"Happy clappers" counterblast: J. Duchen on "how to be a nice audience"

[Bryn]

Seems a well written article to me. I agree with him 100%. Happy clappers should be asked to leave.

During or between movements? By "well written" I take it you mean it reinforces your prejudice against those who show their appreciation according to old, rather than relatively new, norms. Off to the ballet or opera with you where you can get truly hot under the collar.

[verismissimo]

During or between movements? By "well written" I take it you mean it reinforces your prejudice against those who show their appreciation according to old, rather than relatively new, norms. Off to the ballet or opera with you where you can get truly hot under the collar.

Go, Bryn!

[french frank]

Surely you don't agree on etiquette with Sir Roger Norrington, Bryn?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If Sir Roger says it, it must be right...

[DracoM]

Clapping between movements is equivalent to the infernal habit of walking down the street tweeting OTHERS that you are walking down the street tweeting while you are walking down the.....[contd p.94]

It is there to show OTHERS that you are having a soooper time BUT more particularly, that you want OTHERS to know that you are having a soooper time and that you know a lot about music by clapping approvingly in the right spaces. It's the desperate fear that you will not be noticed unless you show yourself doing something to show yourself.

[Resurrection Man]

During or between movements? By "well written" I take it you mean it reinforces your prejudice against those who show their appreciation according to old, rather than relatively new, norms. Off to the ballet or opera with you where you can get truly hot under the collar.

Why does anyone, who has a different view to you, be automatically condemned with the word 'prejudice'?

[Resurrection Man]

Clapping between movements is equivalent to the infernal habit of walking down the street tweeting OTHERS that you are walking down the street tweeting while you are walking down the.....[contd p.94]

It is there to show OTHERS that you are having a soooper time BUT more particularly, that you want OTHERS to know that you are having a soooper time and that you know a lot about music by clapping approvingly in the right spaces. It's the desperate fear that you will not be noticed unless you show yourself doing something to show yourself.

Very well said.

[Nick Armstrong]

it reinforces your prejudice

Since when was a rational point of view a "prejudice"? When it differs from your view?


EDIT: I see RM already made the same point...

[gradus]

Can't say I really care that much when people clap although I am of the generation that waited until the end, perhaps hat's why some of us shout 'Bravo' - pent up appreciation/excitement.
I can't bring to mind applause between solo recital or chamber music movements, yet it sometimes happens when sequences are programmed rather than single pieces.

[gradus]

hat's why, that's why.

[Nick Armstrong]

hat's why, that's why.

Idea: maybe people could silently throw their hats in the air between movements?

[french frank]

I take it you mean it reinforces your prejudice against those who show their appreciation according to old, rather than relatively new, norms. Off to the ballet or opera with you where you can get truly hot under the collar.

1. Those who applaud between movements are not (I would guess in c. 100% of the cases) doing so because they feel it to be an established 'norm' or any sort of 'norm': they are doing it because they feel like doing it.

2. 'Relatively' new means how new, approximately?

3. As Caliban says, if one has explainable reasons for preferring there to be no inter movement applause, that does not make it a prejudice.

4. In any case, the 'prejudice' is not against people ('those who show their appreciation &c'):it's against their 'relatively new' practice of applauding...

5. When did you last go to the opera or ballet and see/hear anyone getting '(truly) hot under the collar'? In fact, even at concerts, it seems to me that the majority politely tolerate the applause rather than make a fuss, even though they are irritated. But on a discussion forum it should hardly be inappropriate to express an opinion/preference.

[hafod]

The second paragraph of a letter to the Guardian from Albert Beale on 14 August sums up my view on this subject completely.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/15/rude-interruptions-music-favours

Sad though it is, I now rarely attend orchestral concerts. Fortunately, I have a large record/cd collection and whilst I miss the frission of live music making, I can be assured that my listening will not be ruined by others invading my aural space.

[french frank]

There may well be reasons why applauding in this way will become the 'norm', partly because people have become more unbuttoned and want to give way to spontaneous feeling (and are encouraged be so). When that does become the norm, one will have to sigh and put up with it, thinking back on the old days when we fuddy-duddies adopted the 'relatively new' practice of waiting until the work had finished before applauding. People either feel they have an obligation to applaud, or else they have a need to.

What does not seem to me to be a valid argument is that that's what was done 'in Mozart's day'; in which case, why are composers not now composing PROPER 4-movement symphonies? - I mean with a minuet for the third movement. I can't abide these modern, frivolous scherzo thingies.

[Bryn]

Surely you don't agree on etiquette with Sir Roger Norrington, Bryn?

As I have already mentioned, it's not something I tend to engage in myself, but unless it interrupts a pair of movements intended to be played attacca, it does not disrupt my concentration on the music. If one can hold the various musical subjects in memory and thus follow the form of a symphonic work, I find it difficult to see why a bit of applause, as against shuffling, coughing, retuning, etc., might ruin one's appreciation of a musical work/performance unless one was determined to have it ruined.

By and large I find Sir Roger Norrington one of the most musically engaging of conductors, though I part company with him where inserting Blumine into the final version of Mahler's 1st is concerned. He readily admits to being a bit of a thespian, and likes to interact face on to the audience now and then (you know, like the orchestral players do most of the time). He can also hold back applause when he wants, as at the end of Mahler 9, his direction of which I find the most draining (i.e. satisfying) I have encountered.