Frederik Hanssen’s column “The classic”: Oh cruel, spontaneous applause!

Cultural politicians who have no idea about classical music (unfortunately most of them) like to demand that the audience must become “more diverse, more colorful and younger in this area” (Claudia Roth). If these representatives were visited concerts and opera houses, they could convince themselves that this has long been the case.

How do you recognize this? On the one hand, the dress code, formerly an unmistakable distinction feature, is completely abolished today. And on the other hand, there is the spontaneous applause between the sentences of a symphony or a soloist concert. Both bring conservative classic fans to the palm, but I am now even happy about it: Because this shows that the audience is alive and not frozen in an awareness.

Enthusiasm, the train breaks

Even a hundred years ago, it was absolutely common to express his opinion about the works in between, be it as a protest (whistling on keys, laughing cock, doors) as well as in an approving form.

In the opera, it is still cheered for particularly successful arias, in jazz enthusiasm gives up after every improvisation. In the concert hall, on the other hand, premature applause was actually only experienced according to the third set of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” and in the final of Haydn’s 90th Symphony – and in both cases it is the composers themselves who provoke this reaction.

In the meantime, however, after a sentence end of the auditorium, applause often gives up. Because many in the hall do not know the unwritten law that an audience reaction only has to take place at the very end. What is also on the fact that even the cultural waves of the state radio stations almost only play a snack. And in the large streaming services, symphonies basically consist of several “songs”.

“The rule of goodness is considered that it sometimes tolerates an exception,” says Wagner’s “master singer”. When music plays live that grabs people so that they listen to their breathless and then have the need to give their joy immediately – then I think they should do it. Without harvesting glimpse from the connoisseurs.