The Glade 4.0

So I was in a choir that was giving a concert (along with the orchestra) yesterday. I've never performed in front of an audience that was so clueless on when to clap. You don't clap between movements of a single piece. I can understand not knowing whether the break is a break between movements, or if the piece is over, but it is still real simple. Just watch the conductor. If the conductor steps down and turns towards the audience? Its time to clap! If he doesn't? Its NOT time to clap. If the conductor never lowers his hands, deperately trying to signal to the audience that they shouldn't clap yet? It is NOT time to clap. The Bugler's Holiday was a freaking joke. Every time the trumpets stopped playing for 2 seconds some in the audience would start clapping, even though the piece wasn't close to being over. In one of the choir pieces we have to figure out our pitch for one movement, from the final pitch of the previous movement. But the audience clapping, and hence having to be acknowledged, meant we couldn't do that and had to have the pitch played.

How freaking hard is it? If the conductor doesn't turn around, STFU.

It's the jazz thing (the notion that you're supposed to applaud every solo or whatever), combined with today's emphasis on praising your kids. People just can't help themselves. "Good job, Aeg!" *clap* *clap* *clap*

I'm only being partly facetious.

And, maybe they weren't part clueless on when to clap, so much as clueless on what they were listening to and the structure of the music. I think listeners of classical music are much less sophisticated than they used to be, largely because it has expanded its appeal, but people are much less exposed to it on a daily basis.

That, and people feel a definite need to fill any little bit of silence nowadays.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Well, they weren't really clapping after solos (except maybe thats what they were attempting with buglers holiday, but sheesh, they did it like five times). You could be right about the sophistication, and it was a Christmas concert, which brings in people that may not usually go to classical music concerts, but you would think they'd get the picture after a real ending to a piece.

"Hmmm...I wonder why those other times less then half of us were clapping, but this time everyone clapped. Also last time the guy standing up front waving his arms didn't turn around, but just turned his head and nodded to his head when we clapped, but this time he turned around and bowed?"

There are sometimes that I can understand it. Like when we did Carmina Burana a few years ago. The first movement ends in such an impressive fashion, that even though the 2nd movement starts right off, it can be very tempting to applaud. But it seemed like this audience deemed any pause longer than 2 seconds, as an applause point.

I'm just glad our audience last spring wasn't like that. We didn't Mendelssohn's Elijah, and there is a part in there where Elijah and the priests of Baal are in a competition to see who can get their god to send down a pillar of fire to light a bonfire they've setup. The priests of Baal (the choir) are singing more and more deperately as nothing happens, until finally they cry out "Hear and answer!" silence "Hear and answer!" silence. So they are begging for a response and hear nothing but silence. If we would have had this audience at this concert, they would have clapped during that and totally ruined the effect.

I hate to rag on people that came to see us perform, but it just really annoyed me.

I'm not much of a clapper. At the beginning and once something is surely over only. Whenever I attend various military events people always seem to want to clap all the goddamn time for no reason. I think one guy started doing it all the time and everyone decided to follow that guy. Now no one wants be be the guy that doesn't clap. So now I openly heckle out of spite. Adulation when you really feel it, not because you want everyone to feel special.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I saw the Radio City Christmas show a couple weeks ago and I had the same thoughts. People kept clapping way to many in times in each number, instead of maybe at the beginning and end of each act. It seemed to mess with the flow of the show.