There’s More To Our Culture Than Just Pop

In the well-dressed, don’t-clap-in-the-wrong-place world of symphonic music, a Thomas Hampson performance is about as close as it comes to a mosh pit.

No one actually jumped up and stormed the stage a few nights ago when Hampson sang before a sold-out Spokane Opera House crowd of 2,700.

But women were thinking of it.

“The visual part of a Hampson concert is great,” said Rosemary Selinger, a past president of the Spokane Symphony. “He’s quite a presence up there and is really very pleasing to look at.”

Hunk is the word ticket-holders at the hockey game across town might have used.

At 40, Hampson has been listed among the 50 most beautiful people in the world by People magazine and had his voice recognized as Male Singer of the Year at the Cannes classical music awards.

The combination of being a mellifluous baritone and a studly presence affords him an unusual opportunity to build a following for classical music among those who would just as soon see hockey.

Thus, every seat was filled at the Spokane Opera House 10 days ago.

Yet I suspect many people left the performance feeling like a kid in Spanish class who hadn’t studied for the test and didn’t really get it when the teacher started to speak.

A night at the symphony isn’t as accessible as The Beatles Anthology on TV.

The buzz I heard from people exiting the Opera House was mostly worried mutterings about being too thick to have gotten the drift of what happened on stage.

I felt the same way.

The program Hampson had chosen was built around a little-known composition by Frederick Delius called “Sea Drift.”

You haven’t heard it on the radio and didn’t listen to it as a kid.

Composed in 1903 by an Englishman who lived on his wife’s inheritance, “Sea Drift” uses poetry by Walt Whitman to tell of a boy’s observations of two mating birds at the beach.

In the end, Hampson received three standing ovations.

These came from a crowd that knew of Hampson’s fame and wanted to recognize the success of a hometown boy.

As for “Sea Drift?”

“Honestly, I found it a difficult program to follow,” said Selinger. “I found I really had to concentrate. I had to put a lot of myself into it.”

But most people don’t work that hard.

Here then, is the promise, and the problem facing the arts in America, including the Spokane Symphony Orchestra in this, its 50th year.

On one hand, our nation loves a star. When a performer manages to hit People magazine, the hall is full.

On the other hand, we have become a nation of cultural channel surfers.

Music or art that requires a degree of thought and depth beyond the buttons of our radios or cable TV, increasingly leaves us dumbfounded.

The current obsession to judge every human endeavour on the basis of free-market ideals raises this question: “So what if symphonic music only attracts 13 percent of the adult population and only a handful of young people under the age of 30?”

The Spokane Chiefs hockey game attracted 6,759 on the same night as Thomas Hampson. Isn’t this simply the free will of the people?

I don’t think it is that simple.

My bet would be that 100 years from now the great hockey players will be reduced to portraits on the wall while “Sea Drift” will endure.

For this has been the human experience.

The arts and music are where successive generations turn to teach themselves and their children about human feelings and imagination.

As adults we learn a life worth living requires more than success on multiple-choice tests or even a hard check to the boards on ice.

Our days unfold as a subtle, ambiguous, profound and unspoken journey. Art and music reflect these realities and can provoke an intelligence about these things.

Unfortunately, we are in danger of entertaining ourselves to a fault. We peruse the top 10 charts in the name of culture while forgetting what it takes to search attentively for that which is unspoken yet most meaningful in art and music.

“Going to the symphony really is a listening experience and we don’t really do very much listening these days,” Selinger said.

In the long run, the music Thomas Hampson sings will matter more even if it is difficult to grasp in a single sitting.

For it is this higher art that distinguishes us from the chirping crickets, the howling dogs and the apes.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on the Perspective page.