Tickets, Youth Orchestras, and Ageeana

The time has finally arrived, and the KSO's season and tickets are on sale now! While Monday was the launch date, handling fees will be waived on phone orders until this Friday the 21^st. A cavalcade of guest conductors will be appearing throughout the year. It will be an eventful season as we seek a new director to pilot us through the unfamiliar yet beautiful waters ahead. Don't forget that Penny4Arts is still around. Under this plan a child can attend a KSO concert (or events presented by a host of other arts groups in town) for a penny, when accompanied by a paying adult. Kids fly free!

It's perhaps on the late side if your child wants to audition, but the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra will be holding auditions this coming weekend. The KSYO braintrust is preparing for the group's 42^nd year of performances, which will be November 16, February 14 and 15, and May 2. Information and repertoire can be found on the website or by clicking here.

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Only someone living in a math-deprived world would fail to notice that this is the figurative 100^th anniversary of Knoxville's musical badge, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, written by Samuel Barber in 1947 and excerpting James Agee's prologue to A Death in the Family. I've been surfing for information on where James Agee's life began-- and also where his father's ended. It is interesting to think on these places when listening to the work. Two tremendous sources of knowledge than on these matters are the blogger commonly known as Knoxville Urban Guy, and Knoxville historian and writer Jack Neely.

A few years ago, KUG posted something about the site of Agee'schildhood home, which is now called James Agee Park in the Fort Sanders neighborhood, at Clinch Ave. From time to time, events are held here in celebration of the flag-bearer of Knoxville's literary heritage. While that particular block of the Fort has been given over to student housing over the past century, a block more evocative of that era might be the 1600 block of Forest Ave. Perhaps Agee's childhood friends resided there.

As for the accident that took Hugh James Agee's life in 1916 and inspired his son's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family, the location is not particularly glamorous, but certainly storied. Jack Neely is arguably Knoxville's most well-versed person in Ageeana, by dint of research for his Secret History columns in the Knoxville Mercury and its predecessor, the MetroPulse. The intersection of Clinton Highway and Emory Rd. is as close as modern configuration can determine the accident site. For years, Jack and others would congregate at the Checker Flag Sports Bar and toast the tragic event-- he has even spoken to someone who remembered the accident. Here is a MetroPulse  article (amazingly still available), mourning the closing of the Checker Flag four years ago.

Rap on Clapping

Concert-goers new to the classical scene are always asking, “when can I clap?” In pondering an answer to this question, I came across some interesting facts and trends on various websites of symphony orchestras and record companies, and even some discrepancies as to the basis for the tradition. One source claims that the idea of saving applause for after the final movement of a piece is actually a pretty recent (only the last 50 years or so) phenomenon, while another says that the protocol is firmly rooted in the German tradition, dating back to Mozart's time.

How you might react at a concert should not be something to stress over. It's not your fault that composers wrote works in such a way as to “fake you out,” with false endings only a third of the way through a work. The tendency worldwide is to favor between-movement applause, especially after big endings where it is hard not to applaud, but not as an obligation after every single movement, regardless of its level of finality. After a movement that ends quietly, it is preferred that there be no applause, as the silence between movements here serves as a tension builder. When an entire work ends quietly, it is extremely jarring when one or maybe two attendees clap before the final note has even faded away. When this happens, the applauders, or shouters of “Bravo,” become performers, proving to all that they know when the work is over. (Or perhaps that they are following along in a score to the work). There are no awards for being the first person to clap; if there is any doubt, it's ok to be a follower and not a leader; the conductor will put down his baton and turn around and bow. I feel safe in quoting Billy Joel here; “Leave a tender moment alone.” Like most musicians, I cherish that span of silence that lay between the final placid note and the first pair of clapping hands. In any case, if someone's applause bothers you at a concert, it is NOT ok to express your dismay by giving them the hairy eyeball.

Let's look at some other questions that surface from time to time. I have used the terms “movement,” “piece,” and “work” above, but never the word “song.” To hear iTunes tell the story, everything that has sound is a “song,” whether it is a 5-hour Wagner Opera, a Bach cantata, or one of those little 20-second snippets of song on the Beatles' Let It Be album (like Dig It). Sure, iTunes, whatever. The concert hall reality is that classical composers write works (think “work of art”) or pieces, which may have several sections or movements. They may write song cycles, literally an album of songs, but that album as a body is referred to as a piece or a work.

Confusion happens when there are differing styles and tempi within an individual movement. Prokofiev did this a lot. It can also happen when two movements are linked together. (Musicians call this practice attacca, Italian for “attached”). In my first season here, maestro Kirk Trevor conducted Brahms 4^th Symphony with the final two movements linked very seamlessly, and when the Thursday night performance was over, (thinking the third movement was actually 16 minutes long), no one clapped! He had to step off of the podium and bow to convince the audience that there was not another movement forthcoming. The Friday night show utilized a somewhat longer pause between the third and fourth movements.

I think we can all agree that, applause or not, there is no worse interrupter of a classical concert than a cell phone going off. We depend on the audience to be sticklers for silencing their phones, and for not answering them (but silencing them discreetly) if they do ring. I refer you to a scene in the 2000 Woody Allen film, Small Time Crooks, wherein Tracey Ullman answers a cellphone call in the middle of a cello recital. It's a ridiculously funny social commentary, brought off as only Woody can.

My words here are by no means the gospel on this subject. Here are a couple webpages whose content I found useful. NeoClassical is a blog by Holly Mulcahy, concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony. I especially liked that she had advice for experienced concert-goers and newbies alike, with some special guidelines for conductors. And this Colorado Public Radio story gives some historical background to the differing customs regarding this issue.