The other day, I was at the Philharmonie de Paris to attend a concert. Mahler’s fifth symphony was being played there, my favorite of all and probably the most vibrant symphony ever written. Although considered a funeral march, it overflows with vitality, humor and joy. As always with Gustav Mahler, everything is pushed to the extreme, in a confusion of feelings and orchestration which leaves the audience delighted but stunned.
I had found a place in the front row, so that the music reached me with all its triumphant sonority. It enveloped me, penetrated me, shook me as if I were at the bow of a ship on a stormy day. And as the conductor also had a fiery temperament, it was for an hour and a half a true musical debauchery, a concert of devastating intensity which left the entire audience stunned with admiration.
I was completely transported and when the concert ended, once the time for applause and cheers had passed, I remained seated in my seat, as if dazed. Gustav Mahler’s music is an intoxication that ravages the heart and inflames the mind. When it ends, it leaves you in a state similar to that of a boxer who continues to box in a vacuum, long after his opponent has left the ring.
I was still just as shaken when a young lady approached to warn me that if I were ever to return to this room one day, I would be well advised to sit still in my seat instead of moving around as I had done throughout the concert to the point that, she told me, the whole row had been shaken as if they had found themselves in a roller coaster ballet. Almost if you hadn’t taken your purse out and vomited in it.
The music of Gustav Mahler punctuates the intrepid movement of life. In whose name, for what, should we listen to him frozen in his seat, like a Buddhist monk at his morning prayer?
All this said in a sweet and friendly tone which left me completely taken aback, so much so that I was unable to give him the slightest answer. The person who accompanied me that evening confirmed his words: I had not stopped feeling agitated throughout the performance. Well, I had moved like hell, but we had come to listen to Mahler’s fifth symphony, not Mozart’s requiem!
Yes, perfectly, I had struggled like hell; yes, I had bobbed my head as if I were suffering from a terrible headache; yes, my legs had never stopped keeping pace; yes, yes, three times yes, my whole body moved to the point where I could have perfectly taken the place of the conductor. I pleaded guilty, better, I claimed to have behaved like this with fury, I would do it again if necessary, the music of Gustav Mahler punctuates the intrepid movement of life. In whose name, for what, should we listen to him frozen in his seat, like a Buddhist monk at his morning prayer?
Certainly, it is common knowledge that during a classical music concert, the audience is asked to stand still. After all, we are neither at the circus nor in a cabaret and even less at a rock or pop festival; classical music calls for silence, meditation, introspection. We are more in a church than at the Foire du Trône or the underwear festival. Probably this is why almost all the spectators pull a funeral face there. To better hear their soul breathe and enter into communication with the august spirit of the composer.
It is also true that a large number of listeners come to this type of concert more out of duty than out of passion. It’s a bit like the second week of Roland-Garros, when the stands are filled with people who know nothing about tennis but above all like to be seen. The same imbecility of the bourgeois or worldly order which confuses the essence of a sport or music with its social representation.
I understand that coming to listen to a requiem, a sonata, a cello concerto requires silence. That a certain genre of music is only suitable for a fully attentive audience. But devil, when it comes to a symphony by Mahler or Shostakovich which often resembles splashes of living matter, a veritable magma of notes brought to their most absolute incandescence, remaining unmoved seems, if not like a fault of taste, at least like an absolute contradiction.
When the music is nothing but transcendence, hallucination, hair-raising, dizzying, when it lets out the sounds of an ode to life, to movement, to action, when it gives itself entirely without lukewarmness or restraint, it is up to the listener to celebrate it as it is expressed, with pomp and joy. During such a concert, to remain in your seat like a mummy exhibited in the Louvre is to hear nothing of the music or to listen to it not as it should be, with enthusiasm, but according to a code established by a nobility who decreed once and for all that classical music was not addressed to the people, but to a circle of refined amateurs.
Obviously, not everyone sees it that way. When I wanted to take tickets for the coming season, more Mahler symphonies, I was instantly blocked from the Philharmonie website, I was immediately sent to the Moulin-Rouge website. So, I bought two tickets to admire the girls at Crazy Horse. Hot in front, it’s going to work, I feel. Onward to the music!
