Sasha Valeri Millwood, composer, pianist and violinist
The recent incident in Kyung Wha Chung’s recital has brought concert etiquette back into the limelight. While it is unusual for a performer to complain directly from the stage, the cause for complaint is, sadly, all too common: persistent and unstifled coughing misappropriating what should have been only a brief pause between movements.
Classical music is a fragile listening experience: most of the widely used instruments are not electronically amplified; and most of the repertoire – from Gabrieli’s Sonata pian e forte to Cage’s 4’33” – relies in part on the effect of quiet volumes and silence, an effect that is severely inhibited by extraneous noise and distraction. The formal concert setting ought to be a place where both audiences and performers can access the requisite focus to experience what the music has to offer.
Like most communal situations, concerts require people to be considerate of each other. Coughing, as well as being sure to spread infection, is noisy and distracting, even when confined to the break between movements (although once instigated, the barrage of coughing rarely desists until several seconds into the following movement). Part of the moral contract of living in a society is to accept that you must sometimes act to your own detriment, in order to safeguard the greater good of others. This means that if you know that you are unlikely to be able to prevent yourself from coughing during a concert, then you should not attend.
Fiona Maddocks, the Observer’s classical music critic
The nub lies in your final sentence: is your cough controllable or not? For most regular concertgoers, sensitive to their neighbours and to the performers, the answer is “I don’t know. But I’ll try.” Very few coughs, even at this time of year, fall into the medically diagnosable, impossible-to-suppress-and-full-of-germs category. If they do, the sufferer probably doesn’t want to leave the house anyway.
Apparently most of us cough at least a couple of times an hour for another reason: to clear irritants or allergens from the airways (smog, smoke, dust or other allergens). Mostly we have no idea when we enter a concert hall that we might end up in bronchial paroxysms with tears rolling down our face as we struggle to contain a tickle. Attending two or three concerts a week, – if I didn’t I would not be able to do my job - I have thought about this a good deal. I’ve trained myself to control most bodily urges (true!) for the duration. Often an unexpected outburst occurs because I’m concentrating, and forget to swallow.
Last week was an example. Just as the Brodsky Quartet were playing the most hushed, eerie harmonics in a Panufnik quartet, I felt that terrible tightening of the muscles in the diaphragm as it pressed against my lungs. Any second now, I knew the glottis would open explosively at “speeds greater than 100 miles (160 km) per hour” (I have borrowed this somewhat technical definition from a medical dictionary). I sucked and swallowed and stuffed a scarf into my mouth and wiped my tears. But still a strangulated explosion occurred. I spent the rest of the concert fearing another outburst, willing myself, reciting mantras. That effort wasn’t enjoyable, but the noise itself only lasted a few seconds. “Look after that cough,” my friend said at the end. “Cough? What cough? I’m fine. It was just the dry air,” I replied. Next morning I had no voice and have been coughing ever since. You cannot rule against the quiddities of the body.
SVM Of course, it is inevitable that we will not always be able to predict with complete accuracy an occurrence of coughing. The problem is that, compared with your personal account of combating an unexpected cough at last week’s Brodsky concert, many people are not so conscientious in trying to prevent the occurrence and in stifling the sound when it does occur. As such, I think the issue is primarily a social, not a biological one.
I am not convinced that all the people who cough in the break between movements really need to do so; rather, I suspect that the psychological effect of hearing others cough may well have something to do with it. This is a matter of etiquette that can and should be addressed. As you intimated, there are strategies that one can use to prevent or minimise coughing in the first place – mine is to discreetly clear my throat (not cough) during the applause as the performers come on stage.
As you say, most people with an “impossible-to-suppress-and-full-of-germs category” of cough would probably stay at home anyway. However, in a large venue, it is, statistically speaking, highly likely that a small number of people with such a persistent cough would be in the audience, so it is important to reiterate the social taboo of coughing in concerts, and the advice not to attend if you know that you have a persistent cough.
FM I like the European venues which have huge tubs of help-yourself delicious boiled sweets at the entrance, wrapped in a kind of waxed paper, which is easy to unwrap silently – not like those foil-packed lozenges people favour here, which take ages to open and are noisier than a bag of crisps being eaten. These give-away sweets – no one is shy of filling their pockets with them - are a way of acknowledging that coughing is part of life, and a tacit invitation to do something to minimise it. The BBC tried doing the same for a while at live broadcasts, but presumably the licence fee couldn’t cope with the greedily enthusiastic demand.
Lazy coughing and needless throat-clearing are another matter. There was plenty in the Kyung Wha Chung concert at that first break between movements in the Mozart Sonata when the violinist showed her displeasure. But the audience was unusually young, with several school groups and older children with parents. You can hope that a teacher or adult will explain concert etiquette, but each first-time concertgoer has to learn it anew. The same rules apply to not jangling bracelets, tapping feet, retrieving items from the bottom of plastic bags, dropping bottles, flicking through programmes, fanning yourself, nudging, giggling, whispering, kissing. And let’s not mention what you may or may not do with your mobile phone…
SVM I agree that providing free boiled sweets that can be silently unwrapped would be a good idea – the cost would be eminently justifiable if it discernibly reduced coughing, and did not encourage those with unavoidable coughs to try their luck in the auditorium. However, I am less convinced that the youth of an audience-member should be anything more than an incidental mitigation. Parents and those acting in loco parentis must take responsibility for the behaviour of their charges in public, including issues of fidgeting and coughing. If the behaviour started to cause a nuisance to others (whether intentional or not), a responsible adult should make a discreet exit with the child (having warned the child in advance that this could happen): the fact that a performer had to comment before this happened suggests that the parent was not taking effective action to control the child’s behaviour.
FM Were you there? The performer did not “have to comment”, but chose to. Her irritation about the coughing – really not so bad; it just became momentarily silly and over extended – was already evident. The poor child was a last straw. For many of us, this whole episode cast a pall on the entire concert. My neighbour had her head in her hands, with agony and embarrassment, throughout. As for controlling a child in public, if you can offer a fail-safe solution, it will be more valuable than the elixir of life itself.
SVM I was not at the concert in question, but I have read dozens of comments from people who were: some claimed not to have noticed anything, while some said that the child had been very distracting for a substantial period of time. For the latter group (many of whom were seated in close proximity to the offender), the intervention will have probably come as a welcome relief. Performers are not obliged to intervene, but they are in a far stronger position to do so than fellow audience members (have you ever tried to stop someone texting?).
FM Yes, I leaned over and asked meekly – I am none too bold – and they stopped. Harder if the person is not within immediate reach. Going back to coughing, are we to ban those with chronic chest problems, asthmatics, hay fever sufferers, the highly or unexpectedly allergic? How would you police it? Would money be refunded? Better to tackle attitudes. Or to place a higher value on tolerance. If the coughers stay away, the coffers of our concerts halls will be empty.
