By general consensus the music at Wednesday night's viola-piano concert in Aeolian Hall was wonderful, but some in the audience were indignant that the hall was set up cabaret-style, with chairs grouped around tables, rather than in rows. That just wasn't done for classical music, they said; it was disrespectful. Some were quite vehement about it.
They were wrong.
Mainly they were wrong on practical grounds. Management had a pretty accurate estimate of how many people were going to show up, and by experience they've established an attendance threshold below which they know that row seating is a bad idea. The number of concertgoers Wednesday night would have been just about sufficient to fill three rows, leaving the rest of the hall embarrassingly empty, but they were enough for a respectable showing when dispersed through the room at attractively clothed and candle-lit tables, where they could stretch their legs as they pleased and sip a glass of something if they liked. A concert that would have been discouraging to performers and audience alike with row seating proved to be comfortable and enjoyable with the alternative.
Those complaining were wrong too in principle. No rule says classical music must be played only to audiences sitting in rows of fixed seats. Even most of the traditional concert halls in which these are found are also ringed with loges in which patrons can arrange the chairs as they please. Much of the concert-hall repertoire was written to be heard in private salons, in aristocratic dining rooms, even in royal barges floating down the river. The Siegfried Idyll was written to be heard first by a woman asleep in bed.
The classics have been performed worthily on piers and promenades, in parks, factories, shopping malls and town squares. To feel that any of those settings constitute an indignity is to forget momentarily the purpose of music.
Well said (as always).
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