The Moment of the Applause

Still from Pyaasa, 1957.

Appreciation of artwork is always situated in, and partly an expression of, a cultural context. And there are different cultural contexts, and, within these, different languages of appreciation. Certain milieus make room for visceral, spontaneous responses and others for a certain refinement—knowing, say, when to laugh or when to applaud. I get the impression that the latter is especially important in performances of Western classical music. People are silent as they listen. They don’t generally shake their heads or gasp with pleasure during the recital, but they must at least know when the piece has ended, and when—and how much—to applaud. Concerts of popular music, on the other hand, are often, as we know, propelled by the audience’s response—a response that’s at once visible and (at times deafeningly) audible. The joke that Joni Mitchell made to the audience in 1974—“No one said to Van Gogh, Paint a starry night again, man!”—was a