tragic

While in Country Bordering Thailand, I was invited with some others to attend a performance by the national symphony orchestra. The four of us were the first foreigners to be invited to such a performance, and much was made of us. We were seated front and center, and the TV cameras spent as much time filming us as they did shooting the orchestra.

This orchestra was started only a few years ago--apparently when this country was allowed into ASEAN, the government decided to found this group to keep up with the Joneses. The members are mostly self-taught, because there aren't any music teachers in the country. A few of them have studied abroad for a few months at most, and some of the younger members are allowed to participate in the youth orchestra that we host at my university in Thailand.

The concert was the most bizarre musical experience I've ever had. At the end of the concert my hostess asked what I thought, and all I could say was, "tragic."

It wasn't that they aren't a great orchestra--I mean, a new group staffed with self-taught musicians playing on hand-me-down instruments isn't exactly going to be the Concertgebouw, nor should it, and that's just fine. It was more than that.

They had clearly rehearsed the music for hours and hours. Some aspects of it were right on--for instance, I've rarely heard a string section play such crisp, together pizzicato. But other things, like the tuning process, made me want to cry. Everyone played an A in unison, and then no one adjusted their instruments! It's as though someone had seen a video of an orchestra tuning, and said, "We should do that!" It was so clear that they didn't know what tuning was for.

Then there was the repertoire. They did a mix of standard-repertoire warhorses (first movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, the famous movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, stuff like that) and patriotic songs. These included one with the title "The Stronger the Army Is, the Stronger the Country Will Be." While playing this music, every musician in this orchestra maintained a facial expression of despair. I've seen a lot of orchestras, and I've seen a lot of string players make goofy faces while playing. Some of them look ecstatic, some look passionate, some (thankfully) look merely alert and focused, and some look...well, constipated. But I've never, before this concert, seen a string player just look sad. And here was a whole orchestra of them, sawing away in morose concentration.

During the Schubert, the conductor got lost and conducted the wrong beat for a long time. One piece, a Mozart overture (I forget which one), they didn't even finish. They just stopped in the middle, at the point up to which they'd rehearsed.

Now, I don't want to sound like a musical snob, looking down my nose at an inferior orchestra. Let me say again, there's nothing wrong with not being a great orchestra. It's fine not to have a violin section full of Itzhak Perlmans. What was tragic about this concert were the things I've described--

The bizarre tuning process. Clearly they're trying to emulate other orchestras, but they don't understand what they're trying to do.

The absolutely wretched looks on all of the players' faces, combined with the aspects of the performance that made it clear they've spent many, many hours rehearsing this music.

The absolute lack of understanding of even basic ideas (like, not stopping in the middle of the piece) about the performance of Western music.

All of the above, combined with the fact that the government wants to use this orchestra to show that they are just as good as the national orchestras of Thailand, of Malaysia, of Singapore. These musicians are working hard, and no one is helping them (because there's no one in the country who can, and since it's the national orchestra, a foreigner couldn't possibly have anything to contribute), and unless that changes, they're never going to get any better.