Please put your hands together....

In any setting, other than church or school assembly, "please put your hands together" is your cue that it's all over.  Time to smile, clap and go home.   In yesterdays EYFS assembly when the two very cute little girls stood up and said, "please put your hands together and close your eyes," everyone in the audience clapped.

 From my half asleep position behind the piano I was momentarily confused, as I thought there was still one more song to go and then I realised their mistake.  It is one I had singularly made at one Easter Service when my daughter was in year one.  When the whole church looks at you as if you are some religious philistine, who has lacked any kind of moral upbringing you do wish the ground would open up and swallow you.  Luckily, yesterday's parents were in the majority and were able to just smugly giggle to each other.

Who decided that clapping should be the way to show approval at the end of a performance, though? Clapping is quite a complex physical manoeuvre.  It requires a certain amount of co-ordination.  It isn't something that happens spontaneously.  Apes occasionally clap in the wild but it is usually out of fear, to frighten something away.

I asked an actress friend.  She said that it must have come from Greek theatre that the applause were probably a chorus in a particular play and that it stuck.  I can see that but why particularly clapping?  Why not shout 'brava', as the Italians do or click your fingers as the Romans did?

I think that making a noise at the end of a performance helps to dispel the energy that has built up.  Theatre and music creates a spiritual holding of the breath, a magic feeling that no one wants to break.  A clap breaks that energy up and allows normal thoughts and feeling back.  I'm sure that is why there is a convention not to clap between movements of a symphony.  The composer wants the tension and energy to remain from the previous movements right until the end.  Mozart, apparently, didn't mind.  He just though people could enjoy his music any way they wanted.

After we made our Wedding Vows the Vicar asked everyone to clap.  I don't know why there was so much tension at that point but everyone was holding their breath.

In my search for an answer I turned to Google.  There was a lot of information about clapping etiquette, when to and when not to clap. Wikipedia made me laugh, as it said that it was convention for violinists to tap their bows and for woodwind players to tap their hand on their knee.  As a woodwind player who taps my hand on my knee and the mother of a violinist who taps her bow I can categorically say that no one has ever told us to do this.  It is purely because with an expensive instrument in one hand or an an expensive instrument and expensive bow in each hand clapping is not an option.  I also found out that people at a Bruce Springsteen concert shout, "Bruce! Bruce!" Bruce!", which sounds like booing.

"Bruce, Bruce, Bruce!"

The word applause arrived in the English language in 1590, from the Latin applausus, which means struck upon.  This would imply that applause started much later than the Greeks.

Jean Daurat - Inventor of applause?

Claque is the French word for clapping. Claques, were groups of people employed to start the clapping (I've been to see some things that could definitely use these people)  The first claques were employed by French poet, Jean Daurat,in 1567,  who would give tickets for his readings away for the promise of applause at the end.  Then he hit upon the genius idea of paying the same people to go to poetry readings of his rivals and boo to show their displeasure.  Maybe it was this poet who invented applause but I still don't know why he chose to bash hand together as a symbol of pleasure.