Have we forgotten how to enjoy music?
A letter from W.A.Mozart in Paris to his father on July 3, 1778 about of the premiere of his Symphony Number 31 in D major, aka the 'Paris':
"In the midst of the first allegro came a passage I had known would please. The audience was quite carried away - there was a great outburst of applause."
"The andante also found favour, but particularly the last allegro because, having noticed that all last allegri here opened, like the first, with all instruments together and usually in unison, began with two violins only, piano for eight bars only, then forte, so that at the piano (as I had expected) the audience said "Sh!" and when they heard the forte began at once to clap their hands."
and again on 9 July 1778:
"the symphony was hightly approved of - and Le Gros [the concert director] is so pleased with it that he says it is his very best symphony. But the Andante has not had the good fortune to win his approval; he declares that it has too many modulations and that it is too long. He derives this opinion, however, from the fact that the audience forgot to clap their hands as loudly and to shout as much as they did at the end of the first and last movements"
(from The Letters of Mozart and His Family, translated by Emily Anderson)
Never mind Historically Informed Performance, what about Historically Informed audience response?
