Freya Parr
BBC Music’s editorial assistant
‘As the team’s resident millennial, I was delighted to be sent off to try the BBC Phil’s in-concert app, which transformed my listening experience. From now on, putting my phone away before a concert won’t feel quite right.’
You’ve found your seat, had a quick flick through the programme and dutifully turned your phone off, slipping it into a pocket. We all know the usual pre-concert rituals. In this concert, however, things are a little different.
The BBC Philharmonic has launched a new app – Notes – which allows concertgoers to keep their phones on throughout concerts in order to receive live programme notes. The app aims to address the potentially intimidating nature of concerts, delivering nuggets of useful information about the music to audience members’ phones in live time. Concert halls can be daunting places for those
‘uninitiated’ into the classical music world – think of all those Italian words, Roman numerals and catalogue numbers. That’s before you even consider when to clap. Answers to all these questions and more land in your phone at just the right time. I’m here as one of these phone-wielding guinea pigs that get to try out the Notes app during its prototype stages.
Entering Bridgewater Hall, I type in the building’s wi-fi details. The web app launches automatically, and I’m in. Easy. Those using the Notes web app are segregated in a dedicated area of the hall to avoid disturbing others. I sit back to enjoy a concert of Sibelius and Tippett, although the dangers of having a phone in a concert are realised almost instantly, as my phone’s GPS is left on, and starts giving me directions out loud. Sufficiently warned, I close all other apps and try to control my growing phone-induced anxiety.
As conductor Andrew Davis walks on stage, my first programme note pops up, explaining who he is. I’m impressed by just how unobtrusive the phones are on our laps. The screen is black, with only a slight glow when the notes update, so you’re aware enough of a change to glance down to read, but not too much to distract.
It may not bother me, but does it disturb the players, knowing that phones are being used across the auditorium? ‘Absolutely not,’ says BBC Philharmonic violinist
Julian Gregory. ‘For over 100 years, audiences have had printed programmes and it’s much more distracting hearing them leaf through pages, or even dropping them. The phone is an improvement – it’s organised and controlled.’
He’s right. All too often, I find myself spending most of the first half of a concert with my head in my programme, trying desperately to digest as much information as possible, often to the detriment of listening to the performance. The digital notes, on the other hand, are tweet-length, with a 280-character limit that makes them easily digestible. Throughout each piece, the name of the movement is listed at the top of the screen with an English translation. It’s small things like this that make you realise how complicated music can seem to those who haven’t learnt the language of concerts.
But it’s not just an educational tool. As a lapsed orchestral musician, I find the notes add an extra layer to an already superb concert. The most interesting part of being in an orchestra, for me, was hearing the conductor’s interpretations and insights in rehearsals, painting a broader picture of the work and finding out more about its origins and influences. The Notes app feels a little like these asides, usually exclusively available to the musicians.
‘If you’re watching a nature programme on the TV, you have a much richer understanding if David Attenborough is talking to you throughout and explaining what you’re seeing,’ says Gregory. ‘It would be great to have that with music but you’d have conflicting audio on top of audio, so this is next best thing.’ By pointing out different instruments and phrases to listen out for, you are made much more aware of the multiple parts that make up a large orchestral work. The celesta in Tippett’s Piano Concerto gets a special mention, along with a little detail about its role in the piece. Quotes from the composers are peppered throughout the notes, putting the works in their historical and social context, so you can listen in a new way.
The language used is descriptive, too. ‘The brass snarls imposingly as the music whirls by’, my phone tells me in response to the colourful textures being created by the BBC Philharmonic. For those new to classical music, struggling to find meaning within the noise, these descriptions break down the grand scale of these works in a magical way. In Sibelius’s Sixth Symphony, comparisons are made to sunlight and rain within the music, appearing on our screens at just the right moment.
The perfectly timed nature of the notes delivered to my phone is no happy accident. During the interval, I go backstage to meet the people making it all happen. At the back of the hall behind a glass screen, one person is reading along with the score, cueing another to trigger the release of a new note to the audience’s phones. The plan is ultimately for the
Notes app to be incorporated into radio broadcasts as well, so those listening at home can also access the app.
‘We’re a broadcast orchestra, so we want the broadcast audience to have the same experience as those in the concert hall,’ says BBC Philharmonic general manager Simon Webb. I instantly think back to my 17-year-old self, and how useful I’d have found this during A Levels, trying desperately to get to grips with the nuances of Tippett’s Double Concerto. There are even plans to share the technology with other orchestras. ‘Part of the reason we’ve created Notes is that we want everyone to have access to it,’ says Webb. ‘The next stage is to share it with the other
BBC orchestras, and the Hallé and the Manchester Camerata have been trying it out too. This is just the beginning.’
There’s no doubt that the presence of mobile phones in concerts will always make some audience members clench their fists with irritation. But is the subtle glow of a screen on your lap any more of a distraction than a heavy breather or a throat clearer? I’m not sure it is.
BBC Philharmonic ‘Notes’ is now available at all concerts in the orchestra’s main Bridgewater Hall season.
I am impressed by just how unobtrusive the phones are, with only a slight glow