Piano "performance" for the advanced amateur

[erick86]

I had a question I wanted to throw out here and see what people's opinions and ideas are.  

What place does "classical" music, and more precisely, the performance of classical have in your life and in your circle of friends, off the stage?  

I'm asking this through the eyes of just a random soul who really loves classical music, and I love playing for myself as well as for other people.

But this leads me exactly to the root of my question:  why does the performance of classical music seemingly belong on stage in a formal setting, and no where in an informal setting?  Have you ever had the experience where you have some people come over, they see your piano and as "Oh, do you play?  Play us something!"  And then proceed to play a piece and everyone continues to talk loudly, walking around, not paying much attention to the story being told by the music.  It is as though it is just that: background music.  It drives me insane.  I'm perplexed as to why it feels awkward to ask someone to just sit still, put your phone down, stop talking, and listen to the music.  

Yet that is how our culture is.  Too busy to listen.

I'm interested in learning more about the difference between formal and informal performances from the perspective of the audience, no matter how big or small.   Is it boring?  Too long?  Too awkward to stay still and silent? Or is there just no interest?  Does it not belong?


Eric

[j_menz]

Aren't you trying to make an "informal" performance into a mini formal one?

In days long gone, music was only ever performed live, but these days most people's exposure to it is of the recorded kind, and often in a context where it forms a background track to their activities - a the supermarket, the mall, the pub. It perhaps simply never occurs to them that it might be something more. Unless, of course, they can sing along, or dance to it.

[amytsuda]

I wonder if OP is from the US. I grew up in Asia, lived in Europe for my job, and now in the US with all the nephews and nieces growing up in the US, I get it. If you didn't grow up getting exposed to classical music, but grew up with pop and rock, you even don't have a concept that you have to carefully listen to what and how another person is playing. I mean, why? Would they care if your pianissimo is like a light breeze through trees? Your trills are like twinkling sun light through leaves? Classical music cares a lot about nuances, interpretations, colors, which most people even don't have any concept..... When I was growing up, every kid was taking classical piano lessons, to the point my parents would buy a piano to their kids. As a result, my friends all grew up with a habit to stop and listen to classical music quietly, whenever someone is playing.... I guess I won't criticize American culture, we can't ask everyone to live in the world that is 200 years old!

[j_menz]

I might add, that our view of the past is also somewhat tidied up.  The below contemporary drawing of Liszt playing would indicate that the audience was not particularly quiet, well behaved or oblivious to other attractions present.

[outin]

I might add, that our view of the past is also somewhat tidied up.  The below contemporary drawing of Liszt playing would indicate that the audience was not particularly quiet, well behaved or oblivious to other attractions present.

The same goes for opera performances of the past, people did not sit quietly and listen like they are expected today, it was more a social event.

Honestly I can only think of a handful of people who would really like to listen to the kind of music that I want to play. Since I am not interested in playing something most people would like to hear, it's best that I restrict my performances mostly to myself...

[m1469]

What place does "classical" music, and more precisely, the performance of classical have in your life and in your circle of friends, off the stage?

It depends a bit.  A lot of my life currently circles around teaching music to a wide range of students both privately and in classes, during 6 days a week, singing in a semi-professional choir, playing the piano or singing for church services every Sunday, taking part in a local Opera Company's Scenes program, mildly socializing with a core group of musical friends, keeping and developing a new long-term musical project, and I am married to a musician.  I also aim to start doing some consistent practicing again, soon.  While, in a sense, I do not believe any of us are ever truly divorced from music, the more committed my time is in the ways listed above, the less my mind is occupied with something other than music-related topics, so it would always be playing some kind of role in my life, both in the foreground and in the background.  I would imagine it would be still another type of level if I were truly performing a lot, too.

When it comes to the core group of musical friends, these are individuals who are very active musically in the community, so their mindsets are probably extremely similar to mine in terms of how music occupies their thoughts, so when we get together, there is a particular understanding that is unspoken.  Even if we never talk about music together, music is somehow still there.  Once in a while music is directly involved informally.

When it comes to my students though, there is not quite the same type of understanding, and when I am teaching this much, students comprise a large portion of the human interactions I have during the day.  Many students, in reality, really couldn't give a rip about musical activity, per se, while some of them are genuinely happy and joyful about being musically active in the classes or lessons I have them in.  There are still some others, too, who are a little more mystified by Classical musicians, and perhaps their main impression of Classical music is basically about being mystified.

A couple of years ago I did hold some informal musical gatherings here at my house, but really it is like was mentioned above, they were small, somewhat formal gatherings, where I performed Classical piano music, while they quietly sat and listened.  I would be interested to know if somebody really took something of lasting substance away from those experiences!  Perhaps I will begin to have the energy to prepare for something like these again.

Anyway, to sum it up, music is somehow always present

[indianajo]

The only time in my life anybody really listened to classical music but me and my Mother, was in school band.  We were a select few, 128 out of 400 in the band program and 2400 in the high school at large.  We really hit the heights of classical repretoire in "symphonic" band class.  Shostakovich, Gershwin, Bernstein, Holst, Grainger, Prokoviev, Wagner. Also King, Sousa, broadway and pop hits.   It was a great pleasure and I really miss them, the directors and the students.
There were the annual recitals of my piano teacher's students, but I had the idea that only one other student and I were really into listening to the music.  The rest were fulfilling their parent's dream, and going through the motions for a few years.  It must be stressful to be a teacher at that level.  
I did try singing with the amateur theatre group in the next town once, HMS Pinnafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. I was just in the chorus, as a deck hand.  I had three separate week long bouts of respiratory disease in the 10 weeks.  I don't know if that building had pigeon disease or that group of players dragged in every virus in the western hemisphere, but my immune system wasn't up to it.  I had to miss the last four performances and was never invited back.  The respiratory disease problem is one reason I never considered performance as a profession - my ability to breathe through my nose and avoid coughing can't be scheduled properly.  
Now I've retired, I've been practicing my piano performance skills and I am about ready to go out in public.  I have played piano at a town weekly charity dinner several times, where I also wash pots and trays.  The host church has a really nice sounding Baldwin Acrosonic console on stage of the fellowship hall.  I've also last week played in Sunday School between the meeting and the church service. to an empty room but a hallway of people chatting, That Sunday School class has a donated Baldwin Acrosonic piano with some missing ivory keytops, but a lovely bright sound.  
In the beginning people hardly noticed my playing, certainly the customers of the free town dinner.  People would come up to the stage and interrupt me to tell me about their performance of the Tennessee Waltz long ago, or the use of Scott Joplin music in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the movie. At the end of December I got somebody pounding the table in rhythm when I played Jingle Bells. Twenty other carols weren't noticed.  
But after playing the dinner a few times, some meal helpers have come up afterwards to tell me it was nice.  They still have no real idea what I am playing, but they are some of the most popular melodies ever composed for piano.  Scott Joplin, Ernesto Lecuona, Enrique Granados, Beethoven, Moussorgski.  I'm not educating, and nobody cares what the titles are, but I'm developing a small audience by exposing them to the literature when they are there cooking or eating food or cleaning up. Unlike school there won't be a test at the end of the course .   I just enjoy that some people enjoy my efforts enough to say something afterwards.    What a lovely loud bright piano a Baldwin Acrosonic is. - pity the "new" piano on the stage of the church is not the tonal equal of the old scarred rejects.
I dreamed last night I was playing piano in a public park to an audience of a dozen.  The gazebo in the park downtown is empty for the fall rains that haven't happened yet, and piano performance doesn't require electricity or the toilet trailer to be out at the curb.  Piano doesn't need the Boy Scouts to sell hot dogs or pick up the trash.  There would no program leaflet to throw on the ground.  Maybe I'll get a car running, find a loud bright beat up looking piano that will fit in the back, recruit a helper to carry the other end, and make it happen some day.    But I doubt it.

[pianoplunker]

I might add, that our view of the past is also somewhat tidied up.  The below contemporary drawing of Liszt playing would indicate that the audience was not particularly quiet, well behaved or oblivious to other attractions present.

 And Lizst must have loved playing in a rowdy atmosphere with lots of prospects for after-gig fun.

[carl_h]

Guess it depends who your friends... When I have friends over and they ask me to play something, they "listen" and complement me after so I feel good

This doesn't mean there isn't any noise and I would never expect them to be queit. Some are more interested than others, people talk, people move, people drop a glass on the floor... stuff happens.
It sound to me that you have a weird idea of how it should be (or how it was?): "Yet that is how our culture is.  Too busy to listen." That is a bit ignorant/selfish when you play in an informal setting for friends, that is a social event not a piano performance.

[dima_76557]

why does the performance of classical music seemingly belong on stage in a formal setting, and no where in an informal setting?  

For "official" recitals, Liszt established the rules and he even openly reprimanded Czar Nicholas I for talking during one of his concerts.

In informal settings, though, you cannot blame anyone for continuing what they were doing. On the contrary: if you manage to make or keep them all silent by what you are doing on the instrument and not by asking them, then you are a true master that deserves to be heard!

[timothy42b]

In informal settings, though, you cannot blame anyone for continuing what they were doing.

I agree, and would go a bit further.

If you are in an informal setting where people expect to hear music at a low intensity, and you insist on playing music that demands rapt attention, you are doing it wrong.

There's a discussion in Music through the Eyes of Faith https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/music-through-the-eyes-of-faith-harold-best/1000493247?ean=9780060608620
that says music can be viewed on a continuum from shallow to profound, and attention can be on a continuum from indifferent to fully engaged (my words, I can't remember what Harold said exactly), and that one should match the two when selecting music. 

[ted]

I do not like formal performance and do not attend concerts of any sort but I do rather enjoy informal musical gatherings. I always listen very attentively and quietly to any piano playing but do not expect others present to reciprocate when it is my turn. Those interested usually gravitate to the piano anyway and those indifferent carry on talking and drinking further away. A big enough room and house can accommodate this quite easily. As I am a shy person and abhor being the centre of attention, informal piano parties are an ideal way for me to meet musicians in person.