Originally posted by prokkyshosty
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Actually, the full version of this text, from a talk given by Ross at the RPS, elucidates even more clearly how the no-applause rule took root over the course of a 50 year period. Wagner and Bruckner begat Wagnerites and Brucknerites, who begat the idea of concert halls as churches and temples, which begat meglomaniacal conductors who wanted to be worshiped as Gods.
Considering this, for a heathen such as myself who is not particularly bothered by intra-opus applause, I can't imagine a better argument in my favor than to say something was championed by... ugh... Wagnerites.
(link is in pdf format)
Yet, as far as I can determine, the No-Applause Rule originated not in America but in Germany. And it took hold
rather quickly, because at the turn of the century mid-symphonic applause was still routine. When Brahms’s Fourth
Symphony was played before the failing composer in Vienna in 1897, “the applause that broke forth after each
movement was indescribable.” At the first London performance of Elgar’s First Symphony in 1908, the composer was
called out several times after the first movement. Conversely, a lack of applause could be an ominous sign for an
anxious composer. Brahms knew that his First Piano Concerto was going down in flames in Leipzig when silence
reigned after the first two movements. And when Tchaikovsky said of his Pathétique, “Something strange is going on
with this symphony,” he was referring to a perceptible coolness that the audience showed at the premiere. Each
movement was “heatedly applauded,” as one critic said, but not as much as expected. It seems that the third movement,
in particular, drew a puzzlingly tepid response. Interestingly, though, the critic Herman Laroche interpreted the silence
as respect: “They behaved, as it were, in a foreign manner: without speaking or making noise, they listened with the
greatest attention and applauded sparingly.”
By the “foreign manner,” Laroche probably had in mind habits that were forming in Central Europe. As
historians such as Heinrich Schwab and Walter Salmen have described, the “reform of the concert hall” was the topic
of much discussion in German music journals in the period just after 1900. Ornate, decorative architecture was
criticized; showy vocal and instrumental soloists deplored; it was suggested that concerts be presented in subdued
light and that orchestras be hidden behind a screen; and it was proposed that no one should applaud until each work
was done. All of this was very much in the spirit of the Wagner festival, with its sacred aura, its famous “Bayreuth hush,”
and its sunken orchestra. Karl Klingler, the leader of the Klingler quartet, took credit for instituting the No-Applause Rule
at his Berlin concerts during the 1909-1910 season, but before Klingler came the formidable young conductor
Hermann Abendroth, who, after taking charge of orchestral concerts in Lübeck in 1905, instructed his audience not to
clap between movements of a symphony. Abendroth was noted for his devotion to the music of Anton Bruckner, which
often assumed a churchly atmosphere and tended to avoid conventional “Plaudite” gestures. Two other outspoken
concert-hall reformers of the period—Paul Marsop and Paul Ehlers—were also avowed Brucknerites. Ehlers, who is
now best remembered (if at all) for his anti-Semitic attacks on Mahler, wrote of “consecrating a temple to symphonic
music.”
The hidden orchestra did not catch on, but the No-Applause Rule did. The entry for “applause” in the eleventh
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910-11) observes: “The reverential spirit which abolished applause in church
has tended to spread to the theatre and the concert-room, largely under the influence of the quasi-religious atmosphere
of the Wagner performances at Baireuth.” By the nineteen-twenties, several leading conductors—Toscanini, Klemperer,
Stokowski, and Furtwängler—were discouraging excess applause. (Furtwängler had succeeded Abendroth in Lübeck
and inherited his practice.) At first, many listeners resisted the Rule, regarding it as a display of arrogance on the part of
a new breed of superstar maestro. In 1927, a letter to the New York Times mocked the practice: “See, I not only have
my big orchestra well in hand, but I can also, by a mere gesture, control a manifold larger audience!” The composer and
commentator Daniel Gregory Mason sardonically wrote, “After the Funeral March of the Eroica, someone suggested,
Mr. Stokowski might at least have pressed a button to inform the audience by (noiseless) illuminated sign: ‘You may
now cross the other leg.’” Olin Downes, the chief critic of the Times, doggedly campaigned against the Rule in his
columns. In 1938, after describing how Koussevitzky had gestured disapprovingly toward his audience when he heard
clapping after the third movement of the Pathétique, Downes exclaimed, “How anti-musical it is! Snobism in
excelsis!”
Not all conductors liked the innovation. Pierre Monteux said in a 1959 interview, “I do have one big complaint
about audiences in all countries, and that is their artificial restraint from applause between movements or a concerto or
symphony. I don’t know where the habit started, but it certainly does not fit in with the composers’ intentions.” And Erich
Leinsdorf wrote: “We surround our doings with a set of outdated manners and even mannerisms, some of them
detrimental to the best and most natural enjoyment. At the top of my list is frowning on applause between the
movements of a symphony or a concerto. . . . What utter nonsense. The notion, once entertained by questionable
historians, was that an entity must not be interrupted by the mundane frivolity of hand clapping. The great composers
were elated by applause, wherever it burst out.”
Considering this, for a heathen such as myself who is not particularly bothered by intra-opus applause, I can't imagine a better argument in my favor than to say something was championed by... ugh... Wagnerites.
(link is in pdf format)
Yet, as far as I can determine, the No-Applause Rule originated not in America but in Germany. And it took hold
rather quickly, because at the turn of the century mid-symphonic applause was still routine. When Brahms’s Fourth
Symphony was played before the failing composer in Vienna in 1897, “the applause that broke forth after each
movement was indescribable.” At the first London performance of Elgar’s First Symphony in 1908, the composer was
called out several times after the first movement. Conversely, a lack of applause could be an ominous sign for an
anxious composer. Brahms knew that his First Piano Concerto was going down in flames in Leipzig when silence
reigned after the first two movements. And when Tchaikovsky said of his Pathétique, “Something strange is going on
with this symphony,” he was referring to a perceptible coolness that the audience showed at the premiere. Each
movement was “heatedly applauded,” as one critic said, but not as much as expected. It seems that the third movement,
in particular, drew a puzzlingly tepid response. Interestingly, though, the critic Herman Laroche interpreted the silence
as respect: “They behaved, as it were, in a foreign manner: without speaking or making noise, they listened with the
greatest attention and applauded sparingly.”
By the “foreign manner,” Laroche probably had in mind habits that were forming in Central Europe. As
historians such as Heinrich Schwab and Walter Salmen have described, the “reform of the concert hall” was the topic
of much discussion in German music journals in the period just after 1900. Ornate, decorative architecture was
criticized; showy vocal and instrumental soloists deplored; it was suggested that concerts be presented in subdued
light and that orchestras be hidden behind a screen; and it was proposed that no one should applaud until each work
was done. All of this was very much in the spirit of the Wagner festival, with its sacred aura, its famous “Bayreuth hush,”
and its sunken orchestra. Karl Klingler, the leader of the Klingler quartet, took credit for instituting the No-Applause Rule
at his Berlin concerts during the 1909-1910 season, but before Klingler came the formidable young conductor
Hermann Abendroth, who, after taking charge of orchestral concerts in Lübeck in 1905, instructed his audience not to
clap between movements of a symphony. Abendroth was noted for his devotion to the music of Anton Bruckner, which
often assumed a churchly atmosphere and tended to avoid conventional “Plaudite” gestures. Two other outspoken
concert-hall reformers of the period—Paul Marsop and Paul Ehlers—were also avowed Brucknerites. Ehlers, who is
now best remembered (if at all) for his anti-Semitic attacks on Mahler, wrote of “consecrating a temple to symphonic
music.”
The hidden orchestra did not catch on, but the No-Applause Rule did. The entry for “applause” in the eleventh
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910-11) observes: “The reverential spirit which abolished applause in church
has tended to spread to the theatre and the concert-room, largely under the influence of the quasi-religious atmosphere
of the Wagner performances at Baireuth.” By the nineteen-twenties, several leading conductors—Toscanini, Klemperer,
Stokowski, and Furtwängler—were discouraging excess applause. (Furtwängler had succeeded Abendroth in Lübeck
and inherited his practice.) At first, many listeners resisted the Rule, regarding it as a display of arrogance on the part of
a new breed of superstar maestro. In 1927, a letter to the New York Times mocked the practice: “See, I not only have
my big orchestra well in hand, but I can also, by a mere gesture, control a manifold larger audience!” The composer and
commentator Daniel Gregory Mason sardonically wrote, “After the Funeral March of the Eroica, someone suggested,
Mr. Stokowski might at least have pressed a button to inform the audience by (noiseless) illuminated sign: ‘You may
now cross the other leg.’” Olin Downes, the chief critic of the Times, doggedly campaigned against the Rule in his
columns. In 1938, after describing how Koussevitzky had gestured disapprovingly toward his audience when he heard
clapping after the third movement of the Pathétique, Downes exclaimed, “How anti-musical it is! Snobism in
excelsis!”
Not all conductors liked the innovation. Pierre Monteux said in a 1959 interview, “I do have one big complaint
about audiences in all countries, and that is their artificial restraint from applause between movements or a concerto or
symphony. I don’t know where the habit started, but it certainly does not fit in with the composers’ intentions.” And Erich
Leinsdorf wrote: “We surround our doings with a set of outdated manners and even mannerisms, some of them
detrimental to the best and most natural enjoyment. At the top of my list is frowning on applause between the
movements of a symphony or a concerto. . . . What utter nonsense. The notion, once entertained by questionable
historians, was that an entity must not be interrupted by the mundane frivolity of hand clapping. The great composers
were elated by applause, wherever it burst out.”
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