An Unexpected Result

Just watch this:

I have to say that I am a sucker for this sort of thing. It always provokes an emotional reaction. It is just so marvelous a thing to witness. Taken at face value, a bunch of well-trained musicians just happen to show up and play the best tunes from the last movement of the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven, itself a naked appeal to emotion and brotherhood, and we all are overwhelmed with delight.

We are, very sadly, living in an era of lies. I'm sure I don't have to specify? Whatever your political leanings I'm sure you sense that the public space is overflowing with lies of all kinds. Lies as to what happened or didn't happen. Even bigger lies about what it all meant. The enormous lies of political ideologies and the lies of economics. Of course we can keep piling up debt and of course there will never be a reckoning. Everything we see crafted for public consumption is based on lies or half-truths. All advertising is untruthful. Under the sheer pressure of so many lies, some philosophers have simply declared that truth, along with God, is simply dead. There is no truth, only different perspectives.

What is so striking about a flash-orchestra is that there seem to be only truths here. Music can't really lie to us, at least not this kind of music, we think, because it is simply abstract instrumental joy. And sure, you can argue that. You could argue on the other side, making snide insinuations about Beethoven and the text to the singing, but unless you are trying to get tenure in a progressive university, really, why bother? This music wears its heart on its sleeve. Just look at the images of the people responding to it. It is the transcendence of it that makes it its own kind of emotional truth.

We could chip away, of course. This was part of an advertising campaign for a bank, of all things. And no, you don't normally get a whole orchestra and chorus for the cost of a small coin in a hat. So it was all deception. Economically, certainly. But not emotionally. The players really were expressing what they felt and the audience was receiving it and at the end it was pretty joyful. The behind the scene details, in this case at least, are not very important.

Another cool orchestral 'flash mob'

If you haven't already seen this, it is worth a watch:

What is cool about this sort of thing is that I think the orchestra plays a bit differently and certainly people listen a bit differently than they would in a concert hall. The surprise of it is a factor, but also the freshness of it, for both orchestra and listener. The only reason these people stopped, listened and applauded was because they were enjoying it--it was a pure musical experience. When I was much younger I spent a summer as a classical busker in Europe playing mostly in Florence and the magic of classical music is very real when you just stumble across it. We were just flute and guitar, but when we played certain melodies, crowds just gathered. Some nights we had easily five hundred people listening and they stayed and stayed. It was just the quality of the music...