To Clap or Not to Clap

Our Masterworks concert last Friday caused quite a stir amongst us musicians. The audience applauded between each and every movement during the concert. They even made the review in the News Sentinel. This sparked a somewhat heated backstage debate on audience etiquette. Musician's opinions on the subject fell on a wide spectrum from some really enjoying applause between movements to others who couldn't stand it and felt the symphony should post signs instructing audiences to wait. Who knew applause could be so controversial?!

The practice of holding applause until the end of a multi-movement work is relatively young. In fact, up until the late 1800's, it was common practice not only to applaud between movements but also to clap DURING the movement. Composers rejoiced with audience applause and were upset when it was withheld. The seeds of silence seem to have been planted in the late 1800's with the premier of Wagner's Parsifal when the singers agreed not to take a curtain call to avoid disrupting the flow of the opera. Mahler also played a role by policing claques, which essentially were people paid to enthusiastically applaud often to the point of disrupting the performance. (At that time, people were also paid to laugh, cry and boo. Guest artists were often exhorted to pay a fee to the concert house to avoid having the booing audience present at their performance.)

But perhaps the biggest champion of squelching audience applause between movements was Leopold Stokowski in the 1930's. Actually, Stokowski was opposed to applause at any time during the concert. He felt it was as absurd to applaud at a concert as it would be to stand in front of a great work of visual art and applaud. It was such a hot topic that eventually the Philadelphia audience was put to a vote. Applause overwhelmingly won out.

The practice of not applauding between movements was slow to spread and didn't really take hold until the 1950's. I haven't been able to find out why that happened at that time. Perhaps people were becoming accustomed to silence between movements through the recordings they were playing at home. I think another real possibility is that it was a way that classical music could distinguish itself as being more civilized than the emerging popular music of the day.

Personally, applause between movements doesn't really bother me. To me, "inapproprate" applause means that we have new audience members (yay!) who will hopefully come back. Besides, I don't really understand how you can be upset with someone who is paying you a compliment. Audiences applaud out of appreciation. I can't imagine anything much worse than getting to the end of a performance and standing up to stony silence. Likewise, if I were an audience member who was glared at for applauding I would not be likely to return for another performance.

In my view, rules such as this are a major contributor to the decline of classical music. Going to a concert shouldn't be a difficult experience fraught with random unspoken rules. The thing I hear most from people who have never attended a symphony concert is that they are intimidated. Symphonies around the country have tried to combat this by offering blue jeans concerts, rush hour concerts, concerts of lite classics, etc, etc, etc. This is a good start, but I don't think there will be a true mass cross-over of audience until the unspoken rules of concert-going are either clearly defined or abolished.

What do you think about applause between movements? Is it a random rule or does it serve a purpose?

Don't Know Much About History

I have a confession to make. I don't know a whole lot about the background of the pieces we play. Music history has never been my great love. My interest is captured more by the music itself and less by the reasons and composers behind it. I have found, though, that I enjoy the rehearsal and performance process more when I know about the pieces. As usual, I didn't know a whole lot about the pieces on our upcoming quartet concert so I did some research. I know that there are program notes available for this concert written by a much better writer than myself, but I thought I'd share some of what I've found anyway.

Smetana is not a terribly well-known composer. His most-played composition is Ma Vlast (My Country) which is a series of tone poems for orchestra. Of these, his greatest hit is Die Moldau which depicts a river. Smetana's first string quartet is also programmatic and is subtitled, From My Life. Youth, love, drama, Smetana gets it all in there. He even manages to musically portray his battle with a persistent ringing in his ears and subsequent loss of hearing. In fact, Smetana was completely deaf when he wrote this string quartet.

If Puccini had found the fountain of youth, 2008 would have marked his 150^th birthday. To honor this event we will play Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums). In Italy, chrysanthemums are associated with death and funerals. Puccini wrote Crisantemi upon hearing of the death of an Italian nobleman. I am aware that playing a piece that was meant for a funeral is an odd choice to celebrate someone's birthday. Given the tragic nature of his most famous operas (La Boheme: people die. Tosca: people die. Mme Butterfly: people die. Turandot: people die.) I think Puccini would be pleased by our choice.