This Node will have a lot of stuff in it. I've divided it into sections
The Last Night of the Proms
The Last Night is a celebration concert marking the end of the annual
proms season. Its tickets are very highly sought after, and in fact
you need to have ticket stubs from 6 other proms concerts to even apply for a
last night ticket- even then, obtaining a ticket is by no means certain.
Luckily the BBC broadcast the concert on BBC2 and its conclusion on BBC1.
Queueing Up
So, you've got your tickets. The cheapest tickets are for
the Arena and the Gallery, both at £4. The Arena is the whole floor of the
Royal Albert Hall, and Gallery is the ring of standing space that surrounds
the hall up in the rafters. These places are unreserved standing. Now you must
face competition for a position. The promming diehards (hereafter "prommers"
or "daleks") will start to queue up the night before in order to be certain of
the best seats. However, queueing up for about 20 hours is tough, so the
concert organisers have instituted a system of checking-in times, at 8am, 10am,
3pm and 5pm. (The concert begins at 7.30pm) You can join the queue whenever
you like and at one of these times you will be given a
raffle ticket. The
number on this ticket is your position in the queue. Your name is taken by an
official. Now you can do what you like until the next check-in time. Picnic
in the nearby
Hyde Park, drink in the nearby student union bar, whatever.
At the next check-in time, if you are not in the queue, and in the correct
position, your name is stuck from the list and you have to go to the back.
Now it gets complicated.
The prommers have instituted a separate system for reserving spaces in the
first four rows of the arena. This year, myself and friends (including noder hugo rune)
got into the queue in time for the 10am check-in. This brought us to the
attention of the prommer running this aspect of the queueing. He presented us
with a plan of the front of the hall, and invited us to choose the spaces that we wanted. He gave us a second raffle ticket with a different number, and hung
around after each official check in to make sure we were still around. When
we eventually went in, our spaces were reserved.
So, we spent quite a bit of the day hanging about in various queues. This made us the pime target of leafleting about local eateries and such, but also on political issues (one offered alternative lyics to Jerusalem protesting about the Foot and Mouth Disease crisis), and from the usual crazies like Henry Percy.
The Prommers
These are the group of high-minded regulars, who, over the years have come to
see themselves as a bit of a breed apart. They are weirdoes.
Bino Man is a
notable example, but there are about 20 or 30 others. They are organised, running the
first 4 rows of the arena with an iron rod, running a prommers orchestra picked
from the audience who perform outside the hall for the queue, and taking a
collection for musical charities. (This year they raised in excess of
£10,000). They can make things very unpleasant for the neophyte, tutting and
shaking their heads at coughers and premature applauders. They also issue
occasional diktats to the audience and concert organisers in a flat unison
monotone. A typical interjection may consist of them shouting, "ARENA TO
AUDIENCE: WE ARE NOW COLLECTING FOR MUSICAL CHARITIES. THANK YOU". This is delivered in perfect sync. They sound not unlike
daleks in their clipped
insistence- and are sometimes referred to as just that.
A Rebuttal To Fondue
Now look here! Sometimes I see something on e2 I disagree strongly with, but decide to let it go. Heck, if it's
well written, I'll even vote it up. But the
WU above cannot go uncontested. I've been to dozens of
Proms, and three Last Nights. Lets have a look at what
actually happens. I'll take the concert of 9th September 2000 as an example.
I've *never* seen a Daily Mail being read at any of them. Not once. The Guardian seems to feature more
often. As for the flag waving, the union jack was again in the minority this year, squeezed out as it was by
the Welsh Dragon, the Soltaire, the Irish, German and French Tricolours. And countless others. If the event was
really about national identity, these others would not come so far to attend. I'm not English, and I enjoy the
whole event. I could even see a Rainbow Flag. You know, the gay pride one.
As presented by BBC1 it may "smack of jingoism", because they only broadcast the famous last half hour, from
which your startling misconceptions seem to stem. Of the 2000 Last Night programme, 24 minutes were
taken up by the patriotic or nationalist songs, and 89 minutes were from Bach, Mozart, Strauss,
Shostakovitch (a world première), Percy Grainger, and Delius.
During this part of the concert, the flags
remain furled, and the audience pay rapt attention to the beautiful music. And lets examine the
"singing about
great England is". Jerusalem is actually about how awful England is, and exhorts the listener to put it
right. It has always been a firm favourite of the social reformer, having for example been adopted by the Women's
Suffrage movement.
But these songs are not taken seriously:- one can hardly imagine the Irish tricolour being waved enthusiastically
about if that were the case.
Some of the regular attendees (such as Bino Man) are a bit odd. But being different isn't a crime, right?
Basically, the proms are about music. Good music, expertly performed is not an anachronism. Not small minded
nationalism, not anything else. It is impossible to get
tickets to the Last Night without attending six other prom concerts. This ensures that the event keeps the
jingoist at home. In my view, anyone who feels it possible to ascribe all kinds of attributes such as social class,
newspaper choice, political affiliation, club membership, hoity-toityness and gimpyness to people he doesn't know on
the basis of the music they enjoy is a bigot and a snob. Oh, and Simon Rattle (the one with the crazy perm) doesn't
conduct
the Last Night, but Andrew Davis (the one with the beard) has.
If you're in London next year, lets go. You might be surprised.
I can't argue with your points about Wimbledon's Henman/Rusedski fans, tho. Although the rest of the tournament
seems quite fair-minded. I've only been once, tho, so I won't comment further.
The 2001 Last Night
This concert came on the weekend following the appalling destruction of the
World Trade Centre in New York. It came at the end of the first proms season
presided over by an American conductor. It was never going to be the usual
party.
Gritchka's writeup below gives the new programme.
A BBC spokesman appeared before the show began, explained that there would
be some programme changes, and invited us to participate in the spirit of the
broadcast. He added that the show would be carried on 300 public radio
stations in the USA. We were being warned to be on our best behaviour.
This was not really needed.
There was next-to-no flag-waving, but there were many US and UK flags being
held aloft. One colonial American flag was to been seen draped over a
banister- a flag that combines the US stripes and the UK crosses.
I've never been at a more sombre proms. I actually wept silently during the
Finzi piece, thinking not of falling leaves, but of falling bodies.