Look Who it Was Random video

Classical Music, Noisy Listening - Tom Service

2,142 views · Published 4 December 2018 · 59:54 · Indexed 17 October 2026

Channel: Gresham College · 2018 · Education

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00:00 // Introduction: The Malmö Sweet-Wrapper Brawl
02:30 // The Problem With Classical Concert Etiquette
06:00 // How We Became "Stuffed Pigs" – A History of Silent Listening
09:30 // Jean-Baptiste Lully & The Noisy Paris Opera
15:00 // Who Was Actually Watching? The Architecture of Distraction
20:00 // Gluck Changes Everything: Audiences Learn to Feel
26:00 // Mozart's Paris Symphony & The Art of the In-Concert Encore
35:00 // Recreating Mozart's 1778 Audience – Live Participation Experiment
44:00 // Beethoven's String Quartets & Vienna's Participatory Listening Culture
52:00 // Haydn Quartet Live: React However You Like

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 introduce the idea of musical works as tools for listening, from Mozart to Mahler, from medieval repertoires to minimalism.

This lecture was recorded by Tom Service on the 19th November 2018

Tom Service was the Gresham Professor of Music 2018-2019, as well as a renowned music journalist and television and radio presenter. He has written regularly for The Guardian since 1999. His book titles include Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras and Thomas Adès: Full of Noises.

Professor Service joined BBC Radio 3 in 2001 presenting Hear and Now and later Music Matters. He has been a contributor and presenter across BBC Radio and Television since. In 2011 he joined the BBC Proms team, presenting the world’s largest annual classical music festival. Professor Service is also the creator of several successful documentaries on classical music, including the highly acclaimed The Joy of Mozart.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/classical-music-noisy-listening

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