If you have a a concerto where the first movement ends with a big flourish - applause is great.
If you have a more meditative piece then I find applause between movements a bit irritating. Less true of solo repertoire than of say Mahler symphonies.
I also get frustrated by applause at the end of a piece that is too soon. I go to the Proms a lot and it's really noticeable that after some deeply emotional performance the people right at the back of the hall will start clapping the moment the baton goes down, at times when people at the front want to spend a few seconds or longer in silence.
Excessive coughing is rude and distracting. If you can't keep the cough under wraps through the use of cough syrup, non-crinkly cough drops and/or careful breathing while waiting for the loud parts, you're probably not well enough to be at the concert.
Also, I hate the sickos who cough through a performance because they should have listened to Borge's advice; (I once had to sit through an extra 2 measures of Mahler's 8th with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony because during that and all 2 previous performances those measures had been infected by audience noises and had to be re-recorded. The recording won an Emmy the next year!)
BUT - here I am, with a cold, I have the $100 tickets I bought a year ago to the only performance Itzhak Perlman will ever give in my lifetime or his in my small city with my regional orchestra.
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Also, I wouldn't be opposed to some designated low-noise concerts sprinkled in to the regular series to help include those who have certain disorders which lend themselves to issues with excessive noise in the concert experience. But then again, complementary ear plugs could be provided.
Some coughing has to be tolerated. We are all human. But people with a bad cough should remember that they are not the only ones who have been looking forward to the concert for months. Hundreds of other people have too. Also I think teaching one's kids how to control a cough is a basic parenting function.
Andrew -- opiods control cough very well. See your physician for a specific prescription and dosage recommendations. You should only need one. Get an Uber instead of driving.
Adding on to what Lieschen said, yawning is also contagious.
Codeine for the cough, coffee so the codeine doesn't put you to sleep, hand sanitizer in your pocket, sit at the end of a row near the exit.
(I am not a doctor and I would hope nobody takes this as actual medical advice.)
As for clapping, many don't know how many movements a particular piece has, and most programs utterly fail to indicate that critical piece of information (and sometimes one movement flows into another one with only a change of tempo without any noticeable break to confuse the poor unaware listener even more). I've lost count of how many time my spouse asked: is this the end? How do you know when to clap or not? I'm sure she's not the only one.
Because classical musical contains much greater subtlety, and because it's rarely amplified, I would not wish to have people behaving as they do at rock or pops concerts. Can you imagine starting a long cadenza with people screaming? Can you imagine people eating hot dogs, or smoking pot and drinking and yelling with an orchestra trying to perform Das Lied or Barber's Adagio or the funeral march from Betthoven 7th? People need to tolerate silence in church, or at a college lecture, or a yoga class.
We don't invite people to yell and drink and dance in these venues either.
Classical music is not the same as a pop, rock, or jazz concert. We don't like silence because we're snobs--we need it because the music itself demands it. It's like saying the viewing experience of an action movie is the same as viewing a miniature painting by a Dutch master at the Louvre. Or that stuffing yourself at the drive-though on a road trip is the same as dining at a fine French restaurant.
I was at a BSO concert when David Zinmann turned around at the coughing and said "the artist needs a canvas. We need silence."
Coughing is involuntary. But yes, I agree that classical music needs silence as its canvas.
Most of the time, people restrain their coughs until the end of the movement. The silence between movements is when everyone starts fidgeting and clearing their throats.
Aside from clapping, there are those moments where the audience just exhales at the same time, usually after the last note has died down. It's pretty surreal. It was as if everyone was holding their breaths up until that moment.
I think, barring extenuating circumstances, such as disabilities, most kids can be trained to fit in with what's currently expected in a particular venue. When I visited China and played some concerts in various cities there,one of the first things I noticed was how many families brought their toddlers along for the ride, and how they stayed completely silent throughout the entire program, which was often around an hour long. I didn't see so much as a wiggle from them. I didn't witness one disruptive child. Now compare that to the West where we see disruptive children in public all the time. My guess is that we just don't have standards for these kids, and that they would be able to rise up if we just had some more expectations.
Drives me absolutely crazy when a gorgeous soft moment is ruined by a shrieking baby or toddler. Even if the parent immediately removes the child from the hall (and usually these parents don't act right away, thus prolonging the agony), the moment is ruined for stage and audience alike.
Yeah, yeah, I know, *my* child is special, *my* child knows how to behave...if that's true, then great, bring your child. But if your child's bedtime is 8:30 PM and the concert starts at 8 PM (and especially if the program is long and heavy), then it is not fair to either your child or the rest of the paying audience to set up a situation destined to fail. Unless you have the psychic ability to remove your child before the crying actually begins, please be considerate and wait for a more appropriate performance.
Editing to add that I don't hate children; I have three of my own, all of whom started attending concerts when they were old enough to be reliably well behaved. Before that point, we listened to music at home, and I took them to less formal performances.
I agree with Mary Ellen: matinees and shorter concerts are a much better option for most kids.
Funny story about applause: my dad used to fall asleep during concerts at Duke--something about sitting way up in the balcony and the warmth and quiet was soporific. Usually it was no big deal but one time he awoke with a start as a movement concluded and began loudly clapping. Oops.
Said gentleman fell asleep, snoring, while I was tuning. He then proceeded to sleep (and snore loudly) through the entire 20 minutes of Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, played at high volume both by myself and the pianist. The applause afterwards finally woke him up.
I hold in coughs all the time onstage at certain times of the year (allergies). It's a simple matter of not breathing deeply (and/or using cough drops and/or a prior half-dose of codeine) until either the brass are covering up everything else or the applause has started. It isn't unhealthy, it's considerate. If the cough is bad enough so that the aforementioned measures don't work, I leave the stage--that's happened maybe once or twice in a 30+ year career.
Years ago I was involved in a giant performance of a Mahler symphony with two orchestras put together (it was a sister-city performance). During the slow movement, a member of the audience began coughing and it was immediately obvious that something really awful was happening. Someone in the audience called 911, and by the time the emergency vehicles arrived, we had stopped the performance and were just sitting on stage. Once the EMTs left with their patient, we resumed the performance at the next movement but it was very hard to play when every person on stage and every person in the audience was extremely upset.
We later found out that the gentleman who took ill had passed away--I'm not actually sure he was still living when he was taken to the ambulance. His partner wrote a lovely note of apology to my orchestra; the gentleman was dying of AIDS but had been a Mahler lover all his life and wanted very much to hear our performance. In retrospect, the partner wrote, the gentleman would never have wanted to disrupt the music and would not have attended if he'd known what would happen.
I don't have a conclusion to draw from this other than to say that I feel for people with a serious illness and I would not want to be the person telling them they couldn't go to what might be their last concert. At the same time, I think it would be wise to buy seats near an exit in case of an unforeseen attack, and if the person is so ill as to be unable to exit quickly if needed, perhaps the person is too ill to be there.
It is sad when you go to a chain bookstore like Barnes and Noble and you see in their music collection all this other stuff and literally 1 or 2 books on classical music. CD collection is not much better.
Sometimes very dry air causes an unexpected spasm of coughs during the live performance in a concert hall. To suppress it, I carry a small water bottle in my pocket. It is pretty effective.
It's a difficult question, concerts and human frailty. But the concert I remember wasn't marred by an annoyance. It was ruined, for everyone in the hall. That's the last thing the sufferer would have wanted.
There are worse things, though. Years ago I was at a concert near Venice. Not only did The Venice Baroque Orchestra have to wait for a mobile phone to stop ringing before starting their second encore, but in the silence just before they started the third encore (Italy, remember), someone broke wind very loudly. Here in UK there might have been some amusement, but the Italian audience just ignored it.
If I feel the need to cough, I can usually swallow a bit of saliva that soothes my throat and reduces or eliminates the need. For an unavoidable cough or a minor sneeze I'm quite adept at quickly bringing my arm up and coughing into my elbow, muffling the sound. In extreme cases I'll put my head between my knees and time it with a loud burst of music.
There's no reason not to make an effort to minimize the disturbance to your fellow audience members.
With that demographics, generally you would have to accept some occasional coughs and throat clearings during any performance. As a concert goer who never makes any noise (until now), I am completely fine with them. In all cases, I could see that the person making the noise was trying to contain it.
There are individual unique cases encountered by some V.com members here (such as the one by Mary Ellen) where it is difficult to state unequivocally whether the person should get the blame. But in most cases, to me it's totally bearable.
After all, without the old and senior (those more likely to make involuntary noises) classical concerts probably wouldn't exist for me to attend. I would consider the occasional noise to be an unavoidable side effect of their love for music that help sustain the performances.
Something like requiring a person to know beforehand which are the pauses between the movements and which are the ones bewteen the works adds to the perception of snobbism that empties those halls.
Yes, we all want better public but as things are and the direction they are going, I am happy with more public at the expense of some uncouthness. The goal is balance but that is always swinging from one side to another.
In order to get more people to go to the live performances I am willing to make sacrifices in form.
What concerns me is if the noise would discourage too many other audience members from attending the concerts/ or the performers, resulting in a net loss for the future performances.
But from all concerts I attended, I haven't seen anyone making noise in such a way that obviously affects the audience or performers (though you may have experienced such).
Honestly I find some infrequent noise during concerts to be totally acceptable (and unavoidable given the audience's demographics). In all the concerts I attended, coughing and clearings do exist, but I have found them to be far lower than the threshold which cause any discomfort on my part.
Having said that though, coughing do interfere with some other people's ability to enjoy music. Hence my concern. But I'm glad that I maybe just overthought it, as Lieschen has suggested.
This discussion reminds me of an incident. If you can still remember how Kyung Wha Chung got blasted by everyone for publicly shutting up a child during her performance:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/dec/03/kyung-wha-chung-london-concert-coughing-child
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30327567
Since this is a related topic, I'm interested in you guys' thoughts of the incident. i.e. Should Chung as the soloist upbraid the child like that? What would be the best reaction for her? If you were in her situation, what would you do?
Well, all that, and sitting still for two hours is a challenge for me, but I find it easier to do in the cinema than in the concert hall. ;-)
We are in a profession where little kids cannot be regarded as knowing nothing about classical music.
Lots of little kids are very advanced violinists. Have a look at one of those international violin competitions, or YouTube. I know of 11 year-olds who can play something like the whole Tchaikovsky concerto with good intonation, and I think you do too.
I have observed that children are quite welcomed to classical concerts, probably for this reason. My guess is that most of them are already playing violins, or come from parents who want their kids to take up string instruments.
I have no doubt that some children can play better than an adult orchestral member (correct me if I'm wrong on this).
I think kids would have no problem sitting quietly in a 2-hour concert, if they have been trained with an instrument which requires much discipline as the violin, for a sufficient time.
I can't help but think of Lindsey Stirling. She isn't the best violinist out there technique-wise, but she surely is very effective in inspiring a younger audience to come to know and learn the violin - something very desirable to classical music, but somehow only with limited success within its current strict shape and boundaries.
I try to suggest that he keep the soloists on the stage until the next movement has begun. To no avail so far.
I feel the same about late Beethoven quartets, but then I'm a bit of a snob...
Sometimes it's really just our personal taste and preference. The fact that I love pizza doesn't necessarily mean I have to love every ingredient, traditional or not, being put into pizza.
That said, I think enthusiasm and excitement are precisely what classical music needs for its future but are lacking at the moment, and personally I would welcome more, not less, of it. Though clapping between movements of a meditative piece may negate musical experience in a way, as a younger audience member I welcome it.
@Lieschen I don't even think clapping between movements is non-traditional; it could well exist since the beginning of concertos, though I could be wrong on this.
After all it was the first performance that marked her comeback after a decade-long hiatus, struggling with finger injuries, non-practice, and a divorce.
Even THAT, together with her status as one of the most respected contemporary violinists, wasn't enough to shield her from a deafening silence of disapproval from the audience at that moment, and an ensuing firestorm of criticism and bashing from the arts community after that incident.
While I would rather not argue whether Chung deserved it, this makes me think about the composure, calmness and resilience to distractions that a performer is expected to have by the art community and the classical audience, no matter how great that violinist is or how important his performance to him.
Like, if I dared to pursue this career, I should be able to perform to the fullest no matter what. This seems to be harsh, but IMHO is what is industry standard.
And Lydia, I love the reverse psychology your community orchestra employed (whether they'd intended it as that, or not). What a great way to offer a hint, hint, without alienating anyone.
I don't care what they do
Jazz is no less of an art form than classical music, and there applause is even tolerated within a piece, but within limits, and always with a sense and hope of sensitivity towards when it is appropriate and not detracting from the music, whereas ritualistic clapping after every movement generally is. The magic of a concert is when the audience is entirely engaged and you can hear it their silence, and in their appreciation of it when it's over.
I will never, ever forget it.
While I do understand that coughing is distracting, and I also understand that this was a small concert environment and different from a large hall, that experience changed my opinion on such matters. The soloist chose to value kindness and inclusion over an ideal musical environment. It meant a lot to me. It still does, really.
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I believe that the classical music audiences should return to the way they were a couple of centuries ago, which was the way many audiences at rock, jazz, and pop concerts are now. I don't know how it all got to be so darn uptight. I think our snobbery is turning potential new fans away.