Cough vigilante

EMM4, your efforts have qualified you for the official "cough vigilante" club membership. Welcome aboard!

EMM4, if you ever move to the NYC area we're calling you in as an enforcer at the NJPAC!

You're touching on an interesting phenomenon. Even in winter, sitting in a tram or bus, sitting in some waiting room or flying in a plane, you'll notice less coughing than even with small audiences in a musical event. I've often wondered why this is. Perhaps a saying in German can give a hint here, where the statement of "I'll give him a cough" is a sign of veiled disagreement, combined with some anger. So, to my mind, there are so many people, who just cannot be still, cannot bear to have others perform and take the stage. So they have to make themselves heard. All this is not conscious of course, but its a sign of discomfort and a subtle rising of inner anger. Why go to concerts then, may you ask, well, many go, because its "done", get bored and and unconsciously have to voice it. Also coughing wells up in the short intermission between different movements of a given piece. It is as if they now also want to have their "say". Only MHO, a hypothesis however, which I'm comfortable with. Cough-cough! to all who disagree, " denen huste ich eins " or I'll cough them one..which is what this saying is in original German.

Detlof, seems you're on to something there. I had always attributed these noisy phenomena to nervousness or wondered why the world's representatives of the common cold invariably congregate around me, wherever I sit, in any venue, in any city! A noteworthy exception being a gentleman next me recently, visibly suffering from a whopping cold -- who, as EMM4 above, was dead quiet throughout the concert...
On another footing, can you all imagine the plight of some people having to sit still through 2 1/2 hrs of Wagner -- because "it's done" (and miss their favourite TV show, too!)... Better still, Mahler's 8th?

Greg, its Bruckner who does this to me!!! (Except his chamber music, though) Cheers,