I’ve been switching back and forth on the precept that we (as a classical music establishment) should be more relaxed about our concert setting.\u00a0 On one hand it is justified that we should be respectful to our fellow listeners who may have different tastes from us, or that some hooligan may just be making noise to cause trouble.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I find myself irrepressibly bored at some classical concerts now a days, not because the performers are terrible (only the good lord knows how much performers put on the line for their audiences) but because the music is absolutely atrocious.\u00a0 There is so much philosophically right about writing music like this, but there is far more aesthetically wrong.\u00a0 Once every work is as garrulous as Stockhausen or Babbitt, then the differences between pieces that were interesting and new when compared to romanticism bleed away into the universality of ugliness.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this listener is driven to want the experience to end, and the means to do that is to boo the work of art off the stage.\u00a0 Call me a neanderthal, but I believe that if every composer has the right to offend my ears for 20 minutes or more, then I should have the right to voice my displeasure without the consequences of breaking a social construct by booing.<\/p>\n