Cacaphonic Fun: The Really Terrible Orchestra

In an article in the New York Times, Alexander McCall Smith describes what can only be called The Really Terrible Orchestra. He begins: "WHY should real musicians — the ones who can actually play their instruments — have all the fun?" A profound question that set this particular funsmith's heart conceptually aflutter. He continues: "Some years ago, a group of frustrated people in Scotland decided that the pleasure of playing in an orchestra should not be limited to those who are good enough to do so, but should be available to the rankest of amateurs. So we founded the Really Terrible Orchestra, an inclusive orchestra for those who really want to play, but who cannot do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases."

Similar in spirit to Adam Sandler's Opera Man, The Really Terrible Orchestra completely avoids the question of "good music" by providing its audiences with very human performers who are having a great deal of fun making music that isn't really that terrible.

Smith concludes: "There is now no stopping us. We have become no better, but we plow on regardless. This is music as therapy, and many of us feel the better for trying. We remain really terrible, but what fun it is. It does not matter, in our view, that we sound irretrievably out of tune. It does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the orchestra have actually been discovered to be playing different pieces of music, by different composers, at the same time. I, for one, am not ashamed of those difficulties with C-sharp. We persist. After all, we are the Really Terrible Orchestra, and we shall go on and on. Amateurs arise — make a noise."

Cacophonic fun. But of course. Related, but not to be confused with, Musical fun.

I, myself, am somewhat of a virtuoso on the Cacophone...since I was in elementary school band, and discovered that if I played quietly enough, I could pretty much play anything.

via Alexander Kjerulf

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith