Prom 57: Saturday 27th August 2011 (Hillborg, Mozart, Beethoven)

[amateur51]

Two points I would make on applause.
1 Why did Zinman, as did Dausgaard last Monday fell the need to crash the applause with the first notes of the Symphony? From a conductor of his experience it must have been deliberate.
2 Perhaps those who clap at concerts at the end of movements do so because most of their listening is done on Breakfast (or CFM) and think they are complete works.

When asked how best to start Richard Strauss' Don Juan, André Previn replied "before the audience stops applauding"

[barber olly]

When asked how best to start Richard Strauss' Don Juan, André Previn replied "before the audience stops applauding"

Yes but do Brahms 1 anb Beethoven 3 have similar 'starting' problems?

[hackneyvi]

One is not, after all, interrupting anything by clapping a movement, any more than one is interrupting anything by clapping at the end.
S-A

Thanks for the kind words, SA. For myself, if people feel they have a choice about applauding and applaud sincerely, I don't think I'd mind very much when they did it.

Without meaning to be perverse, however, I really do find the prolonged, perfunctory applause at the end of concerts excrutiating. I am not often very moved throughout a performance though 1 piece out of the 3 or 4 may impress me. Hearing the Maxwell Davies Mad King songs at the Queen Elizabeth Hall a couple of months ago, I made a point of putting my enthusiasm into my hands (the only vocal noise I make is an occasional, enthusiastic, "Well done!") But commonly at the end of a concert, while I would make some few claps in thanks to the performers, I spend most of the time stationary and silent waiting for the enraptured audience to finish its 2 minutes of sleepy exultation so that I can leave my seat and get home. All those exits, returns and bows really are - I find - a bit of a drag.

PS: I am intending to add to my vocal responses in the 2011/12 season by including shouts of either, "Get off!" or "Get on with it!" if the performers start to annoy me. I've been toying with the idea also of taking hard boiled eggs to throw. Hard boiled eggs or unripe Granny Smiths; I haven't quite settled on which. Probably the apples, stalkes removed. I wouldn't want to cause bloodshed but I believe any one of us can be improved by the shock of an occasional blow. Further, I'd expect every self-respecting musician to be delighted with a bruise, publicly received in a dispute over music.

Yes, I've decided. It's the apples!

[french frank]

and the applause certainly did not disrupt my enjoyment of, or concentration on, the performance.

Hmmm, it's a somewhat egocentric view. I think one sometimes feels that much of the applause is explained by the fact that the applauders are simply unaware of what the vast majority are going to do, not that they are so excited and thrilled that the applause is their enjoyment bursting forth uncontrollably.

It doesn't exactly annoy me but I feel very embarrassed because it usually ends with the applause petering out. And you never know whether a performer does or doesn't want the interruption. Last year Maria João Pires asked the (late-night) presenter to announce that she didn't want applause between pieces. But they still did. Applaud.

In Wrocław when I was there, the applause went on for a long time and gradually became rhythmical, the entire audience clapping in time with each other. I stopped clapping then because it felt silly, but that might have been thought very rude and unappreciative by the Wrocławians.

Yes, I've decided. It's the apples!

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the kind words, SA. For myself, if people feel they have a choice about applauding and applaud sincerely, I don't think I'd mind very much when they did it.

Without meaning to be perverse, however, I really do find the prolonged, perfunctory applause at the end of concerts excrutiating. I am not often very moved throughout a performance though 1 piece out of the 3 or 4 may impress me. Hearing the Maxwell Davies Mad King songs at the Queen Elizabeth Hall a couple of months ago, I made a point of putting my enthusiasm into my hands (the only vocal noise I make is an occasional, enthusiastic, "Well done!") But commonly at the end of a concert, while I would make some few claps in thanks to the performers, I spend most of the time stationary and silent waiting for the enraptured audience to finish its 2 minutes of sleepy exultation so that I can leave my seat and get home. All those exits, returns and bows really are - I find - a bit of a drag.

PS: I am intending to add to my vocal responses in the 2011/12 season by including shouts of either, "Get off!" or "Get on with it!" if the performers start to annoy me. I've been toying with the idea also of taking hard boiled eggs to throw. Hard boiled eggs or unripe Granny Smiths; I haven't quite settled on which. Probably the apples, stalkes removed. I wouldn't want to cause bloodshed but I believe any one of us can be improved by the shock of an occasional blow. Further, I'd expect every self-respecting musician to be delighted with a bruise, publicly received in a dispute over music.

Yes, I've decided. It's the apples!

It'd have to be re-named the Poms! Hey man, what you on??? Gloria in egg-shell, Sis?

The tradition of prolonged applause goes back much further than the banning of smacking. The very first reel-to-reel recording me dad and I did off of the BBC (in 1960 ) was the premiere of Walton's Second Symphony: the applause went on for 14 MINUTES!!!!!

BTW I chose the back of Cadogan Hall for last Thursday's Peter King to avoid further wiggle niggliness. No one else wiggled; no one else noticed. So the lesson seems to be: if you want to wiggle to jazz you don't dance to, wiggle at the back.

Bws

S-A

[Estelle]

Hackneyvi,
Is your P.S. an example of British wit? I allow for a cultural difference because otherwise the point of your postscript escapes me.

[barber olly]

I've been toying with the idea also of taking hard boiled eggs to throw. Hard boiled eggs or unripe Granny Smiths; I haven't quite settled on which. Probably the apples, stalkes removed. I wouldn't want to cause bloodshed but I believe any one of us can be improved by the shock of an occasional blow. Further, I'd expect every self-respecting musician to be delighted with a bruise, publicly received in a dispute over music.

Yes, I've decided. It's the apples!

Tomatoes are soft and they don't hurt the skin
Unless they happen to be still in the tin!

[Bryn]

Hmmm, it's a somewhat egocentric view. I think one sometimes feels that much of the applause is explained by the fact that the applauders are simply unaware of what the vast majority are going to do, not that they are so excited and thrilled that the applause is their enjoyment bursting forth uncontrollably.

Frenchie, did you actually listen to the broadcast of the Prom in question? Applause followed each movement of the Eroica, and in each instance it was no mere smattering. I think it highly likely that it was welcomed by Zinman and co. as part and parcel of their historically aware approach to the music. If there is any egocentricity displayed in this thread, it is by those who seek to impose their precious 'right way of listening to classical music' on others. The continuity argument is entirely bogus. Beethoven and Mozart composed the works performed in last night's Prom as a series of movements, none of which were intended to be played attacca, as far as I am aware. I personally think that the Finale of the Eroica works best with a minimal pause preceding it, but that's not at all what the score indicates, and I would not wish to impose my preference on others. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, both composers were quite used to responding positively to requests to encore a movement before moving on to the next, and to movements being separated by other pieces.

The above notwithstanding, I have edited out the inter-movement applause from the recording of the Eroica I am saving for future listening, much as I edit out retuning or bouts of coughing between movements in other instances where I hope to listen repeatedly.

[jayne lee wilson]

Agree wholeheartedly with Bryn's concise and comprehensive summary.

A virtual-only Prommer, applause at home doesn't bother me much, if it seems excessively interruptive I just fade down the level a bit and wait. It did seem so after the Eroica's scherzo, probably because there is a pent-up energy at that point which needs the finale's release, hence the frequent conductors' licence of attacca - but if you were listening for the first time? The again, in the hall, if one section applauds and another glares, that might be a touch distracting...

Easy enough to approve inter-movement acclaim in a witty Haydn symphony, or indeed within a movement ( eg.Rattle - CBSO Symphony no.90 finale-1992 was it? Think he did it again more recently in Berlin with similar results) but no-one felt the urge during Mahler 6 did they? One wonders about audience behaviour at the premieres of such a piece, or after Part One of the 8th in Munich in 1910 - think I might have been tempted at that one! Or stunned and silent...

It is a part of a living music history, and appears to be a part of "Proms culture" now, perhaps always has been?

Hackneyvi, I think you're being too exclusive here; well alright, just selfish. You wanted to acclaim Eight Songs but get irritated when others do the same if you don't want to? I love the standing ovations with which we greeted Petrenko's Mahler at the RLPO recently, the acclaim is part of a ritual of performance. A concert is GIVEN, we give thanks. I don't see how you can do this silently.

Schoenberg and his followers created the Society for the Private Performance of Music, at which applause was banned, austerely, one might think. It served their purpose of analytical exploration among the like-minded, but was never going to catch on among "passive" audiences, who need to respond, and aren't usually allowed to until the end. This can seem perverse after one of Haydn's many jokes(which don't all happen at the end!), which brings us back to... applause between movements, or even during them.

Silence, reverence, these have their place. But a prolonged silence at the end of a Shostakovich 4th or Mahler 10th would be less meaningful if it were not, finally, followed by applause.

Frenchie, did you actually listen to the broadcast of the Prom in question? Applause followed each movement of the Eroica, and in each instance it was no mere smattering. I think it highly likely that it was welcomed by Zinman and co. as part and parcel of their historically aware approach to the music. If there is any egocentricity displayed in this thread, it is by those who seek to impose their precious 'right way of listening to classical music' on others. The continuity argument is entirely bogus. Beethoven and Mozart composed the works performed in last night's Prom as a series of movements, none of which were intended to be played attacca, as far as I am aware. I personally think that the Finale of the Eroica works best with a minimal pause preceding it, but that's not at all what the score indicates, and I would not wish to impose my preference on others. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, both composers were quite used to responding positively to requests to encore a movement before moving on to the next, and to movements being separated by other pieces.

The above notwithstanding, I have edited out the inter-movement applause from the recording of the Eroica I am saving for future listening, much as I edit out retuning or bouts of coughing between movements in other instances where I hope to listen repeatedly.

[hackneyvi]

Hackneyvi, is your P.S. an example of British wit? I allow for a cultural difference because otherwise the point of your postscript escapes me.

It doesn't contain any wit to my eye but it's an example of a type of humour I enjoy whose posted point is, I suppose, to raise a laugh. It's placed as a PS to emphasise my own inconsistency on concert behaviour.

On the one hand, I have left the British Film Institute for the last time after being dejected by the general behaviour of the staff and the audience - constant rising for the toilet, climbing over the rows of seats, shoes on the seat backs, the rustle of sweet papers. On the other hand, the pre-screening speakers at the BFI have proliferated so (and are so tiring with their film school critiques, droned aloud from cue card notes) that I'd like to see the spirit of the music hall revived where the audience gave dull performers what-for with whatever they had to hand.

As a broad rule, I believe these days there are too few scuffles in British public life. The militant materialism recently exhibited in our streets by small mobs of numbskulls greedy for trainers doesn't count.

[Ferretfancy]

Serial apologist,
I've just spotted your Message 50 about recording Walton's 2nd. At the time of the Liverpool premiere I was sitting in a London recording channel at the Old Grafton Studio, charged with recording the concert on a BTR2 recorder, so I can claim to be the first to press the button! At that time concerts were often recorded in static channels in London, with the programme fed by Post Office music lines from venues elsewhere, so this was not unusual, but it always made me nervous in case the tape clogged or whatever. It was also an editing job, because the tapes were recorded on two machines allowing overlaps, and a suitable point for a tasteful cut had to be made, usually between movements or after an announcement. I was still a bit of a newbie at this!
I've often wondered whether those tapes are still in the archive somewhere, it would be nice to see a reissue. As far as I remember John Pritchard and the orchestra did a convincing job.

[barber olly]

Schoenberg and his followers created the Society for the Private Performance of Music, at which applause was banned, austerely, one might think. It served their purpose of analytical exploration among the like-minded, but was never going to catch on among "passive" audiences, who need to respond, and aren't usually allowed to until the end.

I suspect that Schoenberg was not renowned for his humour. Was it not in Hollywood when he had written some music for a film that the director, I think it may have been Sam Goldwyn asked him to shorten it to four minutes. There would have not have been smiles all round methinks!

[french frank]

Frenchie, did you actually listen to the broadcast of the Prom in question? .

No. I included the word 'sometimes' in Msg #49 to suggest that on the general matter of inter movement applause that appeared to be the case. And my use of the present tense ('It doesn't exactly annoy me' rather than 'it didn't exactly annoy me'), again, to indicate that I speaking generally rather than referring to the performance in question.

I take your point, however, that you were referring to this particular performance when you said the applause didn't disrupt your enjoyment . The point was therefore relevant.

[Bryn]

I take your point, however, that you were referring to this particular performance when you said the applause didn't disrupt your enjoyment . The point was therefore relevant.

No, not really. If I am right, and the performers appreciated the approbation then there were clearly plenty of others who shared my lack of loss of enjoyment and concentration on the performance. Nothing egocentric about our failing to get on our high horses about the (historically informed ) applause. (Now where's the poked out tongue emoticon when I need it?)

[french frank]

No, not really. If I am right, and the performers appreciated the approbation then there were clearly plenty of others who shared my lack of loss of enjoyment and concentration on the performance. Nothing egocentric about our failing to get on our high horses about the (historically informed ) applause. (Now where's the poked out tongue emoticon when I need it?)

Yes, this is the point that I'm conceding. It wasn't that I hadn't heard the concert (though I hadn't), it was that I hadn't properly absorbed what you were saying. What you said and its further implication were valid, what I said was not. Or rather, it was valid but not to the point.

Is there still something I haven't covered? .