"At Figure 19, Cymbals, a Grand Smash of Your Delightful Instrument to help in the General Welter of Sound, If You Please!"
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The immortal Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor and impresario - and noted wit - during a rehearsal.
Another contender would be his shout from the orchestra pit to the stage where the soprano lead was rehearsing:
"How would you like it tonight, madam? Too fast, or too slow?"
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Genius! It reminds me of the Gary Larson cartoon "Roger screws up."
I don't know if you're familiar with his work? I'll try and find a copy...
We are indeed!
Some of those are indeed genius…
Yeah. The one to which I refer is of a guy (Roger) holding his cymbals at the back of an orchestra and thinking "I won't screw up, I won't screw up..." as he waits patiently for his cue at the end of the piece.
I shall endeavour to locate a picture...
I was once at a performance where that actually happened! Many years ago, Simon Rattle conducted a performance of Mahler's Tenth Symphony (Deryck Cooke's completion) in the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. At the end of the 2nd movement there's a terrific cymbal clash (it's not in all editions), just before the last five notes; and the percussion player got it wrong!
Mind you, keeping your place in a huge piece like that, with its rhythmic complexity as well as the great swathes of silent inactivity must be an enormous feat of concentration... I'm sure I couldn't do it. Not professionally, anyway.