While we’re talking about music, it’s worth mentioning a January column by the Boston Globe‘s Sam Allis, a cri de coeur against an old social bugbear: clapping between movements at a classical concert. Allis feels it’s time to bust free of that pointless, fusty constraint against the natural impulse to applaud when a pleasing section closes. Pianist Emanuel Ax is cited in agreement, saying he is “leading a one-man crusade as a listener to start applauding.”
I learned the no-hands rule sometime in high school, and I always thought it was meant to preserve the flow of the piece as conceived by the composer. According to Allis, Ax has traced this view to composer-conductor Richard Wagner, who at one point declared that the integrity of the gesamptkunstwerk (the total work of art; and each of Wagner’s was several hours long) demanded complete silence until the bitter end. But surely the stigma has a social underpinning: it invites those who know the rules — and who know the music, because movements are not necessarily intuitive — to feel superior to those who don’t. “This is about the trappings of music, not the music,” Ax tells Allis. “I think that if there were no ‘rules’ about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always.”
Allis reminds us that spontaneous applause is perfectly acceptable after arias and jazz improvisations. Having attended classical concerts in India, I would add that Indians think nothing of slapping their knees rhythmically, swaying, calling out in approval, or humming vaguely along throughout a high-brow performance. Our protocol seems embarrassingly starchy by comparison, but I’m afraid it will take more than Emanuel Ax’s one hand clapping to loose the bonds of Symphony Hall. I’m with Andre Previn, the conductor and pianist, who tells Allis that the protocol depends on the mood: “If you clapped after the long Bruckner adagio, you’d be in big trouble.”
