Do I just listen?

A combination of being in the audience of a number of different concerts recently (including our own) and reading the blog post by composer Tom Green about how composers shouldn't have to talk about their work has got me thinking about "context". How much should the music stand on its own? Do you need to know the composer's bio, what they were writing about, what they were trying to achieve, what was going on in their life and history at the time? Does it help to see the composer to connect with them? Or can I just listen?

I've seen 3 different approaches to this recently in small new music gigs:

In our Enlightenment concert with the Ligeti Quartet, we were in a concrete basement, with rows of chairs, drinks available and the quartet on a small stage, quite brightly lit. Before the concert, we'd had a blog post about each piece or composer on the programme. We also had a short printed programme with bios of the composers and a short programme note for each piece. During the concert, Richard Uttley interviewed some of the composers and Richard Jones (viola) from the quartet about the pieces. For Crumb's Black Angels, we projected a picture of the structure of the piece on the side wall and had copies of the score out to look at

The Riot Ensemble's recent Portfolio concert was in a break out type area in MeWe365’s office building (I'm not quite sure how to describe it, it was a nice place, not corporate awful!) with lots of different types of chairs and sofas in a semi-circle around the performance area and some people standing as it was pretty packed. The title of each piece was presented on a TV screen and musical director, Aaron Holloway-Nahum talked about the creation of each piece beforehand and gave 1 or 2 words (like "grime" for Daniel Kidane's piece) to think about before the piece. Each composer came up for a bow after their piece. There was wine included in the ticket price, which was a bonus!

The Hermes Experiment Soundscapes concert was a collaboration with photographer Thurston xxx. The concert was in a church crypt with seats arranged around little tables and a bar at the back. The space was quite large, but it didn't feel empty. The photos were hung from beams, with a short programme note hung underneath that you could read before and after the performance and was also posted on their blog in the run up to the concert. There was also a short physical programme with some information about the project and bios of the composers. The ensemble took turns to introduce each piece before they played it and the relevant photo was projected on the back wall during each piece. The composers all took a bow together at the end of the concert

There are quite a few common things about these 3 concerts: the composer/musician/conductor talking about the pieces, relaxed venues where you can drink while listening, all seated and all quite intimate so you're quite physically close to performers. But they all felt quite different (I'm biased about Enlightenment because I wasn't just an audience member) due to the vibe of each venue, the connection with the composers and also the amount and method of the context you got.

Is the context information actually necessary? In the grand scheme of "classical" concerts, these 3 are all similar. When I go to Prom or a LSO concert or London Sinfonietta concert, it’s often in a large venue, I don't always buy a programme because I often know the pieces or at least the composers and it's unlikely that anyone stands up and introduces the pieces. So I just listen and the largely self-enforced lack of context doesn't result in me not enjoying the concert.

Thinking about other areas of art as a comparison, such as going to see an art exhibition. If I go and see an exhibition at the Tate Modern or White Cube gallery, then I'll never take one of the audio guides but I will read the little info booklet or the information on the wall, both about the artist(s) and the information about each room. I'll also read the information against the pictures/sculptures I like and actually get quite grumpy if a work is called "Untitled 5" with no other information or has a particular title but with no explanation for why. Having said that, there are some artists whose work I can just gaze at (like Mark Rothko, Barbara Hepworth, and Constantin Brancusi) and I don't care what the title is or why they did it. What's the difference?

I think it's level of familiarity, prior knowledge and how much I love it! With art, I don't have a good basic knowledge of the different movements, artists and techniques. I enjoy going to exhibitions and being challenged by what I see and learning about it. For those artists whose work I just gaze at, I've loved their work for years and I've read about them, seen a number of exhibitions and so I have that context about them in my head already, even if it's not at the front of my head while I'm looking at their work. With concerts, my base level of musical knowledge is a lot higher than with art so actually I have a lot of that context in my head before I read a programme

On reflection then, or me personally, I do like to have context about the piece and the composer while I’m listening to it and it does make a difference to how engaged I am and how much I enjoy the concert. That context doesn’t have to be provided during the concert, it could be my existing knowledge or I’ve read about it beforehand but it’s important however I’ve got it. For new music where the composer is at the concert, I like to hear from them and see them but if the piece isn’t inspired by anything particular then I don't want them to make it up. For example Steve Hicks wrote a string quartet for our first concert and basically said that he "wrote a string quartet" and that's fine but he also talked about his perspective “in writing a string quartet it is hard not to be weighed down by the history of the form”.

But if he composer does have something in mind, then I like to hear about it. For example, Ed Nesbit wrote a new piece "Like Some Forgotten Music" for Viola d'Amore for the Riot Ensemble concert about which he wrote a blog post on the Sound and Music blog. In this he describes attemping to "evoke the archaic atmosphere suggested by the title, without ever literally lifting stylistic features from Baroque music". I read the blog post before the concert and I found it helpful while I was listening to understand what he was doing.

Of course it’s all personal preference but here’s my perfect concert set-up regardless of repertoire or ensemble size (and right now not worrying about acoustics, volume, costs etc): an informal, intimate venue with no more than 100 audience members, definitely seats (my back hurts if I stand for too long!), preferably at little cafe tables, a glass of wine/ elderflower cordial in hand, silence to listen and no background bar clunking, a little bit of chat from the composer/musician/conductor about the pieces, physical programme that I can read and take home and time and opportunity chat to with other audience members in the interval and afterwards about what we all thought.

So no, I don’t just listen