Dose of culture

Finally made it out to the Brooklyn Museum this weekend. They were doing some major work, it seems, and several whole sections were closed off, but we had a pretty good time anyway. I was rather proud of myself for recognizing one enormous painting of the Rocky Mountains as being something I saw in a traveling exhibition a decade ago. And I really liked the amount of interpretation they had--a lot of art museums tend to just stick a tiny label in the corner with title, artist, year, and materials. These guys also did a substantial amount of wall labels with historical context, explanations of the theme of the particular room, notes on the artist or on specific things to notice about the painting. I realize there's a school of thought that art should stand on its own and allow the viewers to draw their own conclusions and interpretations. Not a fan. I find I appreciate art far more when I understand the context--what the painting was created for, which artists inspired this particular artist, whether or not this is a reaction to something else. Then again, I always thought the "death of the author" stuff was crap, too.

Also went to a performance of an Arabic Orchestra. It was...problematic. The leader was a virtuoso on something like six different instruments. He was amazing. Much of the performance was kind of him as soloist with the orchestra as backup. The thing is, traditional Arabic music apparently is played in small ensembles of four or five people, everybody on a different instrument. He was trying to lead the group in the way you'd lead a small ensemble. I've done some chamber work, many years ago. In a small group, you kind of breathe together. You can tell by the motions of the shoulders of the person sitting right next to you where they're about to come in, you lean together, you move both physically and through the music as a unit. There's an intuitive sense of tension that binds you together. This group was far, far too large for that kind of synergy, but he continued to try to push the orchestra along through body language. It didn't work. For exactly one piece, he conducted instead of playing. And suddenly the group, which sounded rather like a mediocre high school orchestra up to that point, snapped together. Amazing what having your entrances and tempos clearly indicated does for cohesion.

The main problem, though, was that the program was arranged by someone who had never given thought to how to arrange a concert program. There were six pieces, an intermission, then six more pieces. The first half had two orchestral pieces, one extended improvisation by the leader, a male vocalist, a female vocalist, and another orchestral piece. (The orchestral pieces sounded, to Western ears, nearly identical to each other.) The second half featured, as the first piece, a new composition by the leader that turned out to be 45 minutes long. And then they still had five more pieces to play. Which consisted of an orchestral piece, the male vocalist again, the female vocalist again, both vocalists, and an orchestral piece. So after the endless endless song that would not end, it felt rather like we were sitting through the first half a second time. Really, it should have been a short piece, the 45 minute piece, an intermission, the male vocalist, the female vocalist, both together, and the last song. That would have been a reasonable length for a concert. Instead, we got trapped for three and a quarter hours with no way to escape. What was enjoyable became grueling. If they'd done an encore, I think I might have tried to slit my wrists with my program. Haven't they heard the old aphorism, "Always leave them wanting more?"