Klarinet Archive - Posting 000063.txt from 2005/08

From: Wayne Thompson <wthompson222@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Robert Schoen
Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 21:04:32 -0400

Here is another thought about applause at
inappropriate times. I sense that often such applause
is from people unfamiliar with the customs, AND
anxious to do the right thing. In other words, the
music stops, I'm used to clapping when someone
finishes something, so I clap, and then.... whoops,
the music is playing again. When am I supposed to
clap, anyway? What are these movement things?

So, I don't get very perturbed by it. Frankly, when
I'm moved by a piece of music, I want to hear silence
for many seconds, as I slowly bring my conciousness
back to the here and now. So excited applause even in
the appropriate places, interrupts my mood. Oh well.
I'm glad to share the experience with lots of other
people.

And another thought. I like opera. The culture is
somehow different, isn't it? There, the excited
applause as an aria is ending, is, for me, perfect. I
want to join in with the emotion of the singer. Maybe
the difference is that an aria is just a point in the
emotional movement of the story, and as the aria ends
there is a natural place to insert some feedback from
the audience. But a symphony is a smoother
construction, with (except for the breaks between
movements) no internal places to give feedback.

Another deeper conversation might be about the
emotional connection between movements in a Classical
symphony, in a time when applause between movements
was common, and between movements of Romantic or more
modern symphonies. Is it fair to say that later
composers made more connection between movements?

Wayne Thompson

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