THE QUESTION OF APPLAUSE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22402, 24 April 1936, Page 15 (Supplement)

THE QUESTION OF APPLAUSE

CUSTOM OF A CENTURY AGO MODERN SNOBBISHNESS CENSURED In the spring of 1826, a year before his death, the first performance was given of Beethoven's great quartet in B flat, Op. 130, by the faithful Sehuppanzigh and his colleagues. The cornposer, then completely deaf, was not present, but sent his nephew Carl to report to him on the reception of the work. When he heard that the Cavatina had evoked more applause than any of the other movements he did not conceal his displeasure. "The audience," ho said, "cannot have understood a thing about counterpoint, or they would have given their heartiest applause to the final fugue." This finale, as everyone knows, was afterwards published separately as Op. 133, Beethoven having acceded to the appeal of the publisher Artaria to compose a less forbidding finale for the quartet. The point in this incident to which 1 would draw attention, wrote Morin Rosenthal recently is that in those days audiences did not postpone their applause until the very end of a work. The absence of applause at the end of a movement was a sign that it was an utter failure in their eyes. Latterly the custom has established itself of listening in silence until the end of sonata symphony or concerto. The idea seems to be to pay respect to the continuity of the musical thought, and also to show a profound absorption in the composition itself, as distinct from the manner of the performance. It is a custom upon which we should like to hear the opinion of the great masters. Would they indeed have approved of a blank silence at the end of a brilliant Allegro or spirited Scherzo? The Immortals are dead, and they cannot tell us. Or is it possible that they can? Let us attempt to summon them to give evidence, or rather lure them down to us for a moment from high Elysium, where now they make their more than earthly music. The curtain goes up on the past, and we see the old Warsaw of 1830. A young pianist is seated on the platform and plays with witching fingers a pianoforte concerto in E minor. He ceases, and tremendous applause breaks forth. But what happens then? The pianist leaves the platform, and a singer Mademoiselle Constantia Gladkowska, comes forward to perform, she, too,

winning much applause. Then follows a rondo by Hummel, "La Sentinelld," and then Mile. Gladkowska sings again. Finally the young pianist reappears and plays the second and third movements of the concerto, to be rewarded by an ovation from the audience. If such a thing were to happen in present-day London, Paris or Vienna, what would be the result? The earth would surely open and swallow the interrupters. As for the pianist, we may be certain that long and severe would be the lectures read to him on his Philistinism. But who was this pianist, the organiser of this orgy of bad taste? His name is by chance not unknown: he was Fryderyk Chopin, and the concerto was his own composition. What would Beethoven —that more | than mister, that despot of music—have thought of such a crime? What would have been his censorious words if anyone had dared to break the subtle concatenation of his movements with impertinent applause? To this anxious question an answer may be found in a letter which the great man wrote to his pupil and friend Ferdinand Ries on the occasion of his sending him the mighty sonata in B flat, Op. 106. Hero are his own words: " Should the sonata not do well for London 1 could send another; or you could leave out the Largo and begin with the fugue in the last movement, cr the first movement, Adagio, and as the third the Scherzo and the Largo and the Allegro risoluto. I leave this to you to do as you think best." From this letter of the master's it is at least evident that even when the greatest of his piano works was in question he showed small concern for the interdependence of the different movements. Chopin's actual procedure, and Beethoven's own words amount to a sharp censure of the snobbish modern concert-room custom, the effect of which is anything but progressive; for if the public learns from the artist, the artist too has something to learn from the public—who, however, are now forbidden to express themselves and seem on the way to becoming as mute as the Sphinx.