The Beauty of Sounds
Q: Do you often listen to concerts?
A: Very often. Whenever I can. A concert is the joy of my evenings.
Q: And you don’t even choose?
A: Oh yes, I do. I browse the programme well in advance, pick the ones I like, and put them down in my diary. During the day I prepare my soul, I often have a conversation with the trees about where I go and who I will listen to.
Q: With the trees? Are you joking?
A: No, I am not joking. Before important events I go to the forest, walk around, hum a tune. If I am silent, one of the trees will accost me. Not all of them, one of them.
Q: Do you talk with words: Aloud?
A: No, this is a different kind of speech. I walk close to the tree and touch its trunk. I listen to it, and then we talk.
Q: In the winter too?
A: Sure. In the forest there is no such things as bad weather. It is beautiful in the fog, too. In the wind its sounds are fabulous. They calm me down, prepare me to receive the evening sounds, the messages of sounds composed into a musical piece.
Q: Do you receive messages in every concert?
A: Unfortunately not. Often I only listen to works, possibly carefully and precisely performed works.
Q: Then?
A: I listen to them in an orderly way.
Q: Do you clap your hands?
A: I pretend that I am clapping my hands. I stroke my palms I hate the sound of clapping.
Q: Why? People always clap at the end of concerts, don’t they?
A: They do, they clap their hands. They don’t realize that clapping your hands together is an ugly noise. It is certainly distressing after musical sounds.
Q: But performers expect their reward, some feedback about whether the audience liked the music?
A: I have been constantly thinking about how this noise, which hits all beautiful sounds on the head, might be avoided. Not a long time ago, in Texas, first communicant children were applauded one by one in the church as their names were read out loud. Such applause or clapping is the conventional sign of success and approval.
Q: Have you found a better way?
A: There has not been clapping in my classes for twenty years now. We all greet those who have brought, danced, painted, sung or told something beautiful. We go near them, hold their hands, stroke their hair, smile at them, express our sympathy and pleasure with our faces. Sincere emotions may be expressed in many ways, even without words.
Q: Could you do something like this in the concert hall of the Academy of Music?
A: No. But I have found out that one could wave kerchiefs. Let’s say you get nice, light colourful kerchiefs with the tickets you have bought. We would stand up to celebrate, the whole audience, and we would wave our kerchiefs. There is no noise of clapping, only the delicate swishing. What a sight that would be! From the stage especially, since our message would be directed towards those standing and bowing there.
Q: It is a strange idea. People would laugh at you. Aren’t you afraid of that?
A: Great people have accepted many of my unusual ideas in my long life. In one of our most beautiful films my pupils are dancing to Bach’s music, Hungarians as well as Italians, under the mosaics of the San Vitale church in Ravenna, and on the shore of the Adriatic in the sand. They dance to the greatest and noblest music to which nobody has imagined movement before. People all over the world watch this film with enchantment.
Q: Most of the people love to clap: they put their enthusiasm into it.
A: Well, yes, sitting attentively in silence might wear people, it is good to move your hands afterwards, to make some noise. We have got used to it and it has become natural. But what we have got used to is not always the best. Andreas Schiff in his beautiful book talks bitterly about the noise of clapping after the final notes, and he even makes a list of those pieces after which he would like some silence. What he really dislikes, however, is the frenetic applause. It is what we call “iron-clap” in Hungarian. It reminds him of the stormy applauses with which people used to clap Rákosi or Stalin. Do we have to do this? Who told us to do it? Just because it is a custom?
Q: In the Met, every aria receives applause.
A: It is horrible. That is why I don’t listen to the broadcast, even though I often miss excellent music. Opera for me is a story, it has a process, its parts follow from one another. If people start to applaud after Tosca’s prayer, the story is broken for me, and I cannot believe anymore that this wonderful woman loves her lover from her heart. What occurs to me is that the singer needs immediate applause because perhaps she is not completely sure of the beauty of her voice or her singing technique. Or, God forbid, she might be competing with another singer: who gets the greater applause.
Q: Well, they applaud arias in the Hungarian Opera, too. Haven’t you heard that?
A: Oh yes, I did, when I was listening to the broadcast of Don Giovanni on the radio. Should we expect such things in our musical life? We should object this before it becomes widespread.
Q: How should we object?
A: We should ask people what they think about this. Those who find it important to clap should explain why they think it is important. Those who expect their performance to be greeted by applause should say so. It may as well happen that it is not equally important for everyone. There may be people who find joy in making music and would receive other kinds of signs of approval from the audience. There is a need for such signs, but there is no need of noise. Can’t people feel that the sound clapping is of a different quality than the musical sounds? If I sprinkle a cake with sand instead of refined sugar the cake will be inedible, or at least hard for one’s teeth.
Q: Would it be possible to finish a concert without applause?
A: During the Verdi anniversary, the Hungarian Radio was broadcasting Verdi’s Requiem from the church it had been performed in Verdi’s lifetime. Before the concert, the conductor’s request was communicated to the audience: Riccardo Muti asked them not to clap after the end. There are no words to describe that silence. It was a radiating silence, something that could be felt from the distance.
Q: Do you hope people will heed your warning words?
A: I would hope they would but it is likely they wont’ heed my words. I hope, though, that the warning words of Andreas Schiff will bring about some change because his book is a great success, and his concerts are always full. Emotions and attention radiate from his performance. If he asks us to celebrate the rest of music by silence, we should try. It may turn out to be better in that way.