[log in to unmask] posted an article:

>...the idea is put forth that classical musicians have the temperaments of
>Chihuahuas and may sometimes actually spit up on the carpet if they hear a
>cough during a particularly tricky passage.

As a professional musician, I will tell you what it is like to be a
performer.  We have rehearsed, learned our parts as well as other parts,
so that we may give you the best performance we can.  It involves a very
high degree of concentration that is easily dispelled by noises from the
audience.  Each piece, each movement of a work, has its own mood to be
established, and that too is broken by audience noise.  Are we all prima
donnas lost in our own little worlds of music? No!  We are trying to work
together, with all the other players, as an entity.  And if part of that
unit is broken, the work you are hearing is in danger of falling apart.

>Have our instrumentalists and journalists grown so frail that they
>cannot deal with <a common human noise, a brief and inoffensive one
>at that, usually muffled, <unaccompanied by odor? Feh, I say, and fie

If only they were brief and inoffensive, and usually muffled.  <sigh>

--Marcie