Finger-Syncing

Thanks to my company being so cool, I had the chance to watch part of the inauguration ceremony on Tuesday morning of this week. They set up the big-screen TV in the conference room to stream the video feed; unfortunately it kept hiccuping, the audio and video were out of sync, etc. which was pretty annoying. But I enjoyed the chance to see it regardless.

As you probably know, famed film composer John Williams composed a piece specifically for the inauguration entitled Air and Simple Gifts, based on the famous Appalachian folk melody, and it was performed live by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill. My first thought upon seeing the performers was "They can't really be playing, it's way too cold for the instruments to stay in tune!"

You know, turns out I was right. I saw an article on MSN today making that same point. The musicians were in fact performing live, so the people who were close enough to them could hear them playing; but the instruments were not amplified and the music that was broadcast over the speakers at the event and to the millions watching on TV (myself included) had been recorded several days before.

That's a reasonable decision--really the only reasonable one, if you think about it. The temperature was about 30 degrees, as the article points out, too cold for any of the instruments to play in tune but especially "play[ing] havoc" on the piano. This happens pretty frequently with classical performances in very cold environments, and even the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti famously lip-synced his final performance. I fully support the decision of the musicians at the inauguration, as I imagine any reasonable person who understands the factors involved would. But I find it amusing that the press wants to make a point of revealing this fact. The article can be found at the link below.

"Their performance was live — but music wasn't"

When I wrote the first draft of this post, I replaced my original text "I find it amusing that the press wants to make it a big deal" with the text of my penultimate sentence above, thinking the word choice of the former was too strong. But several hours later, the article made it to a more prominent place on MSN's front page and also added a reader poll, entitled "Vote: Bad Choice?" So now I return to my original thought. It's ridiculous that the press is making such a big deal out of it. The actual question on the poll is practically incriminating: "Was it wrong to 'fake' music at the presidential inauguration?" Fortunately, 68.2% of the people who voted in the poll voted no. But some of the responses (you can comment as well as vote in the poll) are rather amusing in themselves; one person who voted yes commented "Just more smoke & mirrors from the obamamite camp." The third option in the poll (besides "yes, it was wrong to fool the masses" and "no, who cares, it sounded good") is "Maybe. If this is how the administration starts out ...", and one of the readers who voted that option also commented "i'm not at all surprise if it was recorded, everything sorrounding the obama campain has been stained with deceitfulness" [sic]. As if Obama or his "obamamite camp" or "campain" had anything to do with the performance (whatever the heck they are). Doesn't anyone have any common sense anymore?

Finger-Syncing