Cellphone users proceed to the lowest level.
The news of the day is that a man attending a New York Philharmonic concert let his new i-phone ring unchecked for a minute or so, during Mahler’s Ninth. Conductor Alan Gilbert stopped the performance until the offending device was switched off. (You can read about it here, or here.)
This problem has been with us for a while, and it seems to be getting worse, rather than better. Personally, I’ll never forget the mobile phone that went off during a delicate moment in a Toronto performance by Lang Lang, a few years ago. Such things remain etched in the mind – and if Dante were alive today, he’d invent a new circle in hell just for people who perpetrate such outrages.
This problem has been with us for a while, and it seems to be getting worse, rather than better. Personally, I’ll never forget the mobile phone that went off during a delicate moment in a Toronto performance by Lang Lang, a few years ago. Such things remain etched in the mind – and if Dante were alive today, he’d invent a new circle in hell just for people who perpetrate such outrages.
The blogosphere has lit up with possible solutions to this problem. How’s about asking all patrons to check their mobile phones at the door? Many people would simply decline to do so. Or how’s about jamming the signals of cellphones in concert halls? The technology exists, but apparently there are legal problems: emergency calls to doctors wouldn’t get through.
Perhaps the time has come for concert halls to have a special “mobile phone section,” for those unwilling or unable to part with their gadgetry. It would be walled off and soundproofed: thick glass windows would allow people inside to see the concert, and the sound would be piped in through loudspeakers. There they could chirp, warble and play snippets of Für Elise to their hearts’ content, without disturbing anyone except each other.
Anyone seated elsewhere in the hall whose electronic device uttered so much as a single beep would be banished for life to the mobile phone section.
Dante would approve.
© Colin Eatock 2012
Perhaps the time has come for concert halls to have a special “mobile phone section,” for those unwilling or unable to part with their gadgetry. It would be walled off and soundproofed: thick glass windows would allow people inside to see the concert, and the sound would be piped in through loudspeakers. There they could chirp, warble and play snippets of Für Elise to their hearts’ content, without disturbing anyone except each other.
Anyone seated elsewhere in the hall whose electronic device uttered so much as a single beep would be banished for life to the mobile phone section.
Dante would approve.
© Colin Eatock 2012
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