Read Greg's controversial thoughts on Audience behavior.
Do you agree? Offer your opinion on the matter.
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Don't miss...
...the opportunity to give performers your two-cents on the "Audience Advice to Performers" page!
What do you expect from a pianist when you go to watch a recital? Should everything be memorized? Are you offended when the performer talks to the audience? How long should the concert last?
(May take a moment to process)
Do you, an audience member, have thoughts on how an audience should behave? Should the audience be allowed to roam freely mid-performance? Eat? Drink? Clap? Do you like dressing up, or should a recital be more casual? Greg will add your comments to this page (and possibly to his book!). Be sure to read Greg's thoughts below!
1) Clap when you feel so inclined. Return any boorish looks you get for doing so with proud defiance.
If people take it up with you during intermission, quote the Boston Daily Advertiser from the 22nd of May in 1873: “Every passage [of Rubinstein’s concerto] was warmly applauded.” Or mention that Hans von Bülow would brag to his colleagues about the applause he routinely received after the opening cadenza of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto. Or tell them about Mozart: Mozart wrote letters to his father boasting of how frequently (during a piece) an audience would clap. Philosophize with your perturbed audience members as well - by applauding midway through a work, it helps to keep the listener an active participant in the concert, entailing both knowledge and attention.
In other words, don’t be AFRAID to applaud - between movements, at the end, or when it simply feels right. Nothing is worse than hesitant applause.
2) If you like a piece enough, clap until the performer encores it, or plays it again. Don’t necessarily save up all your applause for the end of the concert.
3) Conversely, if you don’t like the performance, don’t give the performer the obligatory three curtain calls.
4) Applause is one thing, cell phones are another. Please turn them off! Naturally you would not time your applause for the most sensitive moment of the recital. Cell phones, on the other hand, have the special ability to detect those special moments.
5) If you need to unwrap a noisy cough drop, do it quickly. Unwrapping slowly usually doesn’t make the procedure much quieter, it just prolongs it.
6) Turn off the excessive chatter in your mind. Who cares about tomorrow’s dinner? Who cares if you have loads of homework to finish? Enjoy the music!
Interestingly, I came across this article today after reading this section of your site last night. The article is entitled "The Gentle Art of Capturing Audiences" by Fullerton L. Waldo. I didn't realize that the article was written in 1922 until I happened to glance at the top of the page several paragraphs into it. Could have just been ignorance on my part, though. The part about the reaction of the audience is rather applicable here. An interesting sentence from said part: "So slightly are we 'changed from the semi-apes who ranged India's prehistoric clay' that a manual racket instead of a silent mental reaction is the accepted indication of our feeling." Hmm. Food for thought. Since each person is supposed to be an individual with desires, traits, and emotional journeys particular to him/herself, wouldn't it stand that each audience member could have a different and, very generally speaking, acceptable reaction to a performance? I just realized that I've often asked this question in church. Lol. Being from a Caribbean culture rife with various denominations of Christianity has pushed me to personally confront a similar question about church congregations. Some frown on applause, others on "getting into the spirit", still others on shouts of halellujah. Where's the line between tempering someone's worship experience and maintaining an atmosphere of worship? Here's the link to the article: http://repertoireonline.com/musiccatalog/pub/etude%2010-01-01.pdf.
I love your thoughts on the subject!
1) Don't clap or give standing ovations just to give them - I think it is more special to get them only if the audience really means it. I'm with Greg on this one.....
2) Roaming during a concert is not a great idea - I think that the performer deserves more respect than that... no eating either. After all, you have worked hard to be up there on stage. Try to keep distractions to minimal.
3) Casual or formal - it all depends. I prefer formal - but as classical music is growing and gaining popularity - I think it is kind of cool to take it a little casual. Five Browns concerts would be the perfect example of what I am talking about. I don't know - that is kind of a matter of personal opinion. But I do like formal concerts - as long as they aren't stuffy or too conservative.
Mr. Cording raises more points worth considering. I happen to think it would be wonderful if audiences felt comfortable expressing their negative emotions in addition to their enthusiasm. One, it would keep the audience active participants in the concert experience; two, it would keep performers on their toes, both while performing and programming. 100 years ago in Paris, riots were commonplace (the "Rite of Spring" is only one of many examples). Many composers and performers actually wanted to stimulate such a reaction. "Booing" in the Italian opera hall is still common practice today. Regardless, if audiences' responses were a little more unpredictable (or rather, authentic), perhaps concert-going could become something more of an event and something less like an evening at spent home listening to a CD.
I agree that much of classical music is familiar to audiences already. (I can't help myself from adding: I believe that often times it is up to the performer to present this music in new ways, preferably in ways that relate powerfully to the people sitting in the audience.) At a St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert a few years ago, I began to clap after one of the false endings in the Haydn symphony they were performing. The person sitting beside me shot me a glance that read, "How dare you be so uninformed; that wasn't the real ending." That moment of true classical music elitism still gives me shivers. I hope that when I hear the work performed again, my knowledge of the surprise won't diminish the fun for my fellow audience members unfamiliar with the work.
As for an audience that forgets to applaud, that sounds like magic.
In some cases I agree: it seems reading accounts of olde time concerts whole movements or pieces were repeated on demand, and I wish that would happen sometimes. But a big part of your justification for applause in between movements etc, is apparent practices of the past. In the case of music written for private purposes, then, say, the Well-Tempered Clavier, no applause would actually be the appropriate response. Similar for works intended for liturgical setting. And Parsifal. And this is where the breakdown occurs, because not all music is written for the same purpose, namely the purpose of rising the audience to a state of jubilation. I think we have reached a satisfactory solution, and we do have a time to "catch a breath" in a multi-movement piece, unless it's attacca, because there are pauses in between movements. I often find a double-standard applied to music. Nobody argues for applause halfway through a play, or after a beautiful monologue, but isn't a concert also a dramatic presentation? People also claim that asking the audience to remain silent, in terms of chatter, is also indicative of the elitist nature of music. Have these critics ever been to Wimbledon? A chess tournament? Why is this acceptable there, but evil in a concert of highly intricate music, which demands the full attention of performer and listener.
Walter raises some excellent points - excellent points worth further consideration. I believe classical music audiences could learn a thing or two from theater audiences. Audiences watching a play are actively engaged participants in the production: they laugh freely at humor, they clap at the end of scenes, they "oooh" and "ahhh" after a stunning event, they hold their breath during moments of intense drama, and so forth. What a luxury they have - to react comfortably to the action on stage. For some reason at classical music concerts, audiences are not afforded such a luxury; many listeners sit nervously through moments of humor, jubilation, and virtuosity, quelling their natural urge to laugh or applaud. An actively engaged audience member has no desire to applaud during those moments of intense concentration, whether he be listening to classical music or watching a play. However, audiences laugh much of the way through "Much Ado About Nothing," but for some reason stifle such urges during Haydn Symphonies. What gives?
A couple other comments:
You say: "Naturally you would not time your applause for the most sensitive moment of the recital." Well, you might, if you were the kind of person who were to clap "when you feel so inclined". Perhaps the advice should read: "Clap when you feel so inclined, PROVIDED it is appropriate to do so" - but then, we need an independent guide to when it is appropriate to do so. And fortunately we have one: current etiquette, which forbids applause until the end of the PIECE. And even that, if anything, doesn't go far enough. I speak as an audience member. Perhaps, you, as a performer, would like to hear as much applause as it is possible for the audience to create, but WE'RE not putting on the show for YOU. As one of the poor sods who must supply the applause, let me just say that my hands hurt. But one feels like a cad not clapping when other people are. Unless they're doing something foolish like clapping halfway through the music. If you take it up with some premature clapper during intermission and he or she starts telling irrelevant stories from the 19th Century, try responding with 19th-Century horror stories of your own, like the one about how the soloist at the premiere of Beethoven's violin concerto played his own compositions on an upside-down fiddle between movements.
I would like to remind Mr. Fitzgerald that no audience member is ever obligated to applaud. I personally find clapping my hands to be an instinctive expression of joy. You see it with babies all the time; they get excited and they clap their hands. Likewise, after the first movement of the Tchaikovsky concerto, I get excited and what do you know? - some inborn force throws my hands together. I rather like that feeling. When I try to suppress it, I feel a little weakened - like someone has pulled the rug out from under me. I honestly believe that it's a disservice to the music to thwart an audience from partaking in that natural moment of euphoria together. And yes, even if it is in the middle of the music.
Another "irrelevant" 19th Century story for Mr. Fitzgerald: when Chopin premiered his own concertos (and at subsequent performances as well), various virtuoso acts performed between movements with his approval. It was similar to the comedic "intermezzi" that were placed midway through serious operas a hundred years before. Is it possible that they knew something we don't? Is it possible that this music sounds different, or even better, if we have a moment to catch our breath?
