I took my ancient mom to one of those Candlelight things, it was Vivaldi. The Four Seasons. The people who attended just clapped whenever they got excited and talked to each other during the music like they were at home on their couch. The performers knew they'd have to wait for applause after any kind of crescendo or any extended pause and one of them just continuously rolled his eyes at the other ones when this would happen.

Mom loves her souvenir candles. You can buy a three pack for about twenty dollars after the show: same diameter, short, medium and tall. She'll turn them on and put them where she can see. The white plastic flames are suspended through their balance point with a bit of stiff wire, the heat coming up from the LEDs beneath them is just enough to keep them aflutter. She doesn't remember the performance at all.

>>25632656
>The people who attended just clapped whenever they got excited and talked to each other during the music like they were at home on their couch.
How horrifying.

>>25632656
Apparently some of the worst offenders in this regard were the crowds at Grand Opera in France & Italy in the nineteenth century.

Italians would all go on and on about the glory of Puccini & Verdi & so on, but in practice, all these massive expensive productions were just an excuse for rich fashionable people to turn up and be rich and fashionable and jabber to one other.

There were some celebrity singers who were basically like footballers today. The crowd would cheer wildly when one of these sang an aria, and then just go back to chatting so you couldn't hear anything going on on stage.


Possibly it's not just the nineteenth century either. I remember reading a very funny anecdote in an essay by (IIRC) Anthony Burgess (who was a composer and actually liked music). He visited the opera in Milan or Rome or somewhere and got so enraged at the behaviour of the audience that he stood up and shouted at them.

Then after the performance, one of the singers sought him out and sympathized with him. She said, basically, "yeah, it is absurd the way they behave, but they pay our wages, so whatever".

>>25633034
That's great information. I heard from someone that in those days, with what you said about the arias, sometimes the crowd would ask for a repeat/encore of the aria, even multiple times lol.

btw, for the curious, this is the piece referred to in the story, Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, "Funeral March"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoPPpe6ikKE

as you can see, there's a sneaky ninety-second finale/fourth movement after the famous funeral march third movement, the one the character in the story, Mr. Mahoney, clapped after

>>25633052
Thank you for the link.

I've done a Mr Mahoney once, sort of, as when I did it the rest of the audience did as well. The classical music attendees in that city were pretty good, actually. I can't remember the piece right now but the conductor had a little joke ready to go for after the intermission about how that often happens with that piece. There is a mild feeling that it isn't over but there is a noticeable build up and then a good chunk of quiet so it's natural for the audience to fuck it it, and honestly barely counts. I also avoid listening to a piece if I haven't heard it before if I know I'll be seeing it live as the first live listen being novel is kind of a rarity.

The conductor / music director there was good and the programming was very good. The place I'm in now basically all they can do is play the hits and pray people show up. Which I sometimes do, but I'm not going to pay for a seat and then sit through fucking Rhapsody in Blue. Heard that shit more than enough.

>>25633034
It's more forgivable if everyone is doing it and it's also very Italian to be noisy and annoying and a bad patron but still genuinely interested in the arts. I've also seen people argue before that the current standard of staying quiet for the duration of the piece is not supported historically but I do think it's a better approach. Some works don't really suffer from random applause between movements or whatever but some of them completely get shitted up by it, and it helps encourage a moment or two of delicious silence at the end of movements that trickle away quietly into near nothingness that would never exist if the staying quiet standard wasn't a thing.

There's a trend for women to bring their knitting hobby shit to classical music performances. It's the same "oh you see I'm autistic so that just gives me license to be rude and everyone else had to grin and bear it" bullshit, of course. They don't make clicky clacky noises or anything but I still find it incredibly rude to show up, have 30 or so musicians who all prepared for the show on stage for you, and then make such a display of inattention right at them. Pay attention, silently, and visibly. That's your part to play. If you aren't willing to put in that effort honest the musicians shouldn't be expected to give 100% on their end, and that's the mechanism by which your fucking knitting is also you shitting on your fellow audience members as well. Almost every orchestra has a couple shows a year for kids and families these days, if you want to be visibly inattentive or be able to lean over and make little comments to you fat tick of a wife now and then go to those and only to those.

>>25633308
Shoot, I thought seeing women knitting on the bus was weird enough. At a classical concert, I wouldn't be able to take it.

>>25633446
Had one bitch do it for a viola de d'amore focused chamber performance. I hope she got cancer in her fucking hands and they cut them off.

>>25632624
I have the Leatherstocking tales and Raymond Chandler collections from that press. I absolutely despise the book jackets and tear them off as soon as I can, the canvas(?) underneath makes for a texture that's orders of magnitude better to hold.