An article last week in the New York Times raised some ruckus on the newspaper’s editorial page. It seems the writer wanted classical music halls to loosen up.

Human music has historically been tied to human movement, the author wrote, so why sit there like an unexploded stick of dynamite? Why not get up and dance when the orchestra plays? It’s a valid observation, one that’s been made over and over in the last 100 years, most especially in the last 40 as the baby-boom generation brings its self-important reassessment-of-the-wheel philosophy to every aspect of society.

(I can say that because I’m baby boomer myself, albeit a late one.) Concert halls are stuffy places and, yes, there are moments when some of us feel rather foolish to not be dancing, or at least openly sharing with each other our joy in the musical experience. But as a generalization about orchestral and chamber music, the writer’s argument has two left feet. The body of literature that we commonly refer to as “classical music” almost is entirely a product of the concert hall.

True, in Mozart’s day, you might have to strain to hear the music over the talking and rude behavior of the audience. But even then, the music was being written with the expectation that every note would be heard by somebody.