“In theory the audience is a solid slab, provided with a single pair of enormous ears, which listen, and with a pair of hands, which clap. Actually it is that elusive scattering flight of winged creatures, darting around, and spending much of its time where it shouldn’t, thinking now ‘how lovely!’, now ‘my foot’s gone to sleep,’ and passing in the beat of a bar from ‘there’s Beethoven back in C minor again!’ to ‘did I turn the gas off?’ Beethoven does not flicker, Beethoven plays himself through. Applause. The piano is closed, the instruments re-enter their cases, the audience disperses more widely, the concert is over.”
E.M. Forster, “From the Audience”