Dogging for the Disabled

Last week, I attended the Dogging Musikfest in Austria's charming Burgenland; although I suspect it would have a higher audience if it was relocated to Essex.  The weather was sweltering in a way that only Mitteleuropa can be but excellent portable air-con was provided.  I was also particularly struck by the care and attention given to disabled members of the audience.  Ramps had been constructed to the front of the stalls giving those in wheelchairs the best seats in the house. Helpers and carers were given the end seats on the front rows of the stalls for ease of access.

That being said, the recital on the evening in question hardly generated much competition for the best seats. 

Three settings of 'lost' Hungarian folk songs by an American who lives in Minnesota are hardly going to form a queue.  The notes helpfully advise that 'lost' and 'discarded' are the same word in Hungarian, apparently, so it's difficult to ascertain with any level of certainty why the composers considers these songs noteworthy.  The song cycle which took up the second half of the recital was in Rumelian dialect and (and I think you'll be as pleasantly surprised by this as I was) deals with a shepherd's love for his shepherdess girlfriend (well she'd hardly be an accountant, would she?) his sheep, his sheepdog and, judging from the endless number of sections which make up this piece, his love for anything else with a pulse in the surrounding area as well. Bizarrely, this offering was also the work of an American composer who lives in Minnesota but not the same one.  I wonder if they know each other?

I had never heard of the 'internationally renowned' Welsh baritone whose job it was to interpret these pieces nor his accompanist who, apparently, is 'much in demand' on the international circuit. Not for any musical reason I could discern.  As a decorative doorstop, perhaps, or specialist gigolo for women who become aroused in the presence of plodding, musical mediocrity.  Whatever, the 'back story' (as our American cousins have it), the opening bars and optional accuracy of the singer confirmed the two hours of exquisite torture to come. 

God knows, the 'discarded' folk songs gave me ample time to consider my forthcoming defence statement and reasons why eating Scottish people is wrong. But it was only during the opening section which avowed a love for 'all things in nature' (Keep your cats in doors!) that it was brought home to me how compliant I and other music writers have all become over the years.  We can't just shout down a performer or walk out when being subjected to substandard music or barrack the accompanist from the stalls. We'd never get free tickets again!  However, the two disabled members of the audience had no such qualms.

Throughout the Hungarian songs, it was obvious that the female wheelchair user was less than impressed with the musical fare and seemed determined, despite the ratchet straps which held her wheel chair in place, to escape the aural torture.  The song entitled 'To The Mountains' was punctuated with crashes and bangs from the front of the auditorium as she appeared engaged in a life-and-death struggle with her wheelchair entirely reminiscent of Dr Strangelove's attempts to control his politically-incorrect, rogue right arm during the closing stages of Stanley Kubrick's comic masterpiece.  During the section entitled 'Song of Departure', a helper stepped forward, noisily released the ratchet straps and pushed the wheelchair into the gloom of the abandoned zone of the stalls. Throughout the whole episode, the internationally renowned Welsh baritone (IRWB henceforth) had maintained a stony visage with his 'eyes to the far horizon' (about row S of the stalls). Although I could tell that his resolve had weakened as he manfully sang over the noise of of the wheelchair's squeaky guide wheel as it headed towards the exit.  The interval arrived only just in time.

A surfeit of enthusiasm for the Shepherd's song cycle in Rumelian dialect seemed to be the problem for the gentleman in the wheel chair who now took sole possession of the raised observation platform almost at eye-to-eye level with IRWB.  The organisers had done well to find not just a disabled person keen on modern settings of late nineteenth century pastoral song cycles but one who was also cogniscent of the impenetrable Rumelian dialect.  Not content with forty minutes or so (I wasn't timing it.) of passive enjoyment, he livened up the sections marked 'I Call My Flock' and 'The Dog's Bark' with some free-form vocalisation. This was more than IRWB could stand.  His face glowed russet.  Perspiration soaked his fashionably Nehru-collared shirt as he laid on the fortissimo with a trowel in a desperate effort to be heard above the wailing from the observation platform directly in front of him.  This had now grown in volume with a helper stepping forward advising his charge:

'Nicht singen sie, bitte.  Singen hier is verboten!'

And so it was to prove.  The final section of the song cycle telling entitled 'Our Laughter Fades' was galloped through at some pace as it was now obvious that IRWB and his 'much in demand' accompanist just wanted to 'get the hell out of' Burgenland and be on that plane to the next star-studded musikfest; preferably one beyond the reach of current EC legislation regarding access for the disabled.  Speaking personally, I think that Dogging might become something a summer fixture.