gth.
5. Adaptability to audience.

[Sidenote: VARIETY]

We have given variety first place advisedly; for it is by changing the
style and particularly through varying the emotional quality of the
selections that the conductor or performer will find it most easy to
hold the attention and interest of the audience. In these days the
matter of keeping an audience interested presents far greater
difficulty than formerly, for our audiences are now much more
accustomed to hearing good music than they used to be, and a
performance that is moderately good and that would probably have held
the attention from beginning to end in the olden days will now often
be received with yawning, coughing, whispering, early leaving, and a
spirit of uneasiness permeating the entire audience, especially during
the latter part of the program. The change of etiquette brought about
by the phenomenal popularization of the moving picture theater has
doubtless had something to do with this change in the attitude of our
audiences; the spread of musical knowledge and the far greater
intelligence concerning musical performance manifested by the average
audience of today as compared with that of fifty years ago is also
partly responsible; but the brunt of the charge must be borne by our
habitual attitude of nervous hurry, our impatience with slow processes
of any kind, and the demand for constant change of sensation that is
coming to characterize Americans of all ages and classes. It is
doubtless unfortunate that conditions are as they are; but since the
attitude of our audiences has admittedly undergone a decided change,
it behooves the program maker to face conditions as they actually
exist, rather than to pretend that they are as he should like them to
be. Since our audiences are harder to hold now than formerly, and
since our first-class performers (except possibly in the case of
orchestral music) are probably not greatly above the level of the
first-class performers of a generation ago (although larger in
number), it will be necessary to keep the listener interested by
employing methods of program making, which, although they have always
been not only entirely legitimate but highly desirable, are now
absolutely necessary. As stated above, the obvious way to help our
audience to listen to an entire concert is to provide variety of
material--a heavy number followed by a light one; a slow, flowing
_adagio_ by a bright snappy _scherzo_; a tragic a