More about an engaged, participating audience…following up on my last post.
I exchanged some email with Tom Wolf, the consultant whose firm’s newsletter I’d happily quoted. In this exchange, he told me a fine story involving Boris Goldovsky, whom I’d known of as an opera personage (host of the Met Opera’s old radio intermission feature, Opera Quiz, founder of the opera training program at Tanglewood).
I hadn’t known that Goldovsky was Tom’s uncle, or that he’d been a pianist and conductor. Or that, as a musician of the old school, he’d have reacted ss Tom describes. Or, for that matter, that Tom himself doesn’t like a passive audience.
HEre’s his story (I’m quoting his email with his permission):
As I got older, I found concert “manners” totally off-putting and still do. I remember going to a concert when my pianist brother, the late Andrew Wolf, was playing the Schumann piano quintet which, as you know, has a barn burner of a first movement. When the first movement ended, there was silence in the hall and my uncle, Boris Goldovsky, who had played the piece hundreds of times said to me, “These idiots. The musicians play like Gods and the idiot audience sits and does nothing. Their silence is a crime.”
Thanks for this, Tom!
I wouldn’t myself blame the audience. The people in it are only doing what they’ve been taught to do. To show reverence for the music, by keeping quiet till the end of the piece. A concept that would have been utterly foreign to Mozart or Verdi or Brahms.
So if anyone’s to blame, it’s the classical music police, the arbiters of classical music decorum who believe in these rules, and still sometimes try to enforce them.
When I was a young singer, I sang for Boris Goldovsky’s company, with him on WQXR and on his lecture series at the Met Museum a number of times, listened to many of his lectures and read almost all of his witty and astute articles. Now, having been a conductor of symphonic and operatic literature for many years, I completely agree with the sentiment he expressed.
The observation is specious at best . Some works lend themselves to applause between movements and
some don’t . It all depends on the sophistication of the audience and the works being played.
There is no musical police regulating concert decorum, there are just people not sure of how to behave
at a so called” classical ” music event . It is mostly about “manners ” and ignorance to the art .
Greg – I struggle with this concept. And the mentioning of my favorite chamber work, the Schumann Piano Quintet makes it even more of a challenge. I’m a K-5 music teacher in NYC who’s taking several students and families to Carnegie Hall tomorrow night, some of them for the first time. The “etiquette guide” from the organization tells us about not applauding in between movements and I go back and forth between wanting the least restrictive environment for my students (a principle used by many good teachers, especially those in special-needs classrooms).
However, there is nothing -NOTHING – like that moment in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony when the 1st movement comes to a thundering close and then comes in with that pulse from the low strings. There seems to be no way that Beethoven would want that moment to be interrupted. Same for the 1st and 2nd movements of the Shostakovitch Fifth. And the Schumann and many others.
Do you totally disagree, Greg?
I’ve seen wonderful moments when the silence between movements is wonderful. Hans Vonk conducting Beethoven 7 in Carnegie Hall when he was music director of the St. Louis Symphony, and with his body language maintaining silence after the third movement, so that the fourth could explode from that silence.
But we should also realize that we’ve invented things like that, effective as they might be. And that they don’t have much basis in history. The custom (which is really what it is) of not applauding between movements only dates from the 1950s. The composers whose works we apply that custom to it couldn’t have imagined what we’re doing. Beethoven, in fact, typically presented his symphonies with other pieces coming between the movements! And in his day audiences applauded even during the music, for instance greeting the brief (but for that time unprecedented) timpani solos in the scherzo of the Ninth with applause.
If you’re interested in this, you might go to the website for my Juilliard course on the future of classical music, and read some of what I’ve assigned on classical music’s past. http://www.gregsandow.com/popclass/popclass.pdf. There are links to all the assignments, so you can read what I’ve assigned just as the students do.
Read my collection of anecdotes from past centuries, and scholarly writing about what happened. Read Mozart’s letter to his father, about how he composed his Paris Symphony with the intent of making the audience applaud during the music. Read how thrilled Verdi was when the audience at an Aida performance demanded an encore of a single phrase.
In the future I imagine, we’ll do classical music in many ways. Perfectly find for some people to ask for silence between movements, while others encourage applause even during the music. Only thing I might hope for is that in performances with silence between movements, the silence isn’t ritualistic, but is deserved. That is, the performance should be so rapt that any noise between movements is inconceivable.
A contrived nonsensical reply to suit the premise and you know it………..
It’s unfortunate that an adult of your age should need advice about manners.
But it’s one thing to disagree with someone, and something else to question their motives or their honesty. Can you conceive, just possibly, that someone who says something you think is wrong might in fact believe it? And thus is having a discussion in good faith.
You might want to have a discussion, rather than flinging insults. But, whatever pleases you! I’ll only remind you of a policy here, which is that commenters may say anything, however personal or insulting, about me. But anything insulting about another commenter — including questioning their motives or honesty — will get you barred from any further participation.
I imagine this makes no impression on you, and might just make you laugh. Again, whatever pleases you. But I need to state the policy for the sake of everyone else, and so that it’s clearly out there before I might have to act on it.
It is indeed regrettable that you choose to respond to my observation in such a
personal manner . I was commenting on what you wrote.
Thank you for your excellent response, Greg! I hope to take your class someday.
Best,
Alan
Thanks, Alan! I’m glad I made sense.
And of course I’d love to have you in my class. Please forgive me, if you’ve mentioned this before — are you at Juilliard? If you’re in NY, you possibly could visit the class. And in the past I’ve made it available online, so that could be a possibility, too. Let me know if you should be interested!
A thought experiment for the forum: VIOLIN HERO!
The generation just after mine was raised on the Guitar Hero and DJ Hero video game franchise. How do you know when you are “WINNING”? The virtual crowd (full of hot, sweaty young people, of course) goes wild. If you suck… crickets.
Imagine “Violin Hero”, if it existed… As the soloist extends her “perfect note streak” to 50, 100, etc., a boisterous virtual audience begins to quiet. At the “200 streak” mark, the robo-patrons start scolding one another with violent SHUSHES. At 300, only silent scornful glances are exchanged. And if she maintains the “perfect note streak” all the way through the cadenza, the crowd reaches such a lofty statue state that they all suddenly “sh*t marble” (Amadeus… Anyone?).
One reason I rarely enjoy live classical (despite knowing the repertoire and owning all the scores) is that I can’t possibly sit still if they happen to be killing it. If they rock, I want to stand up, pump my fist, and SCREAM out to the heavens in exaltation! At a Muse concert, everybody does that TOGETHER! And it is freakin’ AMAZING! THRILLING! LIFE AFFIRMING! If you want some pure, private, masturbatory cult experience… Stay at home with your headphones, right?
But since our halls are way too big, and the hacking and wheezing old people in the front seats are already louder than the orchestra’s pianissimo, and we refuse to solve this by amplifying, we must enforce a “code of silence”. Absurd…
BOTTOM LINE: Stifling a music-gasm sucks. Come on, sheeple… If you are feelin’ it, WAKE UP THE NEIGHBORS!
Again…amen to every word. Not the hushed amen of mainstream Protestant churches, but the shouted amen of the black church.
And what a great idea…Violin Hero. I think some orchestra should run with it…own it…present it live (contests for their audience). And of course rake in the cash, if the game catches on.
classytroll, I’d love to put some of your comments, like this one, directly in the blog, as posts of their own. But only if you say it’s OK. You can let me know in the comments, or privately by email. And if you don’t want me to do it, i won’t. But I’d L O V E to have as many people as possible reading what you say!!
Greg, if it will advance the cause, please use “classytroll’s” writing however you see fit (with two conditions below).
TWO CONDITIONS: 1) that you give attribution (we are building a brand, after all); and 2) that you reciprocate.
My group of “classytrolls” (I’m not the only one) would like to use your writing too… And not ALWAYS because we agree… In fact, you often put forward the best pro to our con, and in the interest of letting history decide, we might want to post your counter-arguments (on Cage, for instance… I realize my personal view is not the ONLY view).
Of course we’ll seek your consent too and give attribution… And while “trolling”, we’ll try to keep it classy!
Thanks! And absolutely you can use my stuff. Just use my name, and the name of my blog, with a link to the post you’re using. And maybe also (legalistic, but important for protecting an author’s rights) say that you’re using the post with my permission. You don’t need to do that if you only quote part of it, because after all my stuff is posted in public, and the old “fair use” doctrine of copyright law allows quotes. But if you use a large part or all of something I’ve written — which I’m happy to have you do — just say that you have my permission to do it.
This could be fun!
Can there be any more absurd comments than those expressed by violin hero ?