German audiences (WAS site specific looping)

[Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>]

Mark said:
"Is this normal, directed at the german LDer,s Rainer etc?

I think manly it because germans really listen, and listen hard (I
think Stockhausen said this at a lecture I attended - is he German? I
think so.. that the rest of Europe has to learn to listen!!!) and as
such, maybe they are more absorbed, and it takes some time to snap out
of it?"

So, here's my theory of it:
First of all, I just claim that people who listen to the odd stuff a
lot of us do (including Nadja and you ;) do often have a background in
classical (including contemporary classical) music.

The accepted behaviour for classical concert audiences (mainly ever
since the Romantic era - see below) is not to interfere with the
performance as long as it lasts and save the applause for after the
piece (for works with multiple movements, until after the whole
performance has been finished). And as there are works which work with
extended pauses, the safe bet for the audience is to wait until the
performer clearly shows that he is done.

[note: behaviour in classical music events hasn't always been like
that. Especially during the Wiener Klassik era (CPE Bach, Mozart,
Haydn), a lot of performances happened by the ensemble of a wealthy
peers to accompany their dinner or garden parties. This did only
change when performances were moved more into a public context, and it
also took composers as prolific and self-assured as Beethoven to keep
people from loudly talking or walking around during a performance. As
another note, Richard Wagner was the guy who, against great resistance
from the opera audiences at that time, would include the rules that
the lights in the audience were turned off during the actual
performance and talking was prohibited.
This mode of enjoying music performance has more or less remained
constant since then in the classical realm - except from occasional
fisticuffs and punchfests like at the premiere of Berg's "Zwölf kleine
Orchesterstücke", or Strawinsky knocking out Debussy at the premiere
of "Le Sacre du Printemps".]

So simply, even if you're working with chainsaws or whatever, as long
as it's understood it's "neither rock nor jazz", audiences in Germany
will behave like this. You all be the judge if that is good or bad -
but at least, it allows us to use a huge dynamic range, include
drawn-out periods of silence etc.

Yours,

           Rainer