Class Acts

You might think that, in the relatively rarefied world of classical music in Pittsburgh, the clientele of the various venues would be a fairly uniform bunch, i.e. from one venue to the next. Well, you'd be wrong. No, you'd be half right, but there are many variations to be found, and each venue occupies its own spot along the spectrum. Allow me to elaborate, using as examples the venues I'm the most familiar with after swimming in the cultural pool of Pittsburgh for two years. They are: (1) the Symphony; (2) the Opera; (3) the Chamber Music Society; (4) the Renaissance and Baroque Society; and (5) the recitals put on by the Duquesne University Music Department.

Let's start at the top of the social ladder, with the Opera. This is where people still come to see and be seen -- to rub elbows with the movers and shakers, with the business, social and cultural mavens of the city. This crowd includes the corporate barons (and opera benefactors) who arrive in their own chauffered limos; the up-and-coming young couples (you know, the kind that honeymoon in Tierra del Fuego); and, yes, a smattering of the young and impoverished (mostly university students) who are there simply because -- get ready for this -- they love opera. But it's these top-of-the-heap types from Fox Chapel who fascinate me. Not only are they expensively clothed and accessorized, and perfectly coiffed -- they have perfect posture, they speak in modulated tones (none of that loud, barking laugh so typical of Pittsburghers), and they have this perfect, pink, shiny skin. Where do they get that skin? I can never figure it out. And both the men and the women have it. In fact, more often than not the men are pinker and shinier than the women. And of course, everyone's hair is a glowing white -- none of that merely upper-middle-class blue rinse for these folks. And as for my sine qua non (like the quality of coffee in a restaurant), namely audience manners, these folks are pretty darn good. Of course, we know opera to be a highly interactive affair anyway -- you can applaud pretty much any time you like, if you like something. So it doesn't do to be too fussy about this issue.

Now let's move down a notch to the Symphony crowd. Yes, we still have the benefactors and the business/social types, but they aren't quite as pink and shiny as the ones at the Opera. They occasionally talk loud, and they can be seen to slouch on occasion. I suspect some of them may have come from modest backgrounds. These are people you might encounter on a downtown street without wondering which Fortune 500 company they were CEO of. There are also the same impoverished students, and firmly middle-class young couples. There are also families, and they are distinguished from the general populace not by the appearance of the parents, but by the apperance of the children. The pre-teen girls, in particular, _always_ wear empire-style velvet dresses. This seems to be an absolute rule. The boys can be found in a coat and tie, or maybe a coat and turtleneck. And the children of either gender all have pale skin, long, slender necks, and wrists the size of doughnut holes. In short, they aren't peasants. But there is also this most curious of species, people who show up at the Symphony looking like they meant to go to a Steelers game but made a wrong turn on Penn Avenue. The men are wearing flannel shirts and jeans -- and these are not young guys either, by any means; they are men in their forties and fifties. And the women are dressed -- well, I can't actually remember, but think "on-duty grade school teacher" and you've pretty much got it.

But all the aforementioned combined still only constitue a minority, when it comes to the Symphony crowd. The vast bulk of the crowd consists of the ones I call "The Geezers". And just to show how important these people are to the cultural life of the city, I have devoted an entire separate post to them which will appear in short order. That post will also constitute the answer to the "audience behavior" question for the Symphony crowd.

Next on our list is the Chamber Music Society, and this group is distinguished primarily by the fact that everyone who is there is there for the music. So audience behavior tends to be quite excellent. Except when it's not. And that involves mostly people falling asleep and snoring, or mumbling, or starting to cheer five seconds _before_ the piece is finished. And all of these faults are traceable to a single factor, namely that the chamber music crowd is _really old_. How old is it, Johnny? Well, I'm one of the youngest people in the place. So there. And these are not the movers and shakers either -- not even their husks. These are, by and large, retired professional and academic types. But they are also an international crowd; many languages -- mostly European -- can be heard. Their clothing runs to, primarily, "frayed tweedy professor and wife" style, with woolens in the ascendant. Their grooming is, by and large, minimal -- just enough, in some cases, to keep from getting picked up for vagrancy. And they smell like onions and mothballs -- a heady combination, you'll admit. But gosh, they really do love great music, so much is forgiven.

Now we come to the Renaissance and Baroque Society concerts, which are the least "establishment" of the ones discussed up to now. People who like Baroque music tend to be the garden variety NPR types -- you know, with the Birkenstocks, hybrid cars, solar collectors, cats, etc. The usual stuff, in this case not unlike the chamber crowd but a bit younger -- fewer hearing aids, fewer canes, fewer wheelchairs, fewer oxygen tanks. But people who like Renaissance music are another type altogether. (I ought to know, 'cause I'm one.) These are the people who may have been -- or may still be -- "folkies" (strictly acoustic, please!). But as we know there is a _huge_ nexus between folk and Renaissance. So we're seeing them on a Renaissance night. They are, in a word, Bohemians. They may have been Hippies -- Beatniks, even -- but they will always be Bohemians, right up to the day their ashes are scattered in Sausalito harbor. And they are also a younger crowd than the Symphony folk, and the families are younger as well. You've seen these families, by the way -- maybe you've bumped shopping carts with them at Whole Foods. They typically show up in not only the aforementioned Birkenstocks, but also serapes and those funny llama-wool caps the Peruvian Indians wear -- you know, the ones with the ear flaps. The fathers always -- _always_ -- have pony tails (ahem), and the mothers always look like those sturdy Irish types who live out on some island and have a loom. The kids need their noses wiped. Audience behavior? Excellent -- the best yet.

Finally, we have a much smaller crowd that is almost entirely academic -- faculty and student -- and in the music "biz", but is worthy of praise simply because of its enthusiasm and excellent concert manners, and that's the group that shows up for the Duquesne U. recitals -- which are excellent, by the way. It's a much more uniform crowd than any of the others, and the dress code is "academic" -- not frayed like the chamber crowd, but nicely kept up. Of course, some of the students show up in Goth outfits, with more pins in them than a voodoo doll, but hey, are least they're there and not at some dive down on Carson Street.

Thus, the surprising and, yes, winsome diversity of the classical music crowd. And to think, there are plenty of venues I haven't even sampled as yet. (They'll probably bar the door when they read this. Oh well, it was worth it.)