In this workshop, join composer and writer Bill Dietz to discover how the behavioral conventions of audiences—from the concert hall to the political rally—inform and construct meaning in the public sphere. Author of the book L’école de la claque (2017), Dietz traces the outlines of a critical history of music reception from the nineteenth-century tradition of the claque (professional applauders paid by concert institutions throughout Europe), to the modernist prohibition of applause in early twentieth-century Vienna, to contemporary examples of paid audience responses, inviting participants to cheer and boo their way through a history of concert publicness.

Free with Museum general admission, but please RSVP (purchase tickets for David Bowie is separately).

Questions about this event? Email us at public.programs@brooklynmuseum.org.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition David Levine: Some of the People, All of the Time and co-presented with the Onassis Cultural Center New York as part of Birds: A Festival Inspired by Aristophanes.