Dressed to kill the art form

It's sometimes been said that we should serve popcorn at concerts, since no one seems to have a problem with obnoxious coughing at the movies.

But it's largely a psychological thing rather than a matter of illness or genuine need to clear throats. Audiences are so uptight maintaining the requisite silence, even after movements that simply demand applause, that they need to release that tension somehow. I was interested to see recently at a concert where the concertmaster broke a string and changed it between movements how hushed the audience was. You could have heard a pin drop – and it was winter, normally they'd be hacking away. I think it was because there was something to truly absorb their attention.

But the thing that really mystifies me is why people choose to clear their throats (unbidden coughing fits are another matter) right at the quietest moment of the music instead of during a suitably loud and boisterous moment. It's almost as if the rationale is: there's not much to listen to now, so I'll cough. Bizarre.

Great post. As a classical concertgoer in the coveted 35 and under demographic, I resent articles that speculate that young people need a noisy rock concert atmosphere to enjoy any concert. (Note: I also play drums for a really loud heavy metal group so I'm really familiar with both sides.) The last Pittsburgh Symphony concert I attended exhibited many of the bad behaviors you described above and the offenders I saw were not necessarily young people. An example is how my under-30 date had to shush an elderly woman behind us who was wearing approximately twenty gold bracelets and jangled them as she searched through her purse multiple times during a Mozart piano concerto.

One of the greatest virtues of classical music is its wider dynamic range and this means there will be very quiet sections that necessitate almost total audience silence to be appreciated (or at least, not to be distracted and annoyed by one's fellow concertgoers). It's just plain consideration for others that should dictate that conversation, candy-wrapper-crinkling, bracelet jangling, etc. should be avoided during quiet music. Shouldn't that be ageless?

As for dress, I think many young people like the idea of rising for the occasion. Instead of being scared off, students and young professionals are often attracted to the idea of going to something where they'll feel classy and sophisticated. Why not promote that aspect (within reason)? Perhaps it would attract an audience that doesn't feel bored, entitled and more likely to engage in all the inattentive, inconsiderate behaviors you (and Matt) describe.

Thanks for raising these issues!

Hello, Amanda. Hearing about how the "other half lives" gives renewed hope for the future of classical music in South Florida - to my mind the rudest audience in the world: classical, jazz, theter, you name it! This is, I suspect, a nation-wide disease born out of too much potato couch entertainment and a disintegrating state of civility (or lack thereof) all over the map.

Thanks for your blog!

Amanda,
So far you haven't written a word in this blog that didn't make me want to applaud. This is a must-be-said post and I'm glad you've said it. Your rhetorical question about how many people are kept away from classical music because of the imagined (or is that de facto?) dress code is central. Our research with audiences suggests that getting dressed up is considered part of the fun by those who do attend, part of the sense of occasion and festivity. But when we ask those same people why they don't attend more often, they say "Well, you have to get dressed up, it's a big deal" -- a hassle. The question is whether we want classical music to be a special event or an everyday part of people's lives. (Of course, ticket prices answer that question for many people.)

To generalize your point: when it comes to building new audiences, the current audience matters. Just as research about arts consumption among African Americans reveals that many want to see "people who look like me" onstage and in the audience, the newcomer to a symphony concert wants to be able to identify -- without cringing -- with her fellow concertgoers, something that's unlikely for a certain kind of person for the reasons you mention. The trick is that that "kind of person" isn't defined by age, ethnicity, or even education; it's a personality thing (in marketing-speak, a psychographic rather than a demographic issue). There are young people at symphony concerts who don't mind being part of something where people act and dress as you describe, while others roll their eyes and never return. I share your assumption that there are more of the latter than the former.

The key is to understand what question new audiences are asking when they attend a classical concert for the first time: "Is this experience 'me' or not?" There are empirical and aspirational components here: Is it 'me' as I currently, actually am, and is it the 'me' I'd like to think of myself as, or become one day? The answers have something to do with who's onstage and what they're doing, but also something (for certain people, a great deal) to do with who's around you. Do I want to be like these people? Are they admirable, cool, interesting? Are they having fun? Do they feel like a community I could see myself joining?

A friend of mine is a cultured scholar and citizen of the world who has stopped going to classical concerts. He's not young. He knows the repertoire. He can afford the best seats. He's on a first-name basis with many of the trustees of his local (major) orchestra. When I asked why he no longer subscribes, he made a sour face and muttered something darkly about the "scene" one is forced to deal with at the concerts. As a field, we need to look more closely at the elements of that scene and their underlying causes.

By the way, it's not obvious which is the bigger problem: people who crinkle their candy or people who vehemently shush them. Ten years ago I was at an opera in Munich during which a man seated a few rows in front of me had the temerity to open a wrapped candy. Or rather, to start to. The first sounds were hardly audible when a half dozen of our fellow operagoers hissed him into submission. I can still hear the harsh whisper of one of them to the candyman: "Das gibt's nicht hier!" (loosely, "That doesn't fly here!"). I'm just as annoyed by wrapper noise as the next guy, but there's no way I'd want to identify with the self-righteous Reverence Police that attacked him. Complaints about coughing and wrapper noises are the stock-in-trade of conservative critics and audience members. Historically, the real question is why we're expected to be so silent during the music. Those Dark Knight and Radiohead audiences whose behavior you praise had it easy: nobody cared when they rattled their M&Ms or murmured something into their boyfriend's ear in the movie, or sang and danced along with the song. Big difference.

Thanks for commenting! Re: your last point, I actually wouldn't care if people talked/coughed/unwrapped candy at classical music concerts if it was OK (" ") to do that. What I resent is that we lose audiences on both ends: people don't want to come in the first place because they assume they would have to be silent and well-behaved(" "), and then people don't want to come back because audiences aren't well-behaved, in the most basic sense of the term! -AA

Thank you for pointing out this objectionable behavior! I have been an off-and-on subscriber to the CSO here in Chicago for the past 5-6 years, and it always baffles me how 1) the coughing between movements is atrocious at every concert (is the entire audience really about to die?) and 2) how quickly people bolt to leave as soon as the final piece is over.