Nodding off…

I went to a concert the other day. The first piece was rather unengaging. The man next to me fell asleep. My attention wandered, and I started looking around the hall – from my particular seat I could see most of it. It occurred to me that really a LOT of people were asleep. Hard to put a figure on it, but for an event that had begun about ten minutes ago it was a bit staggering.

Of course sleeping in concerts is nothing new and is often jokily remarked upon. I’ve done it myself on occasion. People will often talk about the age of the audience, the effects of a drink before the concert, the conducive effects of a dark warm room, or perhaps it’s just showing just how chilling-out classical music can be.

People don’t generally think “maybe this just isn’t very interesting”. Seriously, can you think of another entertainment (for this is what classical music is) business being happy with maybe 10% of the audience being asleep within ten minutes of the event starting? Can you imagine that happening at a Madonna gig? A comedy show? Jazz? It’s even rare in cinema. No – people have paid money for their tickets, are looking forward to it and generally have a good time. Why on earth is it acceptable in classical music? Shouldn’t we really be saying – look this concert clearly isn’t that great. It’s not engaging the audience – look it’s SO dull they’re falling asleep.

No, because classical music is a rather defensive world, so we tend not to ask difficult questions. I go to a lot of concerts and I can honestly say that quite a few are very humdrum. If we want classical music to thrive it MUST be engaging, entertaining – and keep people, even Ken Clarke (maybe he could be the litmus test of an engaging concert), awake.

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