Combining knowledge and performance (copy) by Rodo Nijhoff

How can we transfer knowledge to an audience in a performance? Or how can we make a musical performance which is informative? In this research I try to find the middle ground between the musical side and the information distribution. I gain knowledge on which mindset I want to find in myself and activate in my audience. Following, I do research on how other people do performative knowledge distribution and I investigate the impact of my own performance with the audience. As a discussion, I investigate my own performance and reflect on my performance with all the knowledge gained in the research.

ANALYSIS 3: YOUNG PEOPLE'S CONCERT

The Young People’s Concerts from the New York Philharmonic are a very long running series. The concert series exists from 1924 on (100 years this year). Under Bernstein the series became very popular. Regularly shown on American television at the time, and recently easily accessible on the world wide web (Cohen, 2022). I chose to analyze one of the concerts lead by Bernstein in 1964. Bernstein uses A hybrid form of playing and talking throughout the whole concert. The target group is ‘young people’, but is definitely also suited for the ‘older people’. Bernstein explains quite a difficult subject: the sonata form. I chose this particular episode because I was curious how Bernstein explains such an abstract musical term for a target group which is not an expert and at the same time needs to be ‘entertained’.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

Entry point
Bernstein extracts the ‘Sonata form’ as the entry point. It is sufficient over the course of the whole episode of 50 minutes, and it encompasses all the pieces played. It is a complex matter, but the whole episode takes a long time, so Bernstein has a lot of time to explain it in different forms.
Go beyond knowledge, engage by experience
He takes the sonata form out of context of classical music and uses Beatles music, which was brand new at the time of recording, activating the audiences ears in a different way then they expected. It is visible that the audience is surprised by this comparison (video 4.1).
Tap your audience’s competence
Bernstein does not really do this in a very interactive way.
Engage multiple intelligences
Llinguistic: Bernstein uses countless metaphors. A beautiful example is the Tonic acting as a magnet, forcing the dominant to come to the tonic (video 4.2).

Musical: Music is interwoven in all the talks. Having him at the piano makes his words have much more meaning
Bodily: When talking about the sonata form, he makes a comparison to the way our heads are 'composed' in three parts (video 4.3).
Logical: The whole episode goes around the structure of a Sonata form.
Visual: During the last runthrough of the Mozart they included big signs at the back of the orchestra to indicate the location into which we are now in the sonata form (video 4.4).
Interpersonal: -
Intrapersonal: He encourages the audience to find the sonata form themselves during quite a long piece of music.

Reflect
Many times he repeated the structure of the sonata form. During the whole 50 minutes he regularly takes a moment to look back.
Project your personality
Leonard Bernstein has a strong charisma, also when he talks to a big audience like this.He seems to stay quite formal. I suspect this is also because of the time in which this series is recorded.

COMMENTS

One of the comments could be the length of the chosen pieces. It is interesting that he uses quite long pieces. These concerts come from a different time where attention span was possibly a bit longer. Also, the whole episode lasts 50 minutes.

Moreover, the subject Bernstein talks about is formal. I like it that he trusts the audience to be involved and he challenges them examining further. When the hour is over, we are not sure if we know what we know, but the listener is interested in what could come.

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