Everything You Wanted To Know...
...about proper audience etiquette at the classical music concert but were too embarrassed to ask can be read right here. Sam Bergman, violist in the Minnesota Orchestra and a leading member of the musician’s orchestra committee, the news editor for Arts Journal, a mini-blogger extraordinaire, and a rabid baseball fan*, tells all — spot-on and hilariously.
• Upon entering the auditorium, the usher will hand you a program book. This contains interesting information about the music we'll be playing. If it's the Mozart and Beethoven, you can skip it unless you really care a lot about the minutiae of composers' lives. Having known many composers, I can pretty much assure you that they are very odd people, and the less you know about them, the more comfortable you will be. However. If you took the daring route, and are attending a performance of some seriously new music, you should glance over the program notes, especially if the title of one of the pieces suggests that there might be a story behind it. Sometimes, the story is pretty cool, and sometimes, it involves really awesomely dark stuff like murder and suicide and rape and so on, and you'll honestly get a lot more out of the big crashy, boomy sections if you know what's supposed to be going on.
• If the concert you have chosen includes a work with a chorus or a solo singer, the program book may also contain several pages of lyrics, both in the original language of the piece, and in English. It is perfectly all right for you to follow along with these lyrics during the performance. But do keep in mind that there are 2,499 other concertgoers in this room with you, and they have all been given the same program book as you, and it therefore stands to reason that they will be coming to page turns at the same time as you. And while one person turning a page is a relatively quiet operation, 2,500 people doing it sounds like a flock of pigeons descending on a loaf of Wonder Bread, and we don't need that. It won't kill you to turn the page a little early or a little late. Just watch the people on either side of you, and turn when they're not. It won't matter, since everyone else will still be doing the pigeon thing, but you will be able to bask quietly in the pride that comes with not being a clueless moron.
• By accepting the program book in the first place, you have entered into an implicit agreement with the orchestra to keep it on your lap. Because, due to an astonishing anomaly of acoustical law, a 32-page program dropped on a floor during a concert makes the same amount of noise as the complete works of Shakespeare dropped off the top of the Empire State Building onto a Chinese gong. You don't want this.
Really do RTWT. Money-back guarantee if you don't love it — and, if you're not a regular concert-goer, learn from it.
* Biographical data taken from Drew McManus's intro to the Bergman piece.
