Applause....I know, I know..........

[Norrette]

A Hinton: I remember a performance of Mahler 9 conducted by Abbado some years ago which no one applauded until long after it was over - because they just couldn't; surely those composers and performers who desire adulation after a performance of one of their works could not have hoped for better "applause" than this "sound of no hands able to clap"?...

I was there - it was magical.

Also the Rattle Mahler 9 at the proms. He just didn't turn around for quite some time, the audience complied and was appreciative.

[Beef Oven!]

Great gig earlier this evening - JEGgers & OReR LvB 5 & Symphonie Fantastique.

The audience positively exploded into applause between the 4th and 5th movements of the Berlioz! Woohoo!

Actual Prommers and actual performers loving clapping between movements - seems it's only the handful of elderly conservative bloggers on the Radio 3 forum that don't like it!

On an ostensibly unconnected point, the audiences at Prom concerts seem much younger than the audiences of ten years ago. A good thing, IMV.

[Beef Oven!]

Great gig earlier this evening - JEGgers & OReR LvB 5 & Symphonie Fantastique.

The audience positively exploded into applause between the 4th and 5th movements of the Berlioz! Woohoo!

Actual Prommers and actual performers loving clapping between movements - seems it's only the handful of elderly conservative bloggers on the Radio 3 forum that don't like it!

On an ostensibly unconnected point, the audiences at Prom concerts seem much younger than the audiences of ten years ago. A good thing, IMV.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Bullied at school, perhaps?

[akiralx]

Great gig earlier this evening - JEGgers & OReR LvB 5 & Symphonie Fantastique.

The audience positively exploded into applause between the 4th and 5th movements of the Berlioz! Woohoo!

Hopefully they didn't erupt between the 3rd and 4th movement of the Beethoven...

[kernelbogey]

I wasn't suggesting your views were this at all.
but I do think you are right in your second sentence

Thank you MrGG - on both counts - my misunderstanding.

[kernelbogey]

[....] {1} Actual Prommers and actual performers loving clapping between movements - [....]

[....] {2} seems it's only the handful of elderly conservative bloggers on the Radio 3 forum that don't like it![...]

What is your evidence, please, for these two statements?

[french frank]

'Has become' is a present perfect, an action begun in the past but completed in the present. The past perfect is had become.

.

You're right: I would have naturally called it just a perfect (done, finished), and a pluperfect for what you call a past perfect.
I also think my use of 'to become' was confusing: if I had said 'it has been a universal tradition' it leaves it open to read it as 'and it still is' (which I didn't intend) and 'until now' (which I did intend.

It may also be said that clapping between movement is now 'a tradition' of the Proms (and possibly the United States). I don't know whether or not it is even common in other European countries.

And by the way, it is interesting to observe how discussion where there is disagreement descends from mere dialectic - the laying out of the respective arguments - to brawling when some get either:

1. hot under the collar

2. icily sarcastic

3. jeering yobbishly

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Hopefully they didn't erupt between the 3rd and 4th movement of the Beethoven...

...like some ballet audiences, presumably driven by hedonistic selfish emotion (of just feebly following the crowd).

[Flosshilde]

That is why I used a past tense in contradistinction to your present tense. I was not claiming that this is a practice universally respected but that there was a time within living memory when it was.

Whether you used past, present or future perfect or imperfect, "Where there has been a universal tradition which has become the 'social norm' (i.e. is universally respected), suggests that the 'tradition' (ie convention or custom) of not clapping is now universal and fixed. Whereas, of course, it is a comparitively recent convention that has developed in less than 200 years and is now changing.

[Flosshilde]

...like some ballet audiences, presumably driven by hedonistic selfish emotion (of just feebly following the crowd).

Or the wish to show appreciation.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Or the wish to show appreciation.

Drowning out the music is an odd way to do so.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

...like some ballet audiences, presumably driven by hedonistic selfish emotion (of just feebly following the crowd).

Now - this is the problem I have with these annual discussions. Why do you "presume" this, and does not the word suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, you may be being a teeny little bit presumptuous in so doing? Ballet audiences have different mores and "traditions" from those of "Classical" orchestral audiences; many balletomines refer to the choreographer, not the composer, as the "author" of the works, for example - it's the dancing that is their principal focus: the Music as Music per se - the structures, harmonies, orchestrations - regarded as of lesser interest than some listeners to orchestral concerts regard these features. Is not the imposition of "universally accepted conventions" from one cultural activity onto another exactly what some of us object to about inter-movement applauding?

The emotive and uncharitable qualifiers "hedonistic, selfish ... feebly" give the impression that such audience members are deliberately oafish, determinedly buying their tickets with the express intention of spoiling the evening for the "better" members of the audience. This dualism is what I opposed when frenchie suggested the "Hobbesian" simile - the lumping together of "the others" under one simplistic "baddy" label upon which the "goodies" can look down from their trandem of "good taste".

[Zucchini]

...[erupting] like some ballet audiences, presumably driven by hedonistic selfish emotion (of just feebly following the crowd).

I woouldn't know when to erupt. Can you do it when someone goes round and round very fast or when they jump up and down or when they ladder their tights?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Now - this is the problem I have with these annual discussions. Why do you "presume" this, and does not the word suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, you may be being a teeny little bit presumptuous in so doing? Ballet audiences have different mores and "traditions" from those of "Classical" orchestral audiences; many balletomines refer to the choreographer, not the composer, as the "author" of the works, for example - it's the dancing that is their principal focus: the Music as Music per se - the structures, harmonies, orchestrations - regarded as of lesser interest than some listeners to orchestral concerts regard these features. Is not the imposition of "universally accepted conventions" from one cultural activity onto another exactly what some of us object to about inter-movement applauding?

The emotive and uncharitable qualifiers "hedonistic, selfish ... feebly" give the impression that such audience members are deliberately oafish, determinedly buying their tickets with the express intention of spoiling the evening for the "better" members of the audience. This dualism is what I opposed when frenchie suggested the "Hobbesian" simile - the lumping together of "the others" under one simplistic "baddy" label upon which the "goodies" can look down from their trandem of "good taste".

Some good points here, but relegating superb music to mere background music is part of today's listening problem. Put simply, applauding over the music demeans both it and the applauder, who clearly doesn't think it important.

And I like Zucchini's point.

In the first performance of Tony Biggin's The Gates of Greenham (RFH 1985) there was a quiet passage in Part 1 where there was reference to men leaving home to go to war, but now women were leaving home for peace. The beautiful counterpoint on 3 flutes was drowned out by a group of applauders. Happily, it didn't happen again, because they were "shushed" by others in the audience.