What if I don’t love to practice?

Things to include in your program notes for maximum boredom:

• More than a sentence (two, tops) of general biography on the composer.
• Unremarkable facts about the piece’s structure (sonata form! key of F!).
• A blow-by-blow description (first there is a kind of sad theme! it starts out low and soft but then it gets higher and louder!).
• Unfounded judgments about the piece or composer (this is one of the greatest pieces in the repertoire! the composer is truly a genius!).
• Explanation (excuses and/or bragging) about how difficult the piece is to play, or inside baseball about playing technique (this piece goes way up into the third octave! the performer has to use triple-tonguing in this one spot!).
• Show-offy or obscure terminology, especially if it’s not part of your usual vocabulary and there’s a chance you are using it wrong.
• Length greater than a slow reader can get through in the breaks between pieces.

But if you prefer program notes that are less boring, I guess you could try these:

• Stick mostly to biographical information that relates specifically to the piece being performed.
• Stick mostly to language and content that is accessible to someone who is new to this kind of music and nervous that they won’t get it.
• If you must describe the piece to your audience, imagine you are writing program notes for a movie instead. Don’t give away the ending or the celebrity cameos or the plot twist, and don’t give a scene-by-scene breakdown. Give just enough to pique their interest.
• If the piece itself is likely to be challenging or inaccessible to your audience, give them a sense for what is interesting about it. (For example, explain in two or three simple sentences about 12-tone serialism or microtonality or minimalism.)

If you’re a student writing program notes as an assignment, you might have to hit a certain target length, include specific information, cite sources, etc. If you’re a teacher assigning those things, consider that maybe what you really wanted was a book report or a theory paper instead.

Generally, program notes should give an intelligent but not necessarily musically-trained audience a few things to help them enjoy the performance more, without feeling like homework. Be ruthless about trimming away anything that doesn’t contribute to that, and don’t be afraid of brevity.

If I try to play too softly, sometimes my notes don’t respond as I would like. If I try to play too loudly, sometimes my tone or intonation suffer. I have similar limitations when it comes to things like finger or tongue speed, tone color or pitch flexibility, and more.

The way I deal with these limits is very different depending on whether I’m performing or practicing.

If I’m performing, I want to stay just within my limits. I want every note to be predictable and reliable. I want to take advantage of every bit of my dynamic range, but no more. I want to make wise, deliberate, professional-quality choices.

If I’m practicing, I want to explore those limits. Push those limits. Live just beyond those limits. It’s important to do this for couple of reasons. First, if I don’t go past those limits, I won’t know where the limits are for my upcoming performance. Second, if I’m too afraid to go past the limits in the practice room, I’ll never expand them. And if something goes wrong—a note cracks or fails to speak or is out of tune—that’s okay, it’s just practice.

Find your limits, know them well, and, in your practice space, break them.

The question of when to permit applause at a classical music performance has already been discussed to death. In summary, some people believe that you should encourage applause only after a complete work is finished, because:

• It allows the piece to be heard as a unified whole
• It’s respectful to the musicians and/or audience
• It’s current accepted concert etiquette
• The performance might be recorded, streamed, etc. and the applause interferes

But others believe it’s acceptable to let audiences clap between movements, or even during them, because:

• Some classical composers would have expected and even encouraged it
• Holding applause until the end is a relatively recent thing
• Shaming concertgoers for expressing enthusiasm is rude, paints classical music audiences as elitist, and drives potential new attendees away
• You’re allowed to clap, chat, sing along, eat/drink, or whatever at lots of other kinds of concerts

I think neither stance can be fully the “right” one. Perhaps an analogy is helpful:

I could eat dinner at a hamburger joint, or at an innovative Michelin-starred restaurant. These are potentially equally enjoyable and valid dining experiences. At the first place nobody would think it strange if I picked the onions out of my burger, or dipped my fries in some ketchup. At the other restaurant, a waiter might bring me unfamiliar dishes that require some explanation and even instructions in order to experience them as the chef intended.

If I ask the waiter at the casual burger place for instructions on how to eat, I will probably get a strange look. And if I request some ketchup for my avant-garde cuisine, I’ll probably get the same.

Rather than argue over the “correct” way to handle applause at concerts, we should consider what kind of experience we want our audiences (and musicians) to have, and communicate that. It’s okay to encourage people to applaud when they hear something they like. And it’s okay to ask them to remain silent until the end of the program. It’s even okay to ask for silence during one piece, and applause during another.

Audience members may arrive with differing expectations, and nobody wants to feel awkward or annoyed. Help them out. Trust longtime classical music enthusiasts to be open to experiencing music in a less-rigid atmosphere when given permission, and trust your newcomers to be respectful when you explain your expectations in a non-condescending way.

I suggest being clear about your preferred modes of audience feedback, and including these expectations in the printed program and announcing them from the stage at each and every performance. Let’s not put the burden on audiences to somehow know the “correct” way to behave. Let’s use our musical taste and expertise to interpret individual performance situations for them, the same way we select and interpret the repertoire.

[Applause/boos here. Thank you.]