Weightier matters like the future financial model of the symphony orchestra industry will be put aside in this week’s blog entry in favor of a more timely topic: the phenomenon of clapping between movements.
Why is this timely? Because we just performed a sold-out concert of Handel’s Messiah at St. Charles Borromeo church and the enthusiastic audience not only clapped between every movement (a considerable accomplishment in the case of Messiah) but even made up a few extra movements where none before existed.
During intermission I endured the wrath of one indignant, seasoned patron who complained that the applauders were ruining the performance and wanted to know why we hadn’t printed “do not applaud between movements” on the program page. (I restrained myself from pointing out that the program page already enjoins “no photography” and “turn off cell phones” to only modest, occasional effect.)
The rage and contempt provoked by clapping between movements at classical events has always mystified me. Yes, I too found the clapping mildly disconcerting for a while, but then I inwardly shrugged and decided to go with it. My concentration isn't so fragile a thing that it's shot by a little misplaced applause -- and it was still far less than your average jazz concert.
In my misspent youth, my idea of high culture was attending a rock show with a decibel level comparable to a Concorde jet revving for takeoff. Patrons not standing on their seats screaming their heads off were liable to incur the wrath of the performers onstage (which was ill advised at such events). And besides, I have always been under the impression that the custom of observing silence between movements is of relatively recent origin: say, around the turn of the 20th century.
After Friday night’s concert, I looked this up and discovered I was mistaken. In fact, the enjoinment against clapping between movements became endemic less than 50 years ago.
New York Times critic Alex Ross wrote the definitive blog on this topic several years ago, which you can read here. But the Reader’s Digest version is that the custom originated in 19th-century Wagnerian opera. It didn’t hit the concert hall until Leopold Stokowski introduced it in the 1920s, and was adopted only gradually, attaining universality not before the late ‘50s or even early ‘60s.
Ross pins its origin not on reverence for the music, as we have been led to believe – but squarely on the Cult of the Maestro. “It’s not surprising that conductors were intent on stamping out spontaneous clapping,” he writes. “To refrain from applause heightens focus on the personality of the conductor. Silence is the measure of the unbreakable spell that Maestro is supposedly casting on us. A big ovation at the end salutes his mastery of the architecture of the work, or whatever. Whereas a burst of applause after a first movement or a Scherzo is probably inspired by a soloist’s brilliant playing, or by a powerful collective effort by the musicians, or by the infectious energy of the music itself.”
About a third of the audience at last Friday’s concert apparently never got the memo about not applauding between movements. It’s probably not a coincidence that this occurred at our first sold-out Messiah in four years. I’m guessing there were a lot of people at the concert who don’t attend the TSO – or any other classical events – on a regular basis.
It’s a natural human reaction to want to respond with joy to the music. To not applaud this music is itself anomalous – an example of the restrained, repressive attitude toward classical music that has made people avoid our art form like castor oil.
So I’m overjoyed that those people clapped at every turn on Friday night. First, it means we had a lot of new friends in the house, and we should welcome them. Second, apparently there are people out there who don’t know about the prim and proper school of classical music, but still believe it is meant to be a joyful, participatory group experience. Maybe we can learn something from them.
Maybe there’s hope for our art form after all.