Concert Etiquette
The previous experience of Mrs. Cowper attending a rehearsal and concert at the rival Durham series leads us seamlessly into a discussion of standard 18th-century concert etiquette. In the previous letter from Mr. Cowper, there is an audience member clearly requesting a certain composer, but not getting his wish. As we will see below, the experience of audience requesting to hear certain music was not uncommon, an approach I believe would engage the audience in a much different way than our carefully programmed concerts today. To begin our discussion of concert etiquette, we visit the opera.
As outlined earlier, the opera was quite a full social experience and a necessary space to occupy if one was to have any sort of social standing. Since operas ran for quite some time, it was typical for audience members to attend multiple nights of the same opera1. Since they would be seeing the same show many times, this meant that they didn’t necessarily stay through the entire thing in any given night. It was customary to see the first act of one opera and then leave to go see another part of a different opera, concert, or play. Audiences could see many theatres in one night. Since people were coming and going throughout the evening, and would be sitting in boxes all over the theater, it was not considered important to sit and listen attentively throughout the entire thing. It was a social experience, which meant that audiences would get up and walk around, chat with their friends, eat, drink, and play cards. While this may seem to our 21st-century minds as if this meant that the audience was there purely for social reasons and that they didn’t care about what was happening onstage, this does not seem to be true. There were times in which the entire audience would be silent, listening to a particular singer or aria and the rest of the time, there was still awareness of what was happening onstage.2
However, just because it was usual to be talking and moving around throughout concerts, especially the opera, it didn’t mean that everyone thought this was a good thing. The Public Advertiser wrote about the private musical happenings of the Prince of Wales, a devoted musician and music enthusiast, saying, “The Prince’s morning parties are chiefly devoted to the quartettos of Haydn, Pleyel, Stamitz, and the charming trios of Schroeter” and the Morning Herald explicitly stated that, “The Prince’s musical parties are now generally in the morning, but without company – He is too great an amateur to suffer the buzz of conversation to interrupt the harmony of his concerts.”3 Fanny Burney, the daughter of the famous Charles Burney, writes more than once in her letters about audiences being noisy, saying, “
We have been to the opera, and I am still more pleased than I was on Tuesday. I could have thought myself in Paradise, but for the continual talking of the company around me. We sat in the pit, where every body was dressed in so high a style, that if I had been less delighted with the performance, my eyes would have found me sufficient entertainment from looking at the ladies.4
And later,
There was an exceeding good concert, but too much talking to hear it well. Indeed I am quite astonished to find how little music is attended to in silence; for, though every body seems to admire, hardly any body listens.5
While we can see that it was quite typical to have conversation and ambient noise throughout concerts, it was already a topic of contention between the some of the music enthusiasts, such as the Prince or Fanny, and the more general audience.
Because people were coming and going throughout the opera, often to attend other performances throughout the evening, it was not considered strange or rude to arrive quite late to a concert. From Mrs. Papendiek’s review of the concert conducted by Haydn, we see that they were hoping to have a full attendance by the second act, but even then the subscription wasn’t full and they still hoped more audience members would come throughout the rest of the show. With so many people arriving late to concerts, there was a desire to save the best for last, in terms of programming. The pieces by the most famous composers or the most anticipated piece was often programmed last so as to ensure the greatest number of audience members.
Another difference in the format of concerts was the overabundance of encores, at any point in a performance, called for by the audience when they particularly enjoyed a piece. Making encores of specific movements, especially slow ones, was a newly developed phenomenon in London in the later 18th century, but audiences took to it eagerly. This meant that the length of a concert was greatly varied, and it was not uncommon to have it last three hours. The press reported after a highly-anticipated concert that,
The long delayed Concert, undertaken this year by Mr. Salomon, took place last night, and was attended by a numerous and very elegant audience. A musical treat, under the immediate direction of the great Haydn, promised the connoisseurs an exquisite repast, and they were not disappointed…A new grand overture by Haydn, was received with the highest applause, and universally deemed a composition as pleasing as scientific. The audience was so enraptured, that by unanimous desire, the second movement was encored, and the third was vehemently demanded a second time also, but the modesty of the Composer prevailed too strongly to admit a repetition… 6
And Haydn himself wrote about an experience he had attending a performance at Covent-garden, saying,
The Theatre [Covent-garden] is very dark and dirty, and is almost as large as the Vienna Court Theatre. The common people in the galleries of all the theatres are very impertinent; they set the fashion with all their unrestrained impetuosity, and whether something is repeated or not is determined by their yells. The parterre and all the boxes sometimes have to applaud a great deal to have something good repeated. That was just what happened this evening, with the Duet in the 3rd Act, which was very beautiful; and the pro’s and contra’s went on for nearly a quarter of an hour, till finally the parterre and the boxes won, and they repeated the Duet. Both the performers stood on the stage quite terrified, first retiring, then again coming forward.7
Understandably, the demands for encores of a piece or a movement also functioned as a way to gauge how successful the performance was. In a review of a concert in which the famous German-born soprano Gertrude Elisabeth Mara sang, there is specific mention of the request of multiple songs to be repeated, saying, “Mara and her Third Concert, last Thursday, were reciprocally climacterical[sic]; applause and admiration triumphed, even after the transport of harmony had subsided; both her Songs, of the best selection, from Passiello and Sacchini, were sung, as to be wished for again and again.”8 It is also interesting to note that later in the review, there is a mention that more of the audience were non-subscribers than subscribers and that they purchased tickets at the door.
In this way, we can see that the audience actually had much more of an active role in how much they heard of particular pieces and were not shy about voicing their opinions. It shows us that not only were audiences applauding between movements, but also that they were not opposed to hearing certain movements more than once in a row, calling for getting to know a piece of music more intimately or at least wanting a chance to hear it again. The musicians, to some degree at least, were willing to indulge in the audience’s wishes to hear movements multiple times. The audience as a whole was part of the decision of the duration of a concert, depending on the number of encores.
Accounts of Madame Mara’s concerts give us numerous clues into performance situations of the time. It seems as if there were quite a few challenges during Mara’s benefit concert. The Morning Herald gives the review that, “Young Meyer gave a charming Harp Concerto of Krumpholtz, with admirable skill, though under evident embarrassment from diffidence, and the vexation arising from the breaking of several strings.”9 All of us who play on gut strings can relate to this experience of the embarrassment and frustration of strings breaking at unfortunate times, but the more consequential of the surprises came later. “The other accidents of the evening, were the fall of an infirm sopha, and the consequent prostration of some venerable beaux, and the lodgment of a whole cupful of hot tea down the neck of Mara, by the sudden movement of some awkward arm.”10
What a surprise that must have been! Burning the main soprano, for whom the benefit concert was given, is never good. However, this account gives us some valuable information. Firstly, it shows that the audience was at least drinking, if not also eating, throughout the concert itself. Secondly, there was movement enough that tea could be knocked and spilled. Finally, and most importantly, it tells us that at least at this concert, the audience was close enough to the performers that the tea could be spilled down the neck of the singer. This is assuming that this account happened during the concert itself, which seems likely, but is not verifiable. However, even if this happened not during the concert itself, the notes above still apply. It was a close and intimate environment with people moving around, eating and drinking, and it was a notable enough to be written up in the newspaper.
Another calamity in a concert happened while Haydn was conducting a new symphony in King’s Theatre in London. His biographer Albert Christoph Dies gives this account of the concert:
When Haydn appeared in the orchestra and seated himself at the Pianoforte, to conduct a symphony personally, the curious audience in the parterre left their seats and pressed forward towards the orchestra, with a view to seeing Haydn better at close range. The seats in the middle of the parterre were therefore empty, and no sooner were they empty but a great chandelier plunged down, smashed, and threw the numerous company into great confusion…many persons showed their state of mind by shouting loudly: “miracle! miracle!” Haydn himself was much moved, and thanked merciful Providence who had allowed it to happen that he could, to a certain extent, be the reason, or the machine, by which at least thirty persons’ lives were saved. Only a few of the audience received minor bruises.11
Both Dies and Haydn are known for their exaggeration12, so while this account may not be true, it still gives us valuable information about what seemed plausible at the time. We can see from this that if audiences were excited, and especially if they were excited and could not see the stage very well, they would not continue to sit in their seats, but get up and move so that they could get a better view.
Most of the pieces of information we have read about people speaking during a concert have been the audience, but Haydn himself in his first London notebook gives a short anecdote about musicians speaking to each other informally onstage.
Just as the director of a grand concert was about to begin the first number, the kettledrummer called loudly to him and said he should wait a moment, since his 2 kettledrums were not yet tuned. The leader could and would not wait any longer, and said he should transpose in the meantime.13
This little anecdote gives us an idea about how comfortable musicians could be about calling to each other while onstage and not being afraid to express issues that they felt needed to be addressed. It also shows us that some musicians were tired of tuning onstage taking too much time, which is a point of discussion today as well.
I have so far yet to come across any mention of musicians speaking to their audience, which does not mean this did not happen, but William Parke, an oboist who published a book of his musical memoirs, writes about the Prince of Wales speaking to other noblemen while he and Parke were playing together.
I frequently afterwards attended the concerts of the Prince of Wales, in one of which I played a concerted piece for the oboe, composed by Haydn, and was honoured with the distinguishing approbation of His Royal Highness, who, whilst playing the violoncello, called two foreign noblemen to him to listen, and repeatedly exclaimed ‘Bravi! – the finest tone in the world!’14
It may be that the forwardness with which the Prince spoke while he was playing was because he was indeed a Prince, however the story is a sweet one nonetheless and gives us another small window into the concert experience of the time.
