March 6

Modern Concert Etiquette & Decorum

A couple of New York City concert venues are turning established concert performance practice on its ear. But to appreciate it, we first need a little history lesson. During the 1780s in Vienna, Austria, Mozart premiered his piano concertos in restaurants and guest houses where listeners engaged in eating, drinking and gambling during the performances. They clapped after the soloist’s cadenzas, just as we applaud a jazz solo today. In fact, when they heard a phrase or section they liked particularly, they applauded, even though the music was still going on. J.S. Bach was director of Leipzig’s collegium musicum, which performed solely at Zimmermann’s Coffee House, not in any church, palace or other established musical institution. This part-time orchestra was composed of young musicians whose ranks were frequently embellished by famous singers and instrumentalists passing through Leipzig. Their concerts were accessible to all Zimmermann's customers, both male and female (except for these concerts, it would have been scandalous for a woman to be seen in a coffee house). They listened to the music while eating and drinking, sometimes playing cards. They applauded and cheered whenever something caught their fancy, often while the music was still playing. The somewhat stuffy, church-like atmosphere of current classical music concerts was alien to those cultures. In fact, that atmosphere is relatively new.

It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that widespread availability of electricity facilitated lowering the house lights during concerts. Before that time, operas and classical music performances were attended by the wealthy upper classes, who arrived in all their finery, laden with jewelry. The candles or gas lamps stayed lit, all the better for the audience to show off for one another.

In 1904 Mahler had to request that audiences not applaud between movements of his Kindertotenlieder song cycle (they were, after all, songs about the deaths of children). Until the beginning of the 20th century, applause between movements and even during movements was the sign of a knowledgeable, appreciative audience, not of an ignorant one. Mozart bragged that audience members applauded during movements of his symphonies when they heard something particularly attractive to the ear, even shouting “da capo” (to the beginning) in hopes that the movement would be repeated. It usually was. Brahms complained that no one clapped between movements of his first piano concerto’s premiere, a sign that the piece was in trouble.

It was conductor Leopold Stokowski who put the kibosh on applause between movements of classical compositions. In 1929 he turned around to admonish a Philadelphia audience for applauding after the pizzicato movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony (just try not to applaud after this movement). Later, he tried to push forward his agenda to banish applause between movements by polling subscribers, who soundly rejected the idea. This had everything to do with Stokowski’s ego. Applause after a movement was likely the result of a brilliant solo, which detracted from the conductor’s control over the musical moment. Holding applause to the end focused the applause on the conductor, instead of the soloist or the audience.

The no-applause rule was slow to catch on. In 1938 in Vienna, we know that the audience applauded between movements of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by none other than Bruno Walter. Recordings from the 1950s of orchestra broadcasts reveal applause between movements, but by the 1960s, anyone who applauded between movements was looked down upon as uncouth. Many attribute this to recordings, with their spaces of silence between movements. And so the practice lives on today. Strangely, the no applause rule never applied to operatic performances, in which arias were/are routinely greeted by applause or boos and hisses.

But the times, they are a changin’. Le Poisson Rouge, a wildly popular subterranean Greenwich Village music venue, programs classical music (as well as jazz, avant-garde and rock) alongside food and drink, where ticket holders sit at dining tables. For instance, this weekend jazz pianist Brad Mehldau conducted a master class sponsored by Carnegie Hall. Later that same day Le Poissant Rouge offered an evening of Bingo with burlesque entertainment, food and drink, while Sunday offers a concert by cellist Zoë Keating. LPR has a concert grand piano on the corner stage, like a concert hall, but it also boasts a state of the art sound system that can handle heavy rock performances, with lighting and projection capabilities to match.

Billing itself as a multimedia art cabaret, the LPR’s motto is: “Serving Art and Alcohol.” Founded by violinist/composer David Handler and cellist Justin Kantor, the space was envisioned as an alternative venue for new music when both were students at the Manhattan School of Music. They were exasperated with the traditional concert setting, with its “preacher and congregation seating.” Handler states, “Our mission here has been to foster a more symbiotic relationship between art and revelry. Only in recent history have art and revelry diverged, and both are suffering from the breakup.” Le Poisson Rouge is located on Bleecker Street between Thompson and Sullivan.

The venerable Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center now offers Late Night Rose concerts, a 9:30 pm repeat of the day’s 6:30 pm program with a big difference; ticket holders at the later hour are seated at candle-lit tables while drinking wine (photo below). These concerts are performed in the Rose Studio (10th Floor) at 65th Street and Amsterdam Ave., and the wine and candlelight performances are attracting a younger crowd. Unfortunately, all upcoming Late Night Rose concerts (March 10 and May 12) are already sold out. Try for next fall.

An informative lecture on the subject of concert applause (delivered by Alex Ross, classical music critic for New Yorker magazine) can be read at:

http://alexrossmusic.typepad.com/files/rps_lecture_2010_alex-ross.pdf

Ross, who lives in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood, has been married to actor/director Jonathan Lisecki since 2005. While a student at Harvard, Ross (born 1968) was a DJ for the underground rock department of the university’s radio station WHRB. From 1992-96 he was a classical music critic for the New York Times. In 2007 he published a critically acclaimed book on 20th-century classical music, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.

Photo below: Ross at home in Chelsea, NYC.