The Audience

Abstract

No performer can rely on emotionalising the audience. Music in a concert-hall must rely on itself and the perfection of its execution; it is, as it were, under glass. It exists on the other side of the footlights, apart from the audience. With apologies to the language, the audience members are spectators, they watch a thing of which they are not a part; and that thing must be complete in itself. They may be moved by the contemplation of its beauty. They are not moved, or at least can be moved only in an inferior and irrelevant way of being merged into the action of the stage. I labour this point rather heavily, but it is not a trifle, and hundreds of musical careers have been muddled simply because the performers have not understood how entirely the music must lead its own life; must have its own separate existence apart from the audience; how utterly useless it is to try to mix up audience and performance. —Ezra Pound, 1918'