the cheese stands alone

Standing room at theater productions (especially opera) is a wonderful concept – it’s a great way for young, starving artists to see great performances for a low price.  If you’re not familiar with the concept – it’s the practice of having a section of the auditorium that is roped off and intended for people to watch the performance while standing up (though there’s usually a banister for leaning). Standing room is often available for Broadway productions as well – although I’ve found that the standing room section in smaller theaters is often just the back of the house – you get to lean on the rail behind the back row.  I feel a certain sense of deep artistic character when in standing room for a performance.  People in the row just in front me paying five or six times what I paid just so they can sit down.  I feel like I’m playing a wonderful joke on them – hearing and seeing the same things that they are for a fraction of the cost. 

Pros to standing room: 


Low cost  


Don’t have to move your legs for someone to get out of the aisle More freedom as to where you stand (within the section) than sit if you have a specific ticket You meet new people – lots of students, real musicians, foreign tourists, etc.  


Closer to the bar at intermission  


You can hang your coat on the banister, you don’t have to put it on the back of the chair or in the floor OR at coat check  


A sense of being a real artist – “I’ll STAND UP THE WHOLE TIME if it means that I get to see Susan Graham live from one hundred feet away”

Cons of standing room: 


You have to stand the whole time (though there’s usually a banister for leaning)  


People are more apt to whisper in standing room

But the thing that bothers me about standing room tickets at the opera – you can purchase standing room in Europe for just a few Euros (about three U.S. dollars)…standing room at the Metropolitan Opera is 17-25 bucks.  Not cool.  Standing room at NYC Opera goes for 12 bucks.  What’s the difference in standing up on the continent of Europe and standing up on the continent of North America?  Odd. 

so my brother has heard all of the music of Bach

LIke any church organist, I sleep in on Monday mornings.  This Monday morning, I woke up to a text from my brother who is taking a music appreciation class.  He wrote "Bach is played everywhere…I've heard almost all of his music that we've covered in class".  I had to explain to my dear brother that he had probably listened to about 1/1,000 of the music of Bach in said class.  Of course he is just taking a fine arts credit gen ed class (so they probably talk about only the B's of music:  Bach, Bmozart, Beethoven, and Brahms) - but even on a late Monday morning he made me revisit my thoughts of the composers (and specifically organists) who are just as important as J.S.B.

You have to start with Dietrich Buxtehude.  He was a rock star to the young Bach.  When Bach was twenty, he was basically a groupie of Buxtehude - he hitch hiked (but mostly walked) the 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck (where Buxtehude was organist at the Marienkirche, his last organist gig and the most beneficial to his career).  The organ works of Buxtehude still show up regularly in church services and recitals but most of his vocal, choral, and chamber music is lost.  None of his oratorios remain - only the librettos - no manuscript of the actual music.  He was also the bookkeeper for the Marienkirche.  Hopefully he kept better church records than the files for his music.

Who else is just as important as Bach but is rarely mentioned in Music Appreciation 101?  François Couperin was the most important composer of organ music in the French Baroque period - which really isn't saying much because nobody seems to care about the French Baroque.  The French had to wait until the Romantic period to really be taken note of by the rest of the world.  I once attended a workshop on French Baroque ornamentation (with Couperin being the subject matter) - which is much more tedious than German Baroque ornamentation.  His music is just as well written as the works of Bach (they lived at vaguely the same time) but Couperin's tedium lies in knowing how to perform the ornaments since nothing is written out.   

I always make an argument for the importance of Jean Langlais, the twentieth century blind organist.  Somewhere I read that the organ works of Langlais rank second to Bach in means of quantity.  Admittedly, Bach wrote much more vocal, choral, and chamber music than Langlais - but some time in the next two hundred years organ students are going to be studying Langlais just as faithfully as they will study Bach (only my predication and hope).  The problem with Langlais is that he had a system of writing music in Braille so many of his pieces have errors in the publication.  He was a noted recitalist although a teacher of mine who heard him play said he was much more impressed with his improvising than his interpretation of repertoire.  Another teacher told me that even though he was blind he worked without the help of a registrant - although someone had to lead him to the console.  

So how can you avoid the by the wayside fates of Buxtehude, Couperin, and Langlais?  First of all, keep your manuscripts in order - or as Bach did have 20 children to do your copy work and filing.  Second of all, write something like the first prelude from book one of The Well-Tempered Clavier that teenagers in a music appreciation class will hear and say:  "Hey - somebody played that at my cousin's wedding…"