Classical Music, Noisy Listening

Shh! You're in a classical concert - quiet! What has become, in the 20th and 21st centuries, a musical tradition of as-quiet-as-possible, cough-free contemplation and passive disengagement in concert halls was not always that way. In fact, it wasn't ever that way: the way that audiences listen is inscribed in the fabric of music of the last millennium in Western classical music, a spectrum that encompasses everything from silent meditation to explosive applause. In this lecture, we will int...