One of our favourite music journalists, Alex Ross, at the New Yorker, has written a terrific article on how the traditions of concert-going developed. They're not as 'traditional' as you'd expect (for instance, the practice of with-holding applause between movements of a piece only became entrenched in 1950s). An excellent read that hopefully will challenge preconceptions on how to behave at a concert. Some of the 'rules' seem very arbitrary, no wonder people can feel intimidated at first. It supposed to be fun, remember?
Check it out at newyorker.com.
Also, we were amused by this.
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What a great article, however, nothing is mentioned of people coughing. I attended your last concert at the Sydney Opera House and was greatly annoyed that people decided (yes, I say decided) to cough in between the movements. You could almost say that the coughing became synchronised, especially throughout Vivaldi's Four Seasons, not to mention the clapping as well!! I gathered that there weren't many regular concert goers that went to this concert because the amount of noise coming from the audience during each movement almost outperformed the performers! If I overlook the "noise", I would just like to say that it was a great concert! Cheers,
Thanks Caroline. Of course, we love our audiences in all our venues though we've also observed the phenomenon you describe at ACO and other concerts. It seems to be a Sydney (and especially a Sydney Opera House) thing.
Glad you enjoyed the concert!
Hi, I must say I totally agree with you on the coughing front - it can be quite distracting sometimes! But as far as clapping between movements goes, I'm in two minds: on the one hand it can (like the coughing) sometimes prove distracting for the players and the other audience members, but on the other hand your comments about clapping between movements and the apparent lack of "regular concert goers" reminded me of a comment I heard made by another musician: he said he didn't really mind people clapping in between movements because it reminded him that there were new people in the audience, who were (perhaps) experiencing classical music for the first time, and that if they were clapping - they were obviously enjoying it!
In the interests of cultivating new (and often younger) classical music audiences, I think we could probably cut these new guys some slack on the etiquette front - the realm of classical music can be (and still is, for many seasoned concert-goers!) quite daunting after all.
And besides, in a world where classical audiences only seem to be getting older, isn't a bit of 'new blood' in the audience a good thing?
In his op-ed piece in the Weekend Australian, Greg Sheridan writes of his recent attendance at an Australian Chamber Orchestra concert that “There is precious little consolation to be found in classical composers of the 20th Century…. ..My complaint, really, is that the ACO played four Bach fugues but between every one interposed a Kurtag movement. That’s not really playing the game.”
Let’s examine these statements for a moment. With the flick of a keyboard, he opines about the worth of all “classical composers of the 20th century”. Granted, the generic descriptor of music performed by the ACO and other Australian orchestras is classical so I won’t have a semantic debate about the term here, but his description is a powerful reflection of the sort of music he feels is appropriate at a gentile gathering of “older women”.
We’re now in the 21st century. Can we presume, by their omission, that as the calendar flipped across on December 31 1999 that composers suddenly saw the errors of their ways and began to write works that consoled Mr Sheridan? Or maybe he should refer to them as contemporary composers, which would again include compositions created in the last 8 years.
He also referred to Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” as having the ability to “cheer one up”, as if they’re some sort of musical anti-depressant. Follow that line of argument, and we’ll never get to experience the musical depths of despair that some great examples of “Western Art Music” have to offer.
What exactly is “the game”? Is it one played by his rules? That is, we are consoled, or we are not consoled. The arts should know their place. They should not ever challenge their audiences.
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