We went to see the Hilliard ensemble last night. They were fantastic - absolutely awesome even if the tenor did keep on yawning.
I really enjoyed the performance but was troubled by the clapping and now I have a doubt as to whether my irritation was justified or not. My understanding is that one should not clap between movements, you wait until the end of the piece and then clap. The thing is with the concert last night there were several short pieces (e.g. 5 minutes +/-) and some longer ones (approx 10 minutes) and each half was around 38 minutes in total.
It seemed to me that the pieces had been carefully selected to go together and that one should not clap in between them and so I did not and got mildly irked when people did. The clapping was also not consistent. Sometimes people would clap at the end of a piece but if it was really short sometimes they didn't .
I am confused. Can someone elighten me as to the etiquette of clapping?? Was I being an oik not applauding after each piece? Was I rightly irked? Or should I just get a life and not spend time wondering about these things? TIA.