You’re at the symphony. There’s a feeling of anticipation in the air as the audience assembles and the musicians warm up on stage. The Maestro takes the stage, and the music begins. The first movement ends, and there’s a smattering of applause. People look nervously at each other; a neighbor might shush them. Suddenly, believing they did the wrong thing, they feel embarrassed.
Chances are those people who applauded will not attend another concert. This is not a great way to build a future audience.
What if the rules change, get thrown out, and people are told it’s okay to clap when they are so moved? Revolutionary idea, right?! Maybe not so much anymore.
The Rules are Changing
More and more, these days, the executive director of the presenting orchestra steps out ahead of the performance and speaks to the audience about what to expect from the music, thanks sponsors and supporters, tells people to turn off their cell phones, and says it’s perfectly fine to applaud if the impulse strikes at the end of a movement.
With changes in symphony etiquette, there is a need to include audience education and development. Traditionally, symphony audiences are “sophisticated,” which is code for “older.” These are people who have been attending for decades and hew to the standards of the last 100 years: they wait until the end of a piece before applauding. These traditions, it turns out, are intimidating to younger audiences who have a completely different, way more participatory relationship with music.
Think rock concerts, or jazz clubs, or karaoke, where participation is everything, where people are up in the aisles, and where the musicians get instant feedback.
There are those firmly on the side of waiting until the musical story is complete before applauding. As Erika Block, executive director of the Bellingham Festival of Music, puts it, “The whole point of a multi-movement piece is taking people on a journey, an adventure. The silence maintains the connection between the movements,” she says. “There is a really cool intensity that happens, an intense moment when the room is completely still. There is something profound and unique in that and should be cherished.”
Different genres inspire different responses. Sitting in a jazz club and applauding after each musician gets their turn at a solo, audiences want to give them all the support in the world for the amazing music they just created. Why not do the same for musicians at a classical music concert?
Gail Ridenour, executive director of the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra, readily acknowledges that audience development is key to the symphony’s future. “We want the audience to have the best experience possible,” she says. “If that is rewarding the orchestra after a movement, we think that’s fine. We can also let the audience know when silence between movements is important for the feel of the piece.”
Why We Have the Rules
Clearly, a transition is underway as new generations of concertgoers emerge. The past may inform the future. Composers like Mozart and Beethoven wrote to elicit applause, often creating climactic moments at the end of the first movement to do so. It was how the composers knew their work was being appreciated.
Then along came composers and conductors like Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner, who began giving audiences instructions not to clap after movements of a symphony, or between or in the middle of the acts of an opera. They wanted their music to be “sacred”. “Richard Strauss in his opera ‘Ariadne auf Naxos'”, notes Mitchell Kahn, artistic and general director at Pacific Northwest Opera, “has a character literally sing ‘Music is a sacred art.'” Soon, people were treating the concert as if it were church.
Now the pendulum seems to be swinging back. Audience development and education are on everyone’s mind, with plenty of outreach to the community and through school programs. Many companies offer pre-performance talks. “The audience is an important part of every performance,” says Kahn.” The energy of the audience feeds back to the performers; it is important for them to know when the applause adds and when it interrupts the flow of that energy.”
How is an Audience Member to Know What to Do?
One way is to watch the conductor. “I’ll visually guide them,” says Dr. Michael Wheatley, conductor of the Skagit Symphony, “by keeping my hands in the air. If I’m moving my hands even slightly, that means the music hasn’t stopped.” Wheatley is definitely in the camp of being expressive. “We don’t want to be seen as snooty, as if the music is just for the “sophisticated” few.”
Executive Directors and conductors can do a great deal to help us and subsequent generations learn the strings, appreciate how to enjoy the music, and think about what we might experience if we clap or wait. Carrie Omdal, Executive Director of the Skagit Symphony, wants concert-going to be “less of an ordeal for new audiences. We want people to enjoy the experience so they come back.”
A breathtaking example of a piece that benefits from hearing it as a whole is Yunchan Lim’s Cliburn Competition Rachmaninov 3. Watch the brilliant conductor Marin Alsop at the end of the second movement and see how responsive she is to the rustling of the audience. She almost starts the third, but there is a sound, so she holds her orchestra for an extra moment, allowing the silence to crest again.
The More Things Change
These adjustments will not be settled any time soon, or maybe ever. There will be those, like Kahn, who believe “a sublime performance deserves revery. It is far more satisfying to let the music dissipate into silence rather than interrupt that moment with raucous applause,” and those, like Wheatley, who remind us that Beethoven and Mozart wrote and constructed their music to explicitly elicit applause at specific points. It was how they knew people liked it. “When Mozart premiered the Paris Symphony, the audience started cheering,” Wheatly says. “He wrote to his father that ‘people broke out in cheers’ and that his plan to excite them at various points had worked.”
So, if your neighbor starts to clap and you don’t, don’t fuss about it. Or if you do and they don’t, soon they may be wondering why they aren’t clapping.
The most important question may not be when to clap but how to keep the arts alive, supported and available. We can all applaud for that.
