In the apparent constant need by concert promoters, venues and others to attract “younger audiences” to classical concerts and to make them more “inclusive”, it seems to me that the artform’s core audience is being overlooked or even alienated.

The latest suggestion to “trendify” classical music and make concerts more appealing to that elusive younger audience is posited in an episode of BBC Radio 3’s The Listening Service, presented by the affable Tom Service. In it he suggests that audiences should be more vocal; that they should chill, let it all hang out, and behave more akin to their rowdier 18th- and 19th- century concert-going predecessors, or be more like audiences at jazz or even pop gigs where a great improv sequence or a particularly juicy number is met with applause, whistling and more. In short, he wants us whooping in the stalls (the inference here being that silence is terribly elitist and all this listening quietly makes classical music hugely inaccessible and exclusive; nevermind that the same etiquette applies to theatre performances….).

When, 3 minutes into the Tristan prelude you next see me leap to my feet yelling “Whoo! F**king NAILED that cor anglais solo!” you must accept that this is precisely what Wagner would have expected and wanted…

– Richard Bratby on Twitter

For many of us, the chief attraction of classical music concerts, apart from the music itself, of course, is the opportunity to escape into quiet introversion for a few hours. There is also the ‘social code’ of the classical concert: knowing when to keep quiet for the benefit of other people, including the performers. We’ve all been to concerts which have been marred by people whispering loudly, opening blister packs of cough sweets, or – horror of horrors! – a mobile phone going off. I was at a recital of Scriabin piano music at Wigmore Hall some years ago where a couple a few rows ahead of me snogged loudly throughout the performance, and were reprimanded with a sharp rap on the shoulders with a rolled up programme by the person immediately behind them. And quite right too! They should have got a room, not seats at WH!

Joking apart, and at the risk of coming over all communist about it, it’s really a simple case of accommodating the many not the few: because even a small interruption can spoil the experience for the majority. It’s also a basic common courtesy to one’s fellow concert-goers.

And, curious as this may seem in our noisy, extrovert modern times, classical music audiences actually like to listen in silence so that they can enjoy and appreciate the music being performed.

So let’s let classical audiences remain quiet. We show our appreciation in other ways – by applauding, cheering and bravo-ing at the end of the performance, and while these behaviours may seem antiquated, or even elitist (they’re not!) to some, to the regular concert-goer this is what comes out of silence.

Just like the music.

A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.

– Leopold Stokowski, May 1967