And Speaking Of Alex Ross...

[NOTE: This post has been edited as of 10:09 AM Eastern on 9 Mar to add a link, and correct an inadvertent omission of some text.]

And speaking of Alex Ross (here), we suppose we should comment on a piece he wrote for The Guardian which was published today, and which piece we suppose was taken from the text of the Royal Philharmonic Society lecture he delivered at the Wigmore Hall in London this evening (the transcript of which can now be downloaded here [added 3/9]). The piece dealt with the matter of audience applause in the concert hall, and with the "No Applause Rule", as Mr. Ross designates it, which tacitly governs just when and where applause is permissible. This is a very old discussion here on S&F, and one in which Mr. Ross himself participated via several cross-blog exchanges.

In a 2005 S&F post titled, "Another Voice", we wrote (and we quote at length):

Champions of the idea of a return to the concert etiquette of the 18th and 19th centuries where the "regulated" audience practice was, for instance, to show approval by clapping between movements, are forever citing examples of famous composers of the time seemingly showing their pleasure in, even approval of, the practice, the point of adducing the examples being to convince us that if the practice was approved by composers such as those, then we should have no objection to, ought to even encourage, such practice today.

But the examples adduced by these champions are totally specious, and citing them, the worst sort of sophistry. That, for instance, Brahms thought a new piano concerto of his a failure because instead of applause there was only silence after each of the first two movements, or that Mozart purposely wrote into a movement of a symphony certain passages calculated to provoke an audience to applause, and reveled in the success of that device, shows only that both composers were keenly aware of, and sensitive to, the prevailing concert etiquette of their respective times, and what was expected and when from an audience as a sign of its pleasure. The examples in no way demonstrate those composers' in-principle pleasure in, and approval of, that etiquette. It was simply a fact of musical life in those times, the consequence of largely musically ignorant and uncouth audiences, both aristocratic and bourgeois, and as working composers who depended on those audiences for their daily bread and cheese, Mozart and Brahms had little choice but to accept and play by the rules of that etiquette.

Classical music critics writing today who champion such changes in our present-day classical music concert etiquette for the express purpose of making the classical music concert more inviting to, and comfortable for, the masses ... are simply as wrongheaded about the matter as they could possibly be, notwithstanding how well-intentioned their championing, and seem oblivious of the wholesale damage that would obtain were their proposals put into actual practice.

One classical music critic [Mr. Ross, who was left unidentified in the original post] who champions such make-it-inviting-for-the-masses alterations to what he considers, generally, the ossified and elitist classical music promotion and concert practices of the present-day declares in hopeful metaphor, "When the age of the dinosaurs ends, the age of the mammals begins."

I suggest that a better metaphor for what would obtain were the practices this critic and his like-minded colleagues champion put into actual practice would be what obtained on the island of Guam when the alien common brown tree snake was by error introduced into the environment, whereupon their numbers rapidly multiplied. In fairly short order, all native bird species on the island disappeared, their song silenced forever. Today, only the squawking of chickens and the hum and clatter of modern-day commerce prevail there.

Mr. Ross's response to this (on his blog, The Rest Is Noise) and to others who joined the fray was,

There's [a] dark truth behind so-called concert etiquette. It lets audiences off the hook. Instead of delivering an informed, passionate reaction to each segment of the concert as it unfolds, they can sit in neutral silence until the end. A truly engaged audience would applaud warmly when it's called for, remain silent when applause is inappropriate, and boo when the performance falls obviously short.

And that's essentially the same position Mr. Ross takes in his above linked piece for The Guardian although somewhat attenuated and more circumspect. Our response to that position is the same today as it was back in 2005; viz.,

I must say I agree with [Mr. Ross's] sentiment, and would even welcome such a practice in the concert hall. Problem is, it works properly only when an audience is made up entirely of the musically informed and knowledgeable; i.e., genuine connoisseurs. It most certainly does not work — cannot work — with a "mixed" audience where some or many are largely ignorant of classical music, or whose exposure to classical music has been of the superficial, cultural/social obligation sort; ergo, the tacit "rules of conduct" for the classical music concert audience. It's simply the most sensible way to go about the thing today, and speaks to the reality of present-day classical music concert audiences.