Well, a friend of mine had bought a bunch of tickets and then decided she couldn't go. As a token of thanks for dealing with mean Korean airline companies to change her flight back to Japan (in English...?), she offered them to me. I thought "what the heck." So I paid her 10 euros (the "student discount") and went. I dressed as I would for any normal concert: nothing too fancy, but not a schmuck in holey jeans and a stained t-shirt. I had a nice sweater and a nice pair of jeans with some nice shoes. I got there and I realized I had totally under-estimated the local population. They were in evening gowns (complete with gems) and tuxedos (complete with cumber buns.) Not only was I mortified, but I had no time to go home and change (not that I would have anything to change into, because my entire overseas wardrobe consists of normal-wear clothing.) So I sucked it up, absorbed the judgmental stares and paraded through. Luckily, there were a few other students dressed like I was, so I wasn't alone and therefore not the only target of snobby disapproval.
The concert took place in that big baroque palace that I talk about so frequently. My ticket said "Kaisersaal," which was this former ballroom on the 2nd floor. I was excited-this was going to be like a chamber concert in the good-ol-days. But then I realized that there were way too many people here. I was slightly confused. Then I walked upstairs and it all made sense. I have drawn you a little diagram to help explain:
So, as you can see, they divided the audience into four groups. One group (probably the people who paid lots and lots of money) got to actually sit in the same room as the orchestra. The rest of us had to sit somewhere else (the two wings on the left and right weren't actually rooms, they were hallways) These were rooms connected by doorways. As a concession for our displeasure of feeling like women and slaves in a Puritan church they opened said doors, allowing us slight access to the vast amounts of culture, faith, and enlightenment they would send forth from the pulpit. This allowed for an acoustical phenomenon I call "mish-mash-mush" in which the sound vibrations are forced to reverberate through a hall covered with hard surfaces until they finally make their way through a small opening. As a result, there were some sounds that burst free before others and others were at a slight delay. Now put these two things together. It's like 3 or 4 discrete sonic events compressed and presented simultaneously. The effect was not impressive; in fact, it was slightly nauseating. Given my seat location and the wall separating me from the ensemble I had paid money to see, I had a fine view of a horn player through the center door. You know, the horn player sitting at the very back and very edge of the left-hand side of the stage. Because I'm slightly ADHD, I couldn't focus all of my attention on this one horn player who played only a fraction of the time (the rest of the time emptying spit or pretending to be cool with lip exercises), I was forced to divert my attention to the absurdly ornate ceiling of the room in which I was confined. It was all cool. What was creepy was the big ceramic heater sitting in front of me. It had little toddlers of indeterminate gender flailing around with bunches of grapes, leaves, and flowers. One in particular was angled to stare at me with a devilish grin. It was at the very least a little uncomfortable.
Anyway, so I was confused the entire time because they don't give out programs - they charge you for them. I'm super cheap and don't believe in concert robbery, so I abstained. As a result, I had no idea if it was time to clap or not. My general sentiment of dissatisfaction would have kept me from clapping anyway.
So no more Mozart-Fest for me. I've decided it's not really about celebrating some good music. It's about wearing a tuxedo and staring at people hitting rods against some expensive hunks of wood. I'll be all pretentious music major and say that I'm more cultured than them, because they probably wouldn't have appreciated all of the cool crap Mozart wrote anyway. They were too busy suffocating in their uncomfortable girdles.
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