Portsmouth Sinfonia was small orchestra made of both experienced and novice musicians. In many cases, the experienced musicians switched to instruments they typically didn’t play. While the resulting album is often played for laughs, it is also quite serious. We are so used to hearing slickly produced content that when we hear something that is truly askew, we don’t know quite what to make of it. Portsmouth Sinfonia calls attention to this phenomena.
In addition, it illustrates that we as a species are really good at pattern matching – while the music is quite off – we are easily able to recognize the song and imagine it played “correctly”. It calls attention to what “correctly” means – when something we are familiar with is re-interpreted. Finally – there is the recording itself. Room ambiance is evident – instruments were not closely mic’d. This is common in classical music – the location where something is played is significant, as different performance spaces have different acoustic signatures. This is often seen in other instances – such as live albums by bands – where there is some effort to capture the sound of the space itself.