Why do we make such a song and dance about concert audience etiquette?

Classical concert-goers have welcomed one of the more unusual side effects of Covid – the cessation of coughing during performances. Thanks to pandemic paranoia, the contagious throat-clearing that typically accompanies recitals has all but vanished, as people fear the slightest wheeze will provoke a panic.

Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny said the effect on BBC Proms broadcasts was a positive one, as in previous seasons the Albert Hall had felt like a sanatorium. “But just as animals modify their behaviour when faced with new predators, 18 months of living with Covid seems to have stopped us coughing unnecessarily,” he told the Radio Times.

The Telegraph arts correspondent Ben Lawrence suggested the phenomenon heralded “a new form of puritanism” that would make music lovers like himself much happier.

Coughing is only one affront to aficionados who find oafish audiences a blight on high-brow art and would rather they stayed at home if they don’t know the ropes. I sympathise with both the above and over the years have been driven demented by the behaviour of fellow patrons.

While I may not have snatched a mobile from an audience member, as Lawrence admitted he once did, I have ticked off a few philistines for taking photos when the ushers haven’t got there first. In fact, during a Lang Lang concert at one Edinburgh Festival, I had to police a whole row of young groupies in the dress circle who clearly had not come for the music.

But exasperating as the uninitiated are to us musical snobs, I would hesitate to have them all excluded just to enhance my own enjoyment.

That way lies the further erosion of audience numbers for an art form that already has an ageing fan base and an off-putting reputation for elitism. Besides, in the intricacies of etiquette, there is sometimes a fine line between the scolding connoisseur and the uncouth culprit.

Take coughing. When others are doing it, it is annoying for sure. But what if it is you, or your guest? I remember to this day my outrage when my then-teenage daughter was overcome by a coughing fit during a forgettable opera at Covent Garden and two Home Counties harpies asked her to leave.

No wonder young people are discouraged, not only by the rules but by the rudeness of some people at concerts.

There are those who believe the concert hall is no place for children. The Korean violinist Kyung-Wha Chung, who berated the parents of a restless child during one of her concerts, said in an interview with Lawrence, “if you can’t sit still, you should not be there”.

But if we are to engage the next generation, we must expose them to the rarefied atmosphere from an early age. As it happens, as a youngster I was taken to see Chung play Bach, an experience so affecting I credit it with my lifelong love of music.

I let my youngest bring her dolls when I dragged her along, to begin with, aged five. Occasionally her fidgeting upset those sitting nearby but she didn’t make a sound and so never disturbed the musicians.

And it was me, not the child (someone else’s this time), at fault when there was an accident in the middle of “The Lark Ascending” after I had refused to let her climb over the old ladies to get to the exit on time. 

But even as the puddle spread under our feet, up on stage, the sublime soloist, Nicola Benedetti, remained oblivious to the contained commotion in the stalls.

Benedetti was unaware, more recently, when her proud father was told to stop photographing her at the start of her show in the Edinburgh Festival, in an open-sided tent, about half a mile away from the band. 

If artists are greatly bothered by breaches of etiquette, we tend to hear about it. The Polish pianist Christian Zacharias stopped playing in the middle of a concert in Gothenburg Concert Hall in 2013 after a phone went off. And the treasured but touchy Alfred Brendel notoriously demanded quiet, issuing the threat: “Either you stop coughing or I stop playing.”

Common faux pas, such as clapping between movements or, worse, before the conductor has lowered his baton at the end, may be crimes that separate the clueless from the cognoscenti, but does such behaviour really spoil the evening? 

How can we, the enlightened, sneer at this type of audience enthusiasm but ourselves shout “bravo” after a rousing aria in the middle of a scene in an opera?

Obviously, national stereotypes condition crowd responses at classical events just as they do in sports stadiums. Opera buffs at La Scala are famously more demonstrative than here, where booing is almost unheard of.

We don’t even much like cheering. I was once told off for whistling because it interfered with the frequency of the man in front’s hearing aid.

Veteran concertgoers can be just as much trouble as rookies and, on balance, I would rather endure occasional lapses, my own included, to sit in crowded halls. 

Select cliques who want to keep the magic all to themselves are the death knell of classical music. It would be another dividend of Covid for the concert hall if the past year’s enforced abstinence has instilled a greater degree of tolerance.