Concertgoers shouldn’t have to ‘pay up and shut up’
One evening some months back, something astounding happened at the Wigmore Hall. Igor Levit came to the end of his performance of four piano sonatas by Beethoven. And clear as a bell, a loud boo rang out.
It was hair-raising, because just for a second it lifted the pall of social convention that normally hangs over classical concerts like a funeral shroud. More than that, it made the musical qualities of the performance we’d just heard jump into sharp relief. My own feeling was that the performance had been odd in several ways, perhaps indulgently so. But that was just my opinion. Or so I thought, until that boo rang out.
The air crackled with tension, as hundreds of people had to ask themselves – do I agree with that boo or not? The music, at that moment, seemed more alive than when Levit had been playing it, and the reason isn’t hard to see: the audience had joined in the act of making it real.
That happens so rarely now. The permitted role of the audience nowadays at classical concerts can be summed up in five words: pay up and shut up. The decision to choose the concert and pay for it is the only moment when an audience member can exercise genuine freedom. At the concert itself, behaviour is tightly circumscribed. Absolute quiet must be observed, except at those moments when audiences are allowed to bring their hands together, in that social ritual known as clapping. They can even let rip at those moments, and accompany their clapping with restrained cheering or foot-stamping. As for booing, that’s unacceptable.
What’s striking is how this iron law even envelops concerts of contemporary music. By their very nature, concerts of this kind often include one monstrously pretentious dud, but while the audiences may be younger, they reproduce exactly the same muted behaviour as their elders at the Wigmore Hall.
Two huge forces conspired to decree that this is how it should be in the early 19th-century. First of all, there was the increasing stranglehold of the bourgeoisie on music-making, anxious to prove to noisy, chattering aristocrats that they were a cut above them with their courteous quiet.
And then, in tandem, there was the ideology of high art, with its favourite shibboleths of the “masterwork” and the “genius”. The “genius” concept extended to the performer too, who was felt to be the inspired representative on earth of that other genius, the composer. Who would dare defy their combined prestige?
No wonder the deadening social ritual of classical concerts is so immoveable; it’s been ingrained in our consciousness for two centuries.
But now there’s a new twist to the tale. Not content with the unspoken rules about applause, some performers want to police the audience’s behaviour – and not just their behaviour, but how they think. This they do by not just playing concerts but “curating” them – assembling a line-up of music which, they demand, should not be interrupted.
Pianists have become keen on this fad: in recent months I’ve been to concerts by the notable American pianists Inon Barnatan and Jeremy Denk, in which unrelated pieces were shoved together cheek-by-jowl without a pause, and multi-movement pieces broken down into their separate parts before being reassembled into artfully composed sequences. Before they played, they came onto the stage and asked the audience to “save their applause” until the end.
There’s only one proper response to this, which is: “Shut up and play, I’ll decide when and whether I want to applaud”. But no one ever dares, so the performers always get their way.
It doesn’t have to be thus. Well into the 20th century, audiences didn’t question their own right to boo performers off the stage, or cheer their favourites for five minutes at a stretch.
There’s no inherent conflict between the spontaneous expression of feeling – positive or negative – and having respect for the music. On the contrary, expressing a strongly held feeling is the only kind of “respect” worth having. I’m not advocating that every performance be peppered with boos and cheers, but there needs to be a shift in the balance of power.
Of course, there’s no telling when you’ll next be asked to “save your applause”. But whenever it comes, be disobedient, if you want to. Better still, don’t applaud at all.
Hundreds of people had to ask themselves – do I agree with that boo or not?