# Is There A Natural Listening Span?



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

How long are most concerts? How long can composers expect the audience to sit still without a bathroom break, a chance to mingle in the lobby?

There have been epic productions, that go on for hours and hours, but I feel like they're the rarity.

In reproduced music, 20 minutes (an LP side) is probably too short.

However, 80 minutes (the span the chairman of Sony wanted for the complete Ninth Symphony) may be too long. I find myself getting up to stretch or snack before most 80-minute CDs are over. Putting on the radio or Pandora or an epic YouTube video, I always drift in and out. Can't sit still that long.

What are your listening preferences?


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

In practice, it's probably 80 minutes for a concert. That's the length of many of the Mahler and Bruckner symphonies, and most acts of Wagner. And Beethoven's 9th, as you pointed out. There are exceptions when it can be considerably longer (_Einstein on the Beach_ excluded here!). Act I of _Parsifal_ and Act III of _Meistersinger_ are pushing closer to two hours; _Salome_ and _Elektra_ are closer to 100 minutes. _Das Rheingold_ and _Capriccio_ are near the 150-minute mark. I think 80 minutes can be a bit long at home where there are more distractions, but in a concert, or when I'm really focused on the music only, it seems like a long time but usually not _too_ long. (Depending, I suppose, on the quality of the performance!) I thought Christian Thielemann made an argument that 80 minutes was about right in an interview once, but I can't quickly find it.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

As a performer I've always kept it to 75 minutes which includes a break of 4 or 5 minutes, just long enough to get a nice drink of cold water and relax for a minute or two. 

The attention span of the concert goer seems to wane between 75 and 90 minutes.

Kh


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Most opera acts (and it's probably similar for spoken word drama and ballett?) are around one hour, say 45-75 min. covers probably 90% or more of standard rep opera acts. 
Of course, historically, people didn't necessarily keep completely quiet during such performances but I think that it has sometimes been exaggerated how much else was going on. Opera was quite expensive to attend e.g. in Handel's time, so people wanted to get something for their money, not chat with some music background.

Instrumental pieces used to be quite short and even long ones are usually divided into sections of movements. The length didn't just grow indefinitely. A typical baroque concerto or sonata last about 8-12 min, a Bach concerto of 20 min was about twice that length which grew rather slowly to about 30 min and similarly for symphonies or other purely instrumental pieces. Sure, there are outliers as some >50 min concerti by Brahms, Reger, Elgar or symphonies beyond one hour. But in modernity pieces mostly returned to the tyical 20-40 min. with sections/movements (if applicable) rarely longer than 15 min.


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## Philidor (11 mo ago)

I think it is also a question of training.

Usual concertos either have one work with apprioriate length, in particular choral works such as Bach's passions or Haydn/Mendelssohn/Elgar... oratorios, or symphonies such as Bruckner #8 or Mahler #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 that don't make allowances for other music left and right; or they have two half-time with about 35 to 55 minutes of music.

But there are concertos such as with the Emerson String Quartet playing Bartok's quartets on one evening ... I would have liked very much to attend this ... and there are operas, in particular from Wagner, that take four hours or more.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

At the risk of TMI, as I get older the bathroom break issue is becoming more of a factor, and not just for music. My wife and I have only attended a movie theater about once a year for the last decade. We have a decent surround sound system and with the big screen TVs we don’t feel the need for the multiplex for a host of reasons including bathroom breaks. Music and live Theater are different story, though, although we haven’t done either since the start of Covid. We were about to start resuming, but then I fell on the ice and have been dealing with back pain. The thought of sitting through Mahler 3 in the hard chairs of Chicago Symphony Center and then struggling to beat a thousand people to the limited bathroom facilities is leaving me at home, which suits my Covid conscious wife just fine. I ‘ll say one thing for the movie multiplex, at least they have put those big cushy recliners in


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