Hearing Loss Claim at Royal Opera House

[Simon Lewis]

It may be specious but I suspect from the final para in the article linked by Gridgirl alerting us to the appeal it's likely to make an appearance in the case!

 

Hence the reason why so many stakeholders share an interest in this case and its appeal. Claims for industrial hearing loss is Big Business, with individuals seeking compensation for occurrences after 1963 (the date of guilty knowledge) and Jan 1990 and April 2006 when Noise at Work and Control of Noise at Work respectively became law.

If a business cannot prove that it took reasonable steps to protect hearing and there is reasonable evidence that noise induced hearing loss has occurred, the claimant may have a successful case.

CONAWR 2005 does not differentiate between noise and music, but goes out of its way to include music. There were cries of "the end of orchestras as we know them" in the press in 2008, but that went quiet when either the orchestra found ways to mitigate risk or just paid lip service to the new regs.

 

Now that a decision in music has gone pretty much as would be expected under CONAWR, the law will be seen to be impotent if not applied. If the appeal wins, I suspect it will be on only a related matter or on a fine distinction in interpretation of one point....

[GridGirl]

The work you're doing is probably deserving of some proper academic research and publication (and if it's already happening, tell us where we can read the papers!).

 

As a tech/tutor in a music and drama conservatoire I am reading with much interest.

 

One of the horn players in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, up the coast from us, is also an audiologist. Unsurprisingly his interest lies in musicians’ hearing and he’s been part of quite a lot of research in this area. Some of these articles are only abstracts unless you want to pay, but some are the full article:

 

First

 

Second

 

Third

 

Fourth

 

Fifth

 

Sixth

[J Pearce]

Some of these articles are only abstracts unless you want to pay, but some are the full article:

 

First

 

Second

 

Third

 

Fourth

 

Fifth

 

Sixth

 

Thanks, I shall add to the reading to do list. Hopefully some of them will be accessible on work’s academic subscriptions.

[Simon Lewis]

....Some of these articles are only abstracts unless you want to pay, but some are the full article:

 

Excellent - thank you!

 

 

 

[kitlane]

Free seminar discussing 'Acoustic Shock' at King's College, London. December 6th

 

 

Acoustic Shock: Where Law Meets Aesthetics

 

Acoustic Shock explores the contested boundaries where the ‘freedoms’ of aesthetic production meet legal constraints. A collaboration between the Performance Foundation, Dickson Poon School of Law, with support from the King’s College London English Department Creative Seed Fund.

Details and booking

[sunray]

<br />Free seminar discussing 'Acoustic Shock' at King's College, London. December 6th

b>Acoustic Shock: Where Law Meets Aesthetics</b><br /><br /><I>Acoustic Shock explores the contested boundaries where the 'freedoms' of aesthetic production meet legal constraints. <I>A collaboration between the Performance Foundation, Dickson Poon School of Law, with support from the King's College London English Department Creative Seed Fund.</I></I><br /><I><I><br /></I></I><br /><I><I><a href='https://www.eventbrite.com/e/acoustic-shock-where-law-meets-aesthetics-tickets-5340970988' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>Details and booking</a></I></I><br />

 

Dam, I'll not be able to make that one ...

[Simon Lewis]

The August 2007 copy of HSE's Mythbusters provides some interesting reading... including these two salient sections:

 

Orchestras regularly play at 90-95 dB - so no more Wagner then?

The tighter noise exposure action values will not outlaw particular pieces from orchestras'repertoires but the loudest pieces may be played less often. The aim is to protect musicians'hearing so that they can continue in their profession and go on providing pleasure to thepublic. The Royal Opera House for example will still do the Ring Cycle, but schedule theperformances to allow the musicians recovery time in what is anyway a physically demandingwork. The draft practical guide offers other suggestions in relation to suitable venues,orchestra layouts and elevating the brass so that they can be heard without having to playthrough five rows of fellow musicians.

 

Surely there's no evidence of damage to hearing in orchestras?

A study published in 2006 of hearing protection and hearing symptoms in Danish orchestrassuggests more than 27% of musicians suffer hearing loss, with 24% suffering from tinnitus(ringing in the ears), 25% from hyperacusis (increased sensitivity to sound), 12% fromdistortion and 5% from diplacusis (ears hear two distinct tones).

 

edit...

And just to cap it all, the Association of British Orchestras published this work - " THE CONTROL OF NOISE AT WORK REGULATIONS 2005 AND THEIR IMPACT ON ORCHESTRAS" in February 2008. For an institution to turn round years later an say that those regulations simply do not apply to them, because "this is art" ignores the law and the industry guidance that was written to address this very issue.

Edited November 18, 2018 by Simon Lewis

[GridGirl]

Orchestras regularly play at 90-95 dB - so no more Wagner then?

The tighter noise exposure action values will not outlaw particular pieces from orchestras'repertoires but the loudest pieces may be played less often. The aim is to protect musicians' hearing so that they can continue in their profession and go on providing pleasure to the public. The Royal Opera House for example will still do the Ring Cycle, but schedule the performances to allow the musicians recovery time in what is anyway a physically demanding work. The draft practical guide offers other suggestions in relation to suitable venues, orchestra layouts and elevating the brass so that they can be heard without having to play through five rows of fellow musicians.

 

I've just finished my bi-annual Excel mission to create predicted sound exposure graphs for all our players for the upcoming season (it's a good couple of days of staring at Excel until I go cross-eyed) where we have Turandot (very loud, 3 hours long), Wozzeck (very loud, mercifully only 1hr40mins long) and Salome (atomically loud, once again mercifully only 1hr40mins long) in rep, along with La boheme and Werther (neither particularly loud). We've rostered our players very, very carefully to minimize potential issues, and we've created as much space for respite in the schedule as possible, but it's not always achievable to avoid things like a Turandot/Wozzeck double call day simply due to our jammed-tight schedule - we pay so much for the SOH that we have to maximize our use of the venue. We're also mid-season on a production of Spartacus right now, which has caused us huge dramas in the past (it's a very densely orchestrated score with lots of battle/fight scenes which are all very loud!), but thanks to some exceptionally careful planning and contingency plans, it's actually been OK. We planned for the worst and hoped for the best, basically; players are rostered night on, night off, and we rostered a third team of trumpets to cover in case the players needed extra respite - and they've been used, so it was worth it. Plus our refurbished pit has helped - we can put absorptive panels around the walls and roof, and they make a difference of up to 3dB which is massive. We started out without too many in (enough to protect the back desks of the lower strings from the large percussion section) and added more in around the brass once we had sound level readings in, and it's made life far better for the brass players. They don't like having to constantly play softer as it becomes very hard on their embouchures and we start risking injury, so while the panels soak up sound and make the acoustic dryer, they also know they can play out more without the levels going too high. And the dry acoustic can be remedied to a certain degree with our fancy "electro-acoustic environment" system we have in the pit too (testing the system was hilarious - one of the boys asked for a German cathedral acoustic and promptly got it - never before has the pit had a five second reverb time!).

[paulears]

Anna - do you remember when your job was very practical and hands on and now like many of us, it's evolved into areas nothing at all like we imagined we'd ever be doing?

 

May I ask a question? - with the musicians getting gaps in their playing, with show on/show off etc, has that impacted on pay? I'm wondering if they benefit or lose pay because of this, or are the extra musician costs sucked up by extra budget made available for health matters? Also - is consistency a problem for the conductor having somewhat random collections of musicians. My other question is about the musicians themselves, do any of them also do other musical activities outside - I wonder how these get factored in, exposure wise. I'm thinking maybe some are perhaps playing elsewhere on their 'rest day', or perhaps giving lessons - that kind of thing. You'd need to know but would they tell you? If they don't tell you - your figures meant to help them, won't? Maybe they're contractually not allowed to, but maybe they do. Our drummer in panto is a good example. He gives lessons at the local university every day, he plays two shows for us, then goes and plays elsewhere ten till midnight. So far, my role has no sound monitoring element to it at all - and I intend keeping it that way as long as I can, but it will happen at some point I'm sure. All I'm bothered about at the moment is counting heads, and when I get to 7 I stop, and don't even notice sometimes if it's a dep in - because that generates paperwork for me!

[andy_s]

don't mean to hi-jack a serious and useful thread, but that German cathedral sounds like it might be a bit dry, Durham Cathedral has an 18 second RT...

 

On a more serious note, I'd be interested to know how touring orchestras manage their testing regimes and mitigation - they are going to be playing in halls that can vary significantly in loudness and reverberation.

[Simon Lewis]

The major "good" concert halls (e.g. in the lists such as derived by Beranek, Cox etc.) tend to have RT60 in the 1.8s to 2.2s band, and many manage to maintain this reasonably well, occupied or unoccupied.

Loudness (expressed as Gmid = Hall spl - Free field spl at 10m for an average of 500Hz and 1kHz bands) does vary by hall (see below).

Of course, not every venue is a world class hall with controlled acoustics....

 

 

In the cases discussed here, the problem is more to do with musicians in an orchestra pit where there are issues of limited space and proximity. Fixing that problem is what GridGirl is describing in her post and what the appellant seems not to have done

 

 

Concert Hall

G(mid) (dB)

Amsterdam, Concertgebouw

 

6.0

Boston, Symphony Hall

 

4.7

Vienna, Gr. Musikvereinssaal

 

7.0

Basel, Stadt-Casino

 

7.5

Berlin, Konzerthaus

 

6.0

Cardiff, Wales, St. David's Hall

 

3.8

New York, Carnegie Hall

 

---

Tokyo, Hamarikyu Asahi

 

9.3

Zurich, Großer Tonhallesaal

 

8.0

 

Edited November 21, 2018 by Simon Lewis

[GridGirl]

Anna - do you remember when your job was very practical and hands on and now like many of us, it's evolved into areas nothing at all like we imagined we'd ever be doing?

 

May I ask a question? - with the musicians getting gaps in their playing, with show on/show off etc, has that impacted on pay? I'm wondering if they benefit or lose pay because of this, or are the extra musician costs sucked up by extra budget made available for health matters? Also - is consistency a problem for the conductor having somewhat random collections of musicians. My other question is about the musicians themselves, do any of them also do other musical activities outside - I wonder how these get factored in, exposure wise. I'm thinking maybe some are perhaps playing elsewhere on their 'rest day', or perhaps giving lessons - that kind of thing. You'd need to know but would they tell you? If they don't tell you - your figures meant to help them, won't? Maybe they're contractually not allowed to, but maybe they do. Our drummer in panto is a good example. He gives lessons at the local university every day, he plays two shows for us, then goes and plays elsewhere ten till midnight. So far, my role has no sound monitoring element to it at all - and I intend keeping it that way as long as I can, but it will happen at some point I'm sure. All I'm bothered about at the moment is counting heads, and when I get to 7 I stop, and don't even notice sometimes if it's a dep in - because that generates paperwork for me!

 

Show on/show off only affects the freelance players - we have 58 (or so? Should be 62 but we have some vacancies right now) permanent players who are on salary, so they are unaffected. Freelance players obviously get paid per call; if anything it is actually more work for freelancers because we need six oboes, for example, instead of three if they were playing every night, or perhaps five if we were "rostering through" where you might play two nights out of three. With only four oboes as permanent musicians, we need two freelancers to fill that gap. That cost gets factored into budgets, because we can usually predict pretty well which shows are going to be louder and therefore need more players.

 

In terms of consistency it's pretty good - we rehearse as two "teams" - so everything gets rehearsed twice - and those teams stay as consistent as we can, short of illness where the player from the other team gets called in to replace the sick player. String players aren't quite so rigid in the rostering and it's not quite one on, one off for them, as their sound levels are generally lower. They probably do two nights in three, except the principal/associate principal of each section who do one on, one off. We're also careful to rotate seating so that it's not the same viola and cello players in front of percussion more than one night in a row.

 

Other work is a very, very contentious issue. We've tried to implement permanent players at least letting us know what else they're doing (loads of them teach, a few play in church bands, one does a lot of gigging around the city, some of them dep in musicals), and it ended in a player rep storming out of a meeting in fury. So we can't take other work into account, and can only give them the figures for what they're doing with us. To be honest, it would greatly increase the complexity of my spreadsheet if I had to take that into account so I don't mind in that way! We keep telling them to wear earplugs whenever they can, and I know quite a few do while teaching, but that's about all we can do. They're not contractually obliged to not do other work, we'd never get away with that!

 

And Paul - I still run around like a headless chicken moving chairs, stands and instruments, frantically sorting out a sconce light which has gone out at 7:29pm, bumping out three truckloads of orchestral equipment, pushing it all about 150m through a foyer to the only place we could load from, or solving some other dire issue which of course only happened one minute before tuning - I don't think I'll ever be hands-off!

[Junior8]

The Royal Opera House has lost its appeal in this case. There is a link to the judgement in the article. I would draw your attention to the final points made by Sir Brian Leveson in regard to the arguments of the 'interveners' who accompanied the ROH in the appeal. Edited April 17, 2019 by Junior8

[GridGirl]

The Royal Opera House has lost its appeal in this case. There is a link to the judgement in the article. I would draw your attention to the final points made by Sir Brian Leveson in regard to the arguments of the 'interveners' who accompanied the ROH in the appeal.

 

There are some very interesting points in the judgement, and on reading it I understand why they lost the appeal (but geez I feel bad for Matt Downes, I had a few email conversations with him and he was always exceptionally helpful). Here are my thoughts:

 

The judge found that the ROH had provided the claimant with custom moulded earplugs shortly after he joined in 2002. The incident happened in 2012 - ten year old earplugs realistically won’t offer anything like the protection they do when new. We tell our guys that they should be replaced in less than five years, more frequently if they’re in use a lot (and I have a spreadsheet which tracks when players get new plugs). The silicon hardens over time, the plugs don’t seal as well and also become more difficult to get in and out, which means people don’t use them. I don’t know whether the non-replacement of plugs falls on the player or the management though.

 

On 3 September Ms Mitchell attended a meeting with Mr Downes, the principal trumpet player, the principal viola player and other members of the viola section. They discussed the noise issues which the viola section had experienced and the measurements taken at the afternoon rehearsal of 1 September. In consultation with the conductor, Sir Anthony Pappano, the orchestra layout was rearranged. A gap of one metre was created between the brass and the violas, and some of the brass were relocated to another part of the pit. Noise measurements taken after the rearrangement at a rehearsal on 11 September showed that the noise levels had significantly decreased. We set out the comparative tables for 1 and 11 September later in this judgment.. I think this is what might have done them in. I still do not, and will never, understand why he didn’t get up and say something about it being unbearably loud as soon as they started playing, but the fact that they were able to reduce noise levels quite significantly by rearranging the pit indicates to me that that second layout should have been used from the beginning and someone should have flagged it.

 

We do not agree with the judge’s apparent conclusion that Regulation 7(3) is to be interpreted in the absolutist way put forward by Mr Huckle, at least in its application to the playing of classical music and opera. “Reasonably practicable” is not the same as “physically practicable”. We accept the ROH’s case that it was not reasonably practicable for players in their orchestra pit to perform if they were to be required to wear PHPs at all times. We set aside the judge’s finding of a breach of Regulation 7(3), and the consequential finding at paragraph 212 of a breach of Regulation 10(1). This I am very glad to see, because that part of the original judgement concerned me a lot. There are times when players just cannot wear earplugs

 

This is going to change the way pit orchestras do things, undoubtedly. Interestingly enough, in light of the comment in the judgement about a lack of real-time sound level measurements, a (brilliant) sound engineer here in Sydney is developing a system which does give you instant real-time readings, along with also including a monitor system (yes, it does involve wearing headphones) which enable you to turn the orchestra mix and a vocal mix up or down - obviously this entails mic’ing of the orchestra and some sort of area mic’ing for singers, but we do that anyway for our Vivace system, and I think it’s going to give us a lot more information and control over sound level exposure. We’ve had an extensive look at our hearing conservation strategies, and had several experts in to look at them, and there are some differences in our processes which do make me feel somewhat reassured, but it’s still a massive shockwave in the orchestral community.

[Stuart91]

The precedent that this case sets could make for some interesting scenarios outwith the orchestra pit too.

 

The descriptions reminded me of a particularly challenging gig I had with a function band. They had been hired to play a wedding reception in a venue that was too small. (I suspect the management had done the usual of getting an occupancy limit set, which they then treat as their capacity, without taking into account a dancefloor or stage area for the band). We had a seven piece funk/soul band, with a full drumkit, and quite extensive keyboard setup. They were allocated 8x8ft to perform in, with tables crammed in tightly around them.

 

We shuffled tables around as best we could, but still ended up with the business end of the brass section pointing straight at a table. I remember trying to get management to move or strike the table but they refused. There was one unfortunate guest who had their ear about a foot from the business end of a trumpet. I suspect they'd have a pretty good case for claiming for acoustic shock. They fled after the first few notes but I'm sure damage could still have occurred.

 

It would be interesting to see who is deemed liable in those circumstances. The venue, for overselling the room and allocating the seating? Someone in the band who decided the layout of the musicians? The trumpet player himself?