It’ll never end up with a jolly singalong of We Are Sailing or get as raucous as S***-Faced Shakespeare. But Night Shift creative director William Norris suggests everyone has a pint ready for the final song.

Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment (OAE), more used to playing in front of 6,000 people in concert halls, will conduct the audience in a drinking game at the end of its first pub show outside London.

“Concerts haven’t always been as formal as they are now,” he explains. “Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, going to a concert was much more of a social event – people would drink, they would eat, they would even bring their dogs. It was a much livelier environment.”

As part of its aim to return chamber music to an “authentic environment” and have the music played in an “authentic manner”, Norris has devised a series of concerts played by members of the OAE collective in the nation’s boozers.

Informal intimacy

The shows are part of a series of informal – “classical music minus the rules” – late-night events organised by the OAE. Its first pub gig in 2012 aimed to bring the music to a place more “familiar and comfortable”.

“One thing we really like is intimacy: being able to see the music up close makes a real difference to being in a thousand-seat concert hall.”

The OAE wants a bigger audience. It would like a more diverse – and younger – crowd. For the previous London show, the repertoire included drinking songs by Purcell from the 1700s.

The programme in Brighton features three excerpts from quartets by Joseph Haydn in the first half, plus a complete quartet in four movements in the second half.

The players will stop between each movement to give explanations, introduce the music and guide punters through.

“Haydn didn’t write any drinking songs but we decided we wanted something equivalent to the Purcell nights, so we have done this thing where the tune comes round in a game and on different instruments.

“Everyone is assigned a different instrument and when you hear your tune in your instrument that is your signal to drink. The trick is to remember to have some beer left at the end of the evening.”

Three of the four players – a string quartet with two violins, a viola and a cello – are under 35. As well as playing music composed by Haydn, they will tackle a new composition, Indigo Dances, by Kim Ashton, who is 30 years old.

Young composers are beginning to write new string quartets specifically for venues other than the concert hall and OAE commissioned Ashton as part of its remit to nurture fresh talent.

Ashton says he took dance rhythms found in much baroque music as the inspiration.

“The formality of the concert hall can be a bit stultifying, yet in times past, many venues were more relaxed with people drinking (coffee or otherwise) during performances.

“Why not more of this today? Writing for a pub audience is definitely not about dumbing down but I did try to give my piece a clear shape or form – based loosely on an old form, the minuet and trio – for people to follow.”

Norris, who thinks about 20% of the audience have never been to a classical concert before and 85% are under 35, says the pubs have been chosen for their sound quality rather than number of regulars.

Still, performing on instruments from the 17th century has its drawbacks.

“When pubs get really busy they get really hot and the instruments go out of tune with the heat. It can be a bit of a nightmare for the players because they have to tune up between each piece.”