Coughing up an opinion at classical music concerts

Last week, in the midst of my preview of the Niagara Symphony Masterworks # 3 concert, I touched briefly on the touchy subject of inappropriate applause, simply because too many times I have found the  action to detract from the music being played.

Imagine my surprise when I spied a small entry in The Globe and Mail this week, referencing an article from The Telegraph Online in Britain.  The article quotes a German economist, Professor Andreas Wagner, who says although there is little statistical evidence on the subject, existing research points to a strange increase in coughing at classical music concerts.  The professor says the finding holds true even when the demographic makeup of the average classical concert audience is taken into account.  Basically, findings indicate certain types of music appear to attract more coughs, he says.

Imagine that!  According to Wagner, "It is the more modern pieces of 20th-century classical music; it is the more quiet and slow movements that are interrupted by coughs."  He goes on to say, according to the article, "It is also non-random, in that coughing sometimes appears to occur in sort of avalanches or cascades through the audience."  Exactly.  One starts and others all around follow, perhaps even unawares of it.  They just start coughing when they hear others do it around them.

These findings do not come at a surprise to me at all.  In fact, when I paused and thought about the findings for awhile, I realized I don't often recall hearing a lot of coughing at a popular or jazz music concert.  Are these people simply more engaged with the music, perhaps?  What the findings suggest to me is people start coughing as a result of boredom; lack of interest in the music being played could indeed be a factor.

If modern 20th-century music is the culprit much of the time, well, more traditional audience members not enamoured with the music might find themselves coughing involuntarily even if they don't need to. Who would have guessed?!  But what about the quieter passages and slow movements?  Is it simply a faster-paced work or movement holds our interest that much more, thus making us 'forget' to cough?  Perhaps.  But if so I find that very disheartening.  Can we never listen to a lovely slow movement of any symphony, or example, without also putting up with a cacophony of coughs?  Apparently not.

Orchestras and theatre companies the world over have had to deal with this dilemma for years.  Most live theatre nowadays is prefaced with a friendly reminder to do two things:  turn off your cell-phone and please unwrap any hard candies or cough-drops BEFORE the performance starts.  It rarely works.  I can't count the number of times I have been in an audience where someone, barely thirty seconds in from the start and after just hearing that friendly reminder, finally decides that might be the best time to unwrap that cough drop!

That brings us to the next dilemma:  do you unwrap it fast or slow?  Logic would dictate that anyone finding themselves in need of a candy or cough-drop during the performance should try to choose a noisy passage in the music and quickly unwrap the thing.  But more often than not, they choose the latter option and drag it out, slowly turning the cellophane so as to make it feel the knife in your back is being slowly turned...okay, maybe a bit melodramatic but you get my point.

I remember reading about an orchestra somewhere that decided to have ushers at the doors to the auditorium man big bowls of cough-drops already unwrapped, and you could just take what you needed on your way into the theatre.  Not a bad idea initially, but then the concerns of other people pawing over the candies before you get them, and what do you do with the thing if you don't need it yet  seem to have kept that idea from catching on.

I really don't know what the solution is here.  If indeed the coughing is an involuntary reaction to the music being played, you can't change human nature.  We just do it without even thinking.  So concert-goers the world over will just have to grit their collective teeth and accept it as a fact of life.  Unless, of course, we stop programming quiet movements and 20th-century music entirely...Hmmm, wait a minute, we might be on to something here!

How did baroque-era composers deal with this, do you think?  Or were audiences just more attentive back then?  Mind you, if the patron of the music being played, often of royal stature is nearby, you might have been far too self-conscious to risk his ire by coughing...unless he did too, of course!

Happy listening!

February 3rd, 2013.