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trained-pianist
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« Reply #1 on: 23:05:47, 08-01-2008 » |
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Reiner,
Thank you for the article.
I used to be a snob, but I am not sure what I am anymore.
Concerts are becoming more and more difficult for an average person, also too strict in terms of etiquette.
Operas are less strict.
May be concerts will have to become more fun and entertaining affairs with time. Fashions are changing and many things come back.
I hope I don't insult anybody.
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #2 on: 00:08:40, 13-01-2008 » |
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At the end of a concert I went to a few months ago, my friend asked me, "don't people clap after each movement?" (because nobody had). It was his first classical concert, and he was obviously prepared to clap in each break in the music as he would at a rock concert. But he saw that nobody else was, realised there was a mysterious etiquette at work, and went along with it. Which is why I'm baffled when you hear scattered applause between movements at the Proms or whatever. The applauders may not understand the convention, but surely they can see that there *is* a convention and adapt accordingly?  |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #3 on: 00:18:55, 13-01-2008 » |
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It is a difficult question. If you sat patiently through a truly awful performance, would you applaud when it finished? because it finished?
Do you look down on people who clap after an individual movement as being potentially ignorant of the structure of the complete work? If a particular movement really touched you, would you applaud, whether you customarily clap after each movement or not?
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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MabelJane
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« Reply #4 on: 00:22:22, 13-01-2008 » |
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Perhaps we should add to each work a single sustained note to be played linking one movement to another, as heard in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto! Did other composers use this device before him? I'm used to audiences applauding arias etc in opera but find applause between movements irritating - I think I quite enjoy the silence (spoilt by the inevitable coughing!),anticipating the opening of the next movement.
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Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
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Andy D
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« Reply #5 on: 00:36:25, 13-01-2008 » |
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I see the original NY Times article quotes Kenneth Hamilton's book "After the Golden Age". I haven't read it but I'm a great fan of KH and I've posted here about him on several occasions. He is a really hilarious speaker and a great pianist too. I try not to miss any of the occasional lecture/recitals he gives at Birmingham University.
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Andy D
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« Reply #6 on: 00:51:41, 13-01-2008 » |
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Just read this in a review of Kenneth Hamilton's "After the Golden Age":
He entertainingly recounts how classical concerts evolved from exuberant, sometimes riotous events into the formal, funereal trotting out of predictable pieces they can be today, how an often unhistorical "respect for the score" began to replace pianists' improvisations and adaptations, and how the clinical custom arose that an audience should be seen and not heard.
Comments please!
This really does look a fascinating book, very tempted to seek it out.
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #7 on: 10:06:11, 13-01-2008 » |
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It sounds like interesting book. May be everything comes back like in fashion industry. May be we are on a threshold of a new fashion (old fashion with a twist: inclusive).
Concerts in Mozart and Liszt's time were informal affairs, they did not dare to play difficult pieces publicly (music like the last Beethoven quartets or even the whole sonatas, etc), performers were talking with an audience between the pieces, instrumentalists invited singers to participate in order for more variety and entertainment, etc.
Now we went a full circle and concerts are too formal, too predictable, too dry, may be even too challenging for an average listener (and there is not much interest in classical music). May be they are going to go back to the old ways.
I came to the conclusion that there is no point to be dissappointed in the way things are going because times change and fashions too. After dumming down fashion the more serious times will come.
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Andy D
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« Reply #8 on: 11:28:02, 13-01-2008 » |
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It's a difficult one t-p. I'm usually one of the first to complain if people start talking or making other noises during a "serious" concert but I do enjoy more informal concerts too, especially if they're early or contemporary music. Musicians talking about the music doesn't always work, very few are as good at it as Kenneth Hamilton, some are actually quite reluctant to talk even though they're happy to play/sing. I mentioned a couple of months ago the early music concert I went to given by Florilegium and Emma Kirkby which I thought was ruined by no-one saying a word.
Even the matter of dress can make a concert seem far too formal. Fortunately the trend seems to be for chamber musicians to dress in a more relaxed way, in fact the ones who do still wear tails etc look rather out of place now.
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MabelJane
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« Reply #9 on: 13:37:43, 13-01-2008 » |
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I've just recalled how shockingly rude the Palermo audiences were during an opera there 22 years ago. They talked throughout the performance, only stopping each time they recognised a familiar aria, which they sang along to!  Italian opera's wasted on them! |
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Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
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opilec
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« Reply #10 on: 13:46:25, 13-01-2008 » |
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I've just recalled how shockingly rude the Palermo audiences were during an opera there 22 years ago. They talked throughout the performance, only stopping each time they recognised a familiar aria, which they sang along to! Italian opera's wasted on them! Wouldn't do to argue with them, though, MJ!   |
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opilec
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« Reply #11 on: 14:03:21, 13-01-2008 » |
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how the clinical custom arose that an audience should be seen and not heard. There was a bit of a hoo-ha on the boards about this over the summer concerning Mahler symphonies at the Proms, wasn't there? Some supposedly ignorant members of the audience committed the unforgiveable sin of applauding between movements. And yet audiences in Mahler's own time (not so very long ago, in the grand scheme of things) did so, and Mahler acknowledged the applause when this happened. After the first movement at the premiere of the Third Symphony, Richard Strauss even went up to Mahler (who was the conductor) and shook his hand. |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #12 on: 14:18:23, 13-01-2008 » |
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My own feeling here is that this "rule" against applause between movements comes out of the same etiquette books which told the up-and-come which knife to use for the fish course. Opera audiences are more open with their enthusiasm and appreciation, and will applaud individual arias, scenes, and acts... provided they know there's a "space" in which to do so. However, the etiquette books come into play once more... woe betide those who wish to show their appreciation at the end of PARSIFAL if performed at Bayreuth. One presumes that the ticket-ballot acts as a filter to exclude the "uninitiated"?
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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time_is_now
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« Reply #13 on: 15:45:32, 13-01-2008 » |
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After the first movement at the premiere of the Third Symphony, Richard Strauss even went up to Mahler (who was the conductor) and shook his hand.
Really?! Is there documentary evidence for this somewhere? (I'm not doubting you, would just love to be able to quote it ...) |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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opilec
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« Reply #14 on: 16:32:06, 13-01-2008 » |
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After the first movement at the premiere of the Third Symphony, Richard Strauss even went up to Mahler (who was the conductor) and shook his hand.
Really?! Is there documentary evidence for this somewhere? (I'm not doubting you, would just love to be able to quote it ...) tinners, I'm quoting the following verbatim from Gustav Mahler: Letters to his Wife, ed. H-L de la Grange & G Weis, trans. A Beaumont (Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 105: The performance, given at the 38th Composers Festival (Tonkünstlerfest) of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein, was a huge success. At the end of the first movement Strauss left his seat and walked through the hall to offer Mahler his congratulations. As Alma recalls:
Richard Strauss walked right up to the stage and applauded demonstratively, thus instantly sealing the movement's success.The Alma quote is from Alma Mahler: Gustav Mahler, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt/Main, 1991), pp. 57-8. She's not always the most reliable of sources, but in this instance the editors (who normally note when something should be taken with a pinch of salt) seem happy with her account. |
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