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Sweden, October 2018. The audience in Malm\u00f6 were in raptures at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra\u2019s performance of Mahler<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Fifth Symphony. Then the Adagietto <\/em>movement began. And somebody dared to open a packet of chewing gum, at a sub-optimal moment of maximally pianissimo <\/em>intensity on-stage.<\/p> The offending confectionery was ripped out of her hands by a vexed Mahlerian, and after the tumultuously loud climax to the whole piece, the wannabe gum-chewer struck the guy who had taken it, and they were supported by their friends, lovers and political partners in a full-on fisticuffs that is still going on as I write this.<\/p> That last bit isn\u2019t true, but the rest of it is. How did we get here? Why is our listening culture so delicate that it can\u2019t deal with the sound of a single gum wrapper? It\u2019s one of the consequences of those pernicious thou-shalt-not lists of concert hall etiquette, in which our responses are limited to just two options: be quiet \u2013 quieter, ssh! \u2013 and applaud only at the end. <\/p> Woe betide the newbie who applauds after individual movements of Tchaikovsky<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s First Piano Concerto or Beethoven<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Seventh Symphony. They are, it seems, showing their fatal disregard for a culture of self-sacrificing silence that\u2019s one of the highest creations of the art-form we call classical music.<\/p>‘This is not how it was supposed to be’<\/h2>