Mother refuses to remove crying baby from Beethoven’s 9th
NewsThe directorate of the Beethoven Festival in Bonn has issued a public apology for the presence of a baby whose crying disrupted the quieter passages of the ninth symphony on Sunday.
The organisers admitted they were slow to react to the incident but blamed the mother. ‘We would have naturally expected the parents to leave the room with their dear child in accordance with good manners.’
Eventually,mother and baby were escorted out between movements.
The concert was given by the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conductor Cornelius Meister.
The orchestra is at fault. Under no circumstances should babies be allowed at public concerts of the classical repertoire unless the programmes are specifically geared to mothers with young babies. Naturally someone is going to chip in: when is a baby not a baby? When the child is old enough to sit through – and hopefully enjoy – the length of the symphonic movements being performed. Blaming the mother is passing the buck!
“….when is a baby not a baby?”
That is the parents’ decision and, if they decide unwisely, it is they who should be blamed.
The fault first lies with the mother. Any person with any sense should know not to bring a baby to a concert.
What about fathers with babies? Your chauvinism cloaks your ignorance.
Give it a rest.
Unless the conductor is Simon Rattle, of course…
The orchestra couldn’t do anything about that. They were guests, invited by the Beethovenfest Bonn, which has full responsibility for everything concerning the performance. Btw, the baby was just a few months old, sleeping in his mothers arms during the first three movements, so most of the audience didn’t even realize the presence until the 4th movement, where it started to cry….
The orchestra is not at fault, the hall’s front of house staff are for letting the family into the auditorium.
(There was a crying baby at a prom earlier this season, so annoying, please stay at home and put the radio on or get a baby sitter)
I had this once at the RFH London. They gave me
A ticket refund.
Both my kids (by now adults) had their first public concert at age 5. We had a very careful preparation before the concerts, and we listened together recordings, movement after movement, days before the concerts. The programmes were chosen well to keep their interest throughout the whole concerts. I remember well, it was Vespro della Beata Vergine for my older son, and Carmina Burana for the youngest.
Playing Carmina Burana to a 5 year old is child abuse!
Not at all. Colourful music mixing solo song and choirs, rhythmically exciting, “easy” to hear, everything very funny. Perfect for introducing children to the public concert “ritual”.
5 isn’t a baby. Karl Bohm went to the opera when he was 3. Also not a baby.
Good for you. They were 5, not 5 months.
That’s the point: they were not babies.
Taking youth “outreach” a little too far.
This is really a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. They should have played Handel’s Water Music
Oh, I can just imagine what kind of mother that was: egocentric, vegan, anthroposophic, either a teacher or no job, playing the social system.
Damned anthroposophists are a plague…they should not be allowed in civilized society!
What a depressing view of the world you have! You should find a better therapist.
I really do hope you were being ironic…
The Chicago Symphony does not allow children under the age of eight into subscription concerts.
Jolly good idea. Babies have NO place in theatres except in specific mother-toddler events. So it slept quietly for 3 movements. As if that’s a predictor of what a baby will do next.
I remember working for an orchestra where the subscribers included a young couple with a new baby. The sitter let them down one night, but they came, and took turns — one sat in the lobby, able to hear the concert faintly, and the other came out and replaced the first one at the interval. Their solution impressed house management and I think they were given some complimentary tickets for another event they might enjoy together, baby-sitting mishaps permiting.
Major venues in Hong Kong normally have a minimum age of 6 printed on the tickets.
yes, parents are to blame.
and they should haveleft at once if the baby cried and why did they took a baby to a concert? no money for a baby sitter? of course they were not charged for the baby.
unbelievable. shame on them.
If Beethoven had been conducting, no noise would’ve bothered him.
Might have discombobulated some of the players.
I presume the venue doesn’t proactively ban small children because they don’t want parents (who can’t find baby sitters) to fall out of the habit of attending.
Or maybe the child was snuck in under a hoopskirt.
I once had a discussion with a subscriber about this sort of thing and asked if there was suddenly a world-wide babysitting shortage. She told me, quite seriously, that there was. She and I both remembered doing a bit of child-minding when we were in secondary school, for $1 an hour and a snack left for us (ranged from a bowl of potato crisps to “chicken in the fridge if you want it”). Nowadays, IF you could find any young girl at all to agree to mind your child, she charged $20 and hour and a meal, rides to and from the sit, and more besides — adding well over $100 to the cost of a concert.
But even if you could and would pay it, there were very few girls willing to do it — they could get part-time jobs at the Gap (discount clothes for staff), a burger joint (free meal) — jobs that would give references for summer jobs and would let them see their friends in the workplace.
Not everyone has parents willing to take up the slack, so young mothers — and, yes, some fathers — have to make choices that may involve sacrificing the concert hall for a few seasons, or taking turns staying home and going with someone else.
If there were enough young families interested in subscribing to, or even attending, concerts, halls could consider a creche for a modest fee. But that is hardly the major demographic.
A very logical answer but I remain incredulous that the parent(s) of a baby or small child unable to sit quietly through a performance place their own preferences (and are allowed to by management or front-of-house) above those of the other 2000-odd members of the audience who have also purchased their tickets with the intention of listening to the music, not the crying of a baby, and have every right to do so.
You make it sound as though “taking turns staying home and going with someone else” were such a dreadful hardship, and why do you fail to mention the obvious option of going to a concert alone? Are you trying to delegitimise lone concert-goers? In a two-adult household, the obvious and simple solution is for one adult to attend the concert alone and for the other to stay at home. (In a one-adult household with children who cannot be left alone, the need to be organised about childcare is more acute generally…)
You’ve misread me entirely. That is exactly what I am proposing. I do NOT think anyone should bring a baby into a theatre, and I am suggesting alternatives. The “going with someone else” was just based on the notion that a couple had a double subscription but, yes, for the baby years, surely they could go alone. There are choices, and problems — like a babysitter letting down at the last minute is one of them — have to be solved without a baby in the hall.
Imagine if it happened at Bayreuth. There would be wigs on the green on the po faced folk on the hill.
This story does not mention the mother refusing to move — just to not being sensitive enough to go the minute the baby began to cry. I thought we would be faced with an obstructionist complaining about her rights from that VERY misleading headline; instead it is more likely that a young mother was confused as to what she should do — perhaps she resisted tramping over neighbours in her row given she would be holding a baby (and no doubt the paraphernalia without which apparently no baby travels anywhere). Sounds as if the staff did the right thing, if slowly, and she complied without complaint.
Anyone who brings a baby to a concert is by definition selfish and clueless. A hall that admits a baby is clueless. Lots of stupid people out there.
Ok. So babies maybe shouldn’t be allowed in concerts. But little kids should and some can sit extremely well through them. I’ve seen instances of older people actually physically assaulting children in concerts because they bother them by just being children in a concert.
So let’s not start stereotyping against children in concerts because they are the future of this magical art form.
I’m sorry for Maestro Meiser and his orchestra and I can only imagine watching Beethoven sitting through a concert like this. Enjoying it just the same as without the screaming baby.
The thread is not about young children – and I agree with your comments. It is about babies – and babies should not be permitted at concerts.
…as long as the little kid is sat next to the parent/guardian, with the parent/guardian in an aisle seat near the exit (the kid must never be placed in an aisle seat, since that gives rise to a risk of him/her deciding to wander around the hall during the performance, which is enormously disruptive even if done quietly), ready to act immediately and discreetly to stop any disruptive behaviour, if expedient/necessary by taking the child out quickly and quietly (and if the child has to be taken-out of the hall at any time other than the interval or during applause between works, he/she does not come back), having forewarned the child of the possibility.
Unfortunately, some parents/guardians do not seem capable of keeping their charges under control at a concert, or even fail to behave in their own right. In particular, it must be stressed that whispering at any point while the performance is in progress is unacceptable behaviour, and should be done only as a penultimate resort to prevent disruption (with the the antepenultimate resort having been a tap on the shoulder and miming the ‘sssh’ signal soundlessly, and the last resort being removal)… the sound of whispering is very disruptive and carries a great many rows, even if we might not be able to discern the actual words being whispered.
Hope the mother complained about lack of nappy changing facility in the concert hall.
I just attended a concert at the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall. Guess what? There is a nappy changing table in the women’s restroom! Perhaps, babies are welcome there.
As if Babies were a common problem in concert halls! Life is full of suffering…
What about all the adults who don’t know how to behave or turn their phones off?
I suggest that venues start educating the audience on how to act in such places. Some people just don’t think or know or care about that. These lapses seem to have increased markedly since COVID. Reminders on the ticket, programs or inside restroom doors might be helpful. All this condemnation on this thread isn’t going to do much good.
It happens in Ireland too,was at a beautiful carol service in christchurch this evening. A mother with a kid in her arms strolling up and down the aisles and making noise at the back messing around with the buggy taking toys out etc,talking to her kid. Just because the mother wanted to hear the carols she couldn’t care less that her kid was spoiling it for other people..am tired of spoilt young entitled selfish mums..