The Mass Market

It started accidentally: an overflow of concentration that made his neck twitch, his leg kick, as his fingers tapdanced down the keyboard. Then his gesticulations became part of the show, a physical amplifier for the emotion of the music. Soon he was as famous for his writhing as he was for his playing. The pauses where he didn't touch the piano at all, only rocked and moaned on the stool, grew steadily—as did the number of spectators gyrating in the aisles. But he still caused a sensation when he performed without playing a note. Everyone in the crowd (which has swelled in retrospect to many times the capacity of that intimate auditorium) remembers the moment when the seats emptied and the stage filled with weeping, twining people. Finally—to the delight of his distributors—he realised that he didn't have to appear at all, that a bare stage and a name above a door were enough to tap the passion of the masses.