Nagaswaram legend T.N. Rajarathnam Pillai on occasions used to have an audience of more than 10,000 lining the street in front of his performance venue. Many temple concerts, even in the last decade, witnessed 5,000-strong audiences. The Shanmukhananda Sabha in Mumbai held concerts with 3,000 people in attendance.
I once took my daughter, who was then six months old, to a rare M.S. Subbulakshmi concert in Bangalore’s Fort High School grounds. I was only five minutes late and had to stand outside the pandal for a full three hours holding my daughter. I was told that the crowd exceeded 2,000 people. From these we moved to halls with capacities ranging from 100 to 1,000. Srinivasa Sastri Hall at Luz can squeeze in 80 people at most.
But where have we now come to? Concerts with no live audience at all. We are poised to witness the first December season in many decades that will have no audience attendance. Biwoko Hall in Japan recently saw the live performance of a Richard Wagner opera, with no audience but live-streamed to viewers. The legendary German composer, Richard Wagner, has a hall named after him in Bayreuth, with a capacity of 1,925 people, and tickets for the opera (even much after his death) were sold out a year ahead. That’s the kind of frenzy live shows attract.
What effect will this absent audience have on a Carnatic concert? What impact, if any, do crowds have on the artistes on stage? To start with, it has always been believed that the mood of a concert comes not just from the artistes but also largely from the audience — their warm applause, ‘aha’ sighs and nodding of the head. The analogy for audience-less music is recorded film music or some of the AIR and television recordings. One is not sure if the ‘manodharma’ component of any of these is comparable to a live concert with audience.
Live feedback
The second aspect that is difficult to judge is the audience’s overall attention and engagement — artistes are very good at noticing restive behaviour, people leaving, or general approval for the concert. Many seasoned artistes are known to make content and duration adjustments on the go, based on the vibes they get. Moreover, a packed or a relatively sparse audience has no equivalent relevance when it comes to online audiences — the statistics of logins, sign-ins, likes etc. can never equal live assessment.
In familiar venues, artistes also keenly look for known faces and audience composition (age groups, gender groups or disciple groups). One would also assume that the presence of erudite listeners and connoisseurs spurs many artistes to aim for a high level of artistry (versus simply performing a ‘on par’ show). Concert is a medium of communication between performers and listeners and in an audience-free concert, one side of the equation is missing.
That will be a cause of worry for the traditionalists when the kutcheris go online . There could also be questions of audio quality at home versus venue. On the flip side, decibel levels can be regulated in online concerts to get optimal listening comfort.
Younger artistes would surely love to have live audiences to cheer them and notice their talent. They may also feel robbed of their ‘big stage moment’ this year.
It appears that going online has less pros and more cons. But these have to be overlooked in the wake of the pandemic. Whether it will be a one-year experiment or will survive beyond that is as yet unknown.
The writer is a classical music critic and commentator