"I have been trying to find out exactly when listeners and performers decided that applause between movements would not be allowed, but nobody seems to have been willing to admit that they were the culprit"
About this Quote
Classical music has always loved a rule it can pretend was carved into marble, and Emanuel Ax skewers that habit with the gentlest knife. His line isn’t really about applause; it’s about how a living art form gets embalmed by etiquette, then insists the embalming is “tradition.” The joke lands because he frames the ban on between-movement applause as a whodunit with no suspect: everyone participates, no one claims authorship. That’s social policing in miniature - a norm enforced by shared anxiety rather than a clear decree.
Ax’s intent is quietly insurgent. As a performer who lives inside the concert ritual, he knows how the room can turn brittle: audiences trained to fear being “that person,” musicians pressured to treat spontaneous response like a mistake, not a compliment. The subtext is that this code serves insiders more than music. Silence becomes a credential. Knowing when not to clap becomes a way of proving you belong.
Context matters: between-movement applause was common in the 18th and 19th centuries; the modern hush hardens in the 20th, alongside the rise of the “work” as sacred object and the concert hall as quasi-temple. Ax’s phrasing - “would not be allowed” - mocks the authoritarian vibe of what’s supposedly polite.
The brilliance is how he re-centers the audience as participants, not museum visitors. He’s asking who benefits from a culture where joy has to wait for permission, and why we keep mistaking restraint for reverence.
Ax’s intent is quietly insurgent. As a performer who lives inside the concert ritual, he knows how the room can turn brittle: audiences trained to fear being “that person,” musicians pressured to treat spontaneous response like a mistake, not a compliment. The subtext is that this code serves insiders more than music. Silence becomes a credential. Knowing when not to clap becomes a way of proving you belong.
Context matters: between-movement applause was common in the 18th and 19th centuries; the modern hush hardens in the 20th, alongside the rise of the “work” as sacred object and the concert hall as quasi-temple. Ax’s phrasing - “would not be allowed” - mocks the authoritarian vibe of what’s supposedly polite.
The brilliance is how he re-centers the audience as participants, not museum visitors. He’s asking who benefits from a culture where joy has to wait for permission, and why we keep mistaking restraint for reverence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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