[iosonofuturista]

Believe it or not...

As a regular orquestral concert goer (I would say I average a concert a week per year at least) reading your description of the tuning process gave me goosebumps.

It really is one of the best sounds on the world! The tension! The anticipation! And then seeing and hearing a well rehearsed group of people move from casual conversation mode into serious business mode in a few seconds. And from chaos comes order. And then the silence, only broken by the applause when the maestro and soloist(s) arrive.

One of life's biggest pleasures if I may say so.

[madcaptenor]

I don't know if this is true - might just be a joke - but I've heard stories of people unfamiliar with Western classical music going to concerts and telling the people who brought them that they liked the "first part" of the music, their hosts thinking they meant the first movement or the piece that was played first, but they actually meant the tuning. See e.g. https://silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/if-you-apprec....

It seems like the story is usually told about an "Indian musician" and something similar happened in reverse at a Ravi Shankar concert, where the Western audience applauded after he tuned.