No more Bruckner? Quieter Wagner and Richard Strauss?
A quiet revolution
Even Beethoven's Ninth could be at risk from Brussels bureaucrats
Martin Kettle
Saturday January 17, 2004
The Guardian
Last night's well publicised BBC Symphony Orchestra performance of John Cage's celebrated 4' 33" - given in its orchestral rather than its original solo piano version, it should be noted - was a musical milestone. Never before has an entirely silent orchestral piece been broadcast in a live concert on the radio. But the Barbican event was also a sign of things to come. For all orchestral music in this country is facing what can only be described as a quiet revolution.
European Union directive 2003/10/EC has attracted few headlines since it was issued almost a year ago. But it has not gone unnoticed. Across Europe, the managements of every symphony orchestra and major concert venue are already grappling with what it may mean. As Colin Paris, a double bass player and vice chairman of the London Symphony Orchestra, said yesterday: "The implications are huge." It is no exaggeration to say that the directive has the potential to change the orchestral repertoire as we know it, and to alter the nature of concerts as they have existed for over a century.
The purpose of the directive is to set out minimum health and safety rules, due to come into force in February 2006, to combat excessive noise at work. Ordinarily, no one could dispute such a plan, which will set a maximum limit of 85 decibels in the workplace. Deafness is the single most common occupational disease in the EU. The new rules will provide protection to about 700,000 UK workers. Not surprisingly, the TUC has welcomed the new directive as good news.
Orchestral musicians, though, are workers too. And concert halls are their workplaces. The directive is explicit that the regulations will apply to the "music and entertainment sectors" just as much as to others doing noisy jobs, like airport workers and drillers. The only latitude orchestral players have been given is that they may be allowed an extra two years to draw up a workable code of practice.
On one level, the orchestras' response takes the form of mainly practical help to protect musicians from the noise they make. A study by Alison Wright Reid for the Association of British Orchestras three years ago was unequivocal. "Noise in orchestras is loud enough to cause hearing loss, pitch distortion, tinnitus and pain," it said.
In practice, much depends on where the musician plays and sits. Violinists and double-bass players are not as close to the big decibels as brass and woodwind players. The ABO report called for all such musicians in symphony and pit orchestras to be required to wear ear muffs or more on half of their working days, in order to protect their hearing. However, few orchestras have complied.
In the LSO, there is now a "noise team", which is working to ensure that the orchestra is more spread out on the platform to avoid ear damage. But players who sit in front of the brass or the timpani - which mostly means the woodwinds and the viola section - are now regularly protected by plexiglass screens from the noise behind them. The LSO has just taken its screens on tour to New York, a move that provoked the New York Times to write this week about "the shushing of the symphony", and to comment that "the noise police have arrived".
The intriguing issue, though, is whether the directive will impose changes in the repertoire itself. The LSO says that this is a real possibility. Loud works like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler may have to be scheduled more rarely and surrounded by quieter pieces. Look up the European commission's website and you will find a section mocking the idea that Beethoven's Ninth symphony - the EU's anthem - might even fall foul of the noise at work directive. But the idea is not so far-fetched.
Fortunately for musicians, the most famous hearing-impaired composer of them all only went above the ff fortissimo marking in the first movement of his Eighth symphony. So a strict observance of his markings may mean that the Ode to Joy will survive the directive in most halls. But large numbers of late romantic and modern composers peppered their scores with fffs and even - in Tchaikovsky's Sixth, for example - ffffs. Orchestral musicians may be workers too, but can it really be possible that the directive will silence their beautiful noise? No more Bruckner? Quieter Wagner and Richard Strauss? It's enough to drive a man to commit Euroscepticism.
martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk
