The world according to 5 moods

There are exactly 5 moods--all hyphenated--of classical music.

Or at least this is what the new concierge function at the San Francisco Symphony website tells the imagined would-be-overwhelmed-audience member who might not know what concert to pick.

This new helper function will come to the rescue (oops. I slipped and initially typed "ridicule" instead. Of course, this wasn't a Freudian slip.) of this imagined helpless concertgoing ignoramus and help him select a concert, based on the mood of music he wants to hear, the period, the instruments, etc.

What are my choices of the types of moods of music?
1. Light/fun
2. Dramatic/thrilling
3. Pretty/pleasant
4. Edgy/intense
5. Spiritual

I played around with this concert helper to see what their idea of "dramatic/thrilling" music is, and conversely, (as if there is a dichotomy between these two categories) of "pretty/pleasant" music.

Beethoven's "Eroica" is thrilling. Fair enough. Shostakovitch's Ninth is also thrilling, as are Mendelssohn's violin concerto, Stravinsky, Brahms, and Mozart.

And pretty/pleasant? Mendelssohn's violin concerto emerges again! Alongside Beethoven's "Eroica", along with, of course, Bach, Handel and Mozart.

An interesting (the polite I'm-sure-it's-great-but-I'll-keep-my-distance kind of interesting, that is.) proposition, I suppose, but someone really screwed up on the marketing here.

My first problem with this categorization of music-according-to-five-moods is that the SF Symphony seems to suggest that some music isn't thrilling (read: exciting), to which this potential concertgoer begs to ask, why program something--anything--that you don't think is thrilling? It might also be "pretty", "edgy", "fun", whatever, but in the very least, you, the programmer and seller of tickets (you do want these tickets to sell, right?) should program and sell tickets with the mindset that every program will be thrilling and worth going to and convince the potential ticket-buyer that this is so.

Second, both "pretty" and especially "pleasant" are vapid adjectives to describe music. In fact, when I call something "pleasant" or "lovely", half the time, I might actually mean that something is indeed pleasant or lovely, but the rest of the time, I say it to refer to something I am lukewarm about or found nice enough, but isn't hanging-off-the-edge-of-my-seat riveting or even moving. "Pleasant" is the kind of thing I imagine the bland in-laws of the main character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding might say about a performance. If any of you read the SF Chronicle, I associate this polite applause icon with the word "pleasant". Again, are you trying to sell tickets or lull us to sleep with reassuring sounds? Not that Beethoven's "Eroica" would do that. But why would you market any music as "pretty" or "pleasant"? How about "beautiful" or "moving", which are also clichés, but are at least less insipid-sounding than "pleasant". One uses "pleasant" to describe the weather. But even then, it's a non-committal modifier and therefore not a powerful one.

"It's pleasant weather" vs. "It's gorgeous weather"

Do you see the difference in levels of enthusiasm? And likewise: "The concert was pleasant." vs. "The concert was smashing. The adagio movement in the violin concerto sounded so lyrical and uplifting."

Why settle for the merely pleasant, when you can have riveting, moving, gut-wrenching, tender, gorgeous, etc.?

Third, I can come up with at least 20 adjectives to describe just one movement of Beethoven's third symphony. Thus, how could you possibly describe your entire season with 5 or 9 adjectives?

Fourth, you offer no options for any edgy/intense pieces from the Baroque period. Both Bach and Marais have written works that I'd categorize as edgy or intense, you know.

I think I understand what you're trying to do, but do you see how not terribly useful this is?

Also, if I may say so, it's a bit presumptuous as well. From what is written under the "first time concertgoer" tab, it sounds like you are either trying to be funny or you think first time concertgoers are idots. To wit: under top five concertgoing myths, ok, the first one is a valid misconception (although hello. We are in San Francisco, where people go to work in flip flops and go to five-star restaurants in jeans. Do you really think anyone thinks they need to dress in a tux to go see a symphony? Another marketing failure: you clearly don't understand your audience enough).

But "that one piece they always play at the beginning where the violin stands and everyone plays the same note"? Are you serious? First of all, if someone has come to a concert enough times that they observe that "they are always playing that song", then clearly, this person has been to enough concerts to figure out what the strings are doing. Actually, it only takes one concert to learn this. Surely you don't think a first time concertgoer is this moronic?

But this gets even better. "It's good to leave your cellphone on during a performance." There is always a miscreant who leaves their cellphone on, but I think that most people just simply forget to turn it off. I don't think anyone actually thinks, oh, gee, this is a great idea. Even if someone were a first time concertgoer, it's not like this person never goes to the movies or other plays or other non-classical performances where he'd also be required to switch cellphones off.

Ditto with the snarky remark about coughing and how it adds a nice percussive touch to the concert. It's fine to tell people that they should try to hold their coughs during the performance. But to suggest that first time concertgoers think this adds new percussion to the music-- you can't possibly be this out of touch with reality, so I'm going to assume you're trying to be witty or funny.

But funny it ain't. This top-5 misconceptions list is just plain dumb at best and condescending at worst. Why don't you just list FAQs and do away with this silly useless list? Like this as the NY Phil does?

First time concertgoers are not idiots. Perhaps you should keep that in mind when you do your next website redesign.