John wrote:

>This reminds me of an incident related to me by a friend many years ago.
>During a performance of one of his works, Ralph Vaughan Williams was
>sitting in the front row of the stalls noisily unwrapping and munching
>sweets while his wife was passing them round to other members of the
>audience.

And this reminds me in turn of Jerry Goldsmith at his 70th birthday
concert with the RSNO who said that some concert halls (though none
that I've been to!) have sweets in a jar at the door, so that those who
are prone to cough during a performance can suck to ease their throats.
(Presumably those sweets don't have noisy wrappers.) The film composer said
that you can cough all you like to his music, since normally it is played
to the accompaniment of explosions, car crashes and other such noisy events
on screen.

Jim Paterson
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