How to Get an Audience to Pipe Down

It is a sorry sign of our uncivil times that symphony performances are constantly punctuated by audience noise. A veritable orchestra-full of instruments are employed by the rude: rustling papers, jangling bracelets, wristwatch alarms, and the bane of all concert artists-coughing. Here are some methods that have proven effective on the great triumvirate of audience vulgarity, including coughing, talking, and cell phones.

Coughing

New Yorkers and Chicagoans have long been notoriously bad audiences, but even sedate Londoners now feel the need to wheeze. Coughing at concerts has gotten so bad in recent years that conductors have tried all sorts of things. Pre-performance lectures, free cough drops, icy stares from the podium, and long pauses between movements to allow the infirmed to whoop away have all been employed to little effect. It is clearly time for some new approaches.

Kurt Masur, the former music director of the New York Philharmonic, recently came up with a solution that worked. During the serene third movement of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, the hacking got so bad that the maestro simply stopped the orchestra and walked offstage-to applause from the audience. He returned two minutes later to finish the symphony... without interruption.

Probably the most elegant solution ever devised was by the great composer and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff, in 1931. He played his Corelli Variations in accordance with the politeness of his audience. When the coughing increased, he skipped to the next variation. At one concert the coughing was so bad Rachmaninoff played only 10 of the 20 variations. His all-time record was 18, set in (of all places) New York.

Talking

Chin-wagging during performances appears to have gotten worse recently, but is really a very old problem. If so inclined, conductors can easily dispatch the problem with a stern message from the podium. Over 100 years ago, Theodore Thomas, the founder of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, chastised a Washington, D.C. audience for talking, saying, "I shall stop if you do not. We do not play music as an accompaniment for people to talk to." While performing one of his pieces, 19th-century composer Franz Liszt curtly stopped playing after noticing his patron, Emperor Alexander of Russia was talking. "When the King speaks, everyone else should be silent," Liszt explained.

Cell phones

Cell phones have become the bane of concert performers everywhere. Some halls insist that people check their phones and pagers at the door, but many patrons ignore the request, leading to the jarring cell phone obligato. Recently performers have begun to strike back in an effort to embarrass the scofflaws. After an abashed audience member let a cell phone keep ringing during a performance of The Scarlet Pimpernel in New York, actor Douglas Sills turned towards the phone's owner and asked, "Don't you think it's probably for you?"1

Violence also works. At a theater performance in St. Louis, audience members used their programs to whomp a woman in front of them whose cell phone had gone off. John Corcoran, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, sarcastically suggested a system called THUGS, short for Telephonic Harmony Ushers Guaranteeing Security: "When a cellular phone or beeper goes off, the THUGS politely and unobtrusively fling the offending lout from the concert hall for a complimentary thrashing outside."2 Canada had the best solution of all-jamming. In 2001, Industry Canada seriously considered allowing private companies to put up jamming umbrellas around their properties to create cell-phone-free zones. It concluded, however, that jammers could potentially interfere with emergency communications, so the move was rejected. In 1999, the United States Federal Communications Commission killed a similar proposal and appears unlikely to consider it. Mark our words, though, the day will come...

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Golan Levin, a composer and software engineer with a master's from M.I.T., recently premiered his original composition "Dialtones: A Telesymphony," in which 200 cell phones held by audience members chime at predetermined moments, with a crescendo ending of 60 phones ringing at once.