Philip Jongeneel writes:

>To me this borders on the outrageous.  First of all, Ma Vlast is a
>symphonic cycle, and should be performed with intermission...

I've never listened to Ma Vlast "straight-through" at home, so I don't
think that an intermission would bother me.  Intermissions are good things;
they give me the chance to get out of my seat and move on to other matters
for a short period of time.

No, the intermission would not impact me negatively, be it Beethoven's
Choral Symphony or Mahler's Fourth.  There are two important considerations
here: what refreshments are available during the break and will the
remainder of the work be performed after the break.  Those are my bottom
lines.  And I am assuming that the intermission comes at the end of a
movement; all bets are off if it's not at the end.

Looking at this from another angle, our commercial world is becoming
increasingly daring in its plugging of products during the "real" show.  A
new regimen I have noticed is that products are plugged during "foul shots"
in NBA basketball games.  Now that's something to fight about.  Basketball
games have a flow to them just as symphonies do.

Perhaps the future of classical music concerts will have people walking
around the stage carrying placards promoting mouthwash and deodorants
while the performance goes on.  There are no limits to messing around
with programming.  Why? We keep going to the concerts and watching the
television.  There's just no practical reason for the corporate world to
not increasingly invade our lives.  These folks call me on the phone all
the time.  Telling them I'm not interested does nothing to shut them up.
So, I ask them for their home phone number - that does the trick.  The
females who call me just don't realize what they are missing by not
providing their phone number.

Don Satz
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