Peter Harzem takes Mats Norman to task for applauding between movements.

If we're talking "authenticity" he is wrong to do so, as Mats points out.
Composers until fairly recently would have expected this "intrusion" and
it would not have worried them - as Mats points out, Handel and Mozary
soon got paranoid if their audiences didn't applaud between movements.

I find it moving when I hear it in the UK - usually but not exclusively
at the Proms - because, unlike the regulation applause at the end, it
is a spontaneous reaction of overflowing enjoyment.

>One of the precious practices that survive, even if precariously, in
>classical music performances (but few, if any, other situations) is regard
>for others' feelings, comfort, etc.

Not if all the coughing, snoozing and digitizing that goes on at most
Festival Hall concerts is anything to go by.  Indifference is a far worse
crime than voluble enthusiasm.

To go a little further, surely the sanctimonious air that infects most
concert halls - in Britain at least - is off-putting to real music lovers
in the extreme? I've not forgotten the shame of being subjected to a
withering glance from a gentleman (I hope it wasn't Mr Harzem!) for daring
to laugh out loud at one of Haydn's witty strokes during a Barbirolli
performance of the 'Drumroll' Symphony.

The romantics placed their art on a pedestal and expected people to
admire it in reverence.  It's not their fault that this attitude has now
become ossified, parodic.  As a natural, joyous and healthy part of life's
experience, music deserves more respect than the stifling, silent worship
of that significant minority of concertgoers today, who are content to pay
it (closed) lip service.

React away, Mats!

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"