venta

Well, anyone who wasn't at the Sheldonian Theatre this evening missed a cracking concert - which is pretty much everyone, really, because a bare 50 people rattled around in the theatre for the Oxford Camerata performance. I was expecting just the choir, but they turned out to be accompanied by a ten-piece brass ensemble from somewhere in Scandinavia (at least, I infer them to be Scandinavian, owing to the presence of øddities in their names). The Sheldonian acoustics are better than you'd think if you've ever been rammed in there 18-deep for a graduation ceremony, and the baroque trumpets sounded marvellous.

Anyone in London at a loose end tomorrow is highly recommended to get themselves to Smith Square to see the same performance. It's called The Glory of Christmas, and claims to be a millennium of Christmas music. It blatantly isn't - it flirts with some early carols, places itself moderately firmly in the baroque period, waves briefly over the parapet at Berlioz and goes scampering back to Handel for a finale.

The choir began out in the vestibules, singing a call and response version of Angelus ad Virginem between the men and the women. They processed in slowly, winding up stage centre for the final verse. The last notes fell into the silence and... more silence. Not a clap from the audience. Not daunted, they began on their second piece; it too closed against complete silence.

Now, at this point I'm wondering if there's some obscure point of musical etiquette I'm unaware of. You don't clap between movements of a symphony. Maybe you don't clap between pieces at a concert in the Sheldonian if there's an r in the month. Who knows ? After a pregnant pause, I decided that the audience damn well was going to clap, and mercifully people joined in with me.

Throughout the concert there did seem to be a marked reluctance to clap - when the conductor introduced a group of three pieces, people stayed silent for the first two and had to be dragged into applause by a few brave souls following the third. And I don't think the problem was lack of enjoyment - people clapped enthusiastically once someone had started them off. But, of course, nobody wants to be that someone in case they're left alone.

Maybe larger audiences mask this problem - it only takes one person to clap and the rest follow. When there's a thin audience, no one wants to be the one person. Apparently the British sense of not stepping out of line is stronger than the British sense of being polite when it comes to applause :)

And incidentally, what were the people who wrote Up, Good Christen Men thinking ?

"Ex Maria virgine,
In a stable,
'Tis no fable,
Christus natus hodie"

No-one minds the Latin creeping in, but stable/fable ? Nul points.