polyphone through dissonance develops
A serpent-conscious Eden, crude but pleasant;
While vibro-atmospheric copulations
With mezzo-forte mysteries of noise
Prelude Stravinsky’s statement of the joys
That unify the monkeydom of nations.
This matter is most indelicate indeed!
Yet one perceives no symptom of stampede.
The Stalls remain unruffled: craniums gleam
Swept by a storm of pizzicato chords:
Elaborate ladies reassure their lords
With lifting brows that signify ‘Supreme’
While orchestrated gallantry of goats
Impugns the astigmatic programme-notes.
In the Grand Circle one observes no sign
Of riot: peace prevails along the line.
And in the Gallery, cargoed to capacity
No tremor bodes eruptions & alarms.
They are listening to this not-quite-new audacity
As though it were by someone dead, – like Brahms.
But savagery pervades Me; I am frantic
With corybantic rupturing of laws.
Come dance, & seize this clamorous chance to function
Creatively – abandoning compunction
In anti-social rhapsodic applause!
Lynch the conductor! Jugulate the drums!
Butch the brass! Ensanguinate the strings!
Throttle the flutes! … Stravinsky’s April comes
With pitiless pomp & pain of sacred springs …
Incendiarise the Hall with resinous fires
Of sacrificial fiddles scorched & snapping …
Meanwhile the music blazes & expires;
And the delighted audience is clapping.
And I am left wondering. I first heard it 40 years after that riotous premier in May 1913.
What today, from the 1960s, in any branch of the arts might still be regarded with shock, as opposed to mere dislike, distaste, or disdain?
