mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (06/30/90)
In article <585@dan.scs.com> dan@dan.scs.com (Dan Adler) writes: > > As a follow up to the discussions on semantics of music, I would suggest a >different angle for consideration. My claim is that to appreciate most forms >of music you actually have to be a musician, or at least have a very trained >musical ear and mind. Sorry, not a new angle. Not only that but I strongly disagree with the presumption. But lets go on... > The case is very clear in some forms and less clear in others. For example, >my guess is that it is almost impossible for an untrained ear to enjoy Jazz. Wow. Tell that to the fans with "untrained" ears who enjoy it. >You listen, but mostly you can't figure out who's playing what. You probably >can't follow the form since you don't know the standard, you don't understand >why the soloist is doing what he's doing the relation to the form and harmony, >and usually you are bored within five minutes, after the initial enjoyment of >the rhythmic feeling. To enjoy what's going on, you need to *understand* what it >is the musicians are doing. What references they are making, why a certain phrase >is interesting and another is just a common lick. When is the soloist being >funny (which may sometimes be obvious). Lets face it. You have to be part of the >clique. Sounds more like you're spending so much time trying to decipher the music that you can't enjoy it like the people around you. > The same I think is true of 20th century classical music. If you don't have any >idea of how *difficult* or interesting something is in the technical sense, you >will probably not enjoy it. I recall the instance from some years ago when an aunt of mine, who is not musically trained, attended an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus concert in which I was performing. Three works on the program: Something by Mozart (I think), a Beethoven symphony, and Karel Husa's "Apotheosis of the Earth" (yes, a 20th century classical work). I thought she's hate the Husa, the final piece, because I didn't think she'd understand it or appreciate its unconventional style and techniques. I was wrong. She said afterwards, "I really liked that last piece. The rest was kind of boring." > To be more precise I would say that you cannot enjoy >it *intellectually*. I'm glad you chose to be more precise (not that the previous comments didn't betray your approach to listening). So what makes it imperative that the enjoyment of music be a primarily intellectual matter? Music isn't about knowledge, it's experience. (I don't even say "about experience" anymore.) >You may enjoy the pleasant sensation in your ears, but is that >really the same. How terrible, that someone would enjoy a pleasant sensation in their ears! :-) (Or even be willing to expose themselves to an unfamiliar experience! :-)) >If someone like that came up to you after a performance and said he >enjoyed it does it mean as much you *you* as if a musician said the same thing ? Yes, it would. And I happen to be a composer (of 20th-century music, since I'm alive; I hope to write 21st-century music too, if my luck holds out). And if you think that all 20th-century music is intellectually difficult, I suggest that you haven't explored the repertoire very far, nor have you examined in depth such pre-20th-century works such as Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" which can give you enough discovery of intellectual jollies for the rest of your life, if intellectual jollies is your sole bag. > I would make the analogy of watching a play in chinese. You can enjoy it >sensually but not intellectually (if you don't understand chinese, that is). >There's little chance of following the plot, getting the jokes, or really >understanding the characters. > Similarly, knowing the language of music is in my opinion a pre-requisite for >intellectual enjoyment of music. Sorry, false analogy. In the Chinese play, there is a genuine language of WORDS which carries the text of the drama. Understanding the contents (message) carried through use of that LANGUAGE is not the same as listening to and enjoying music, which is NOT a language. (You also forgot to mention that the play in Chinese also involves action, which is a part of the drama. Or is your example that of a play being READ in Chinese behind a screen?) I also think you can get intellectual enjoyment from hearing music with whose method of construction you are unknowledgable or unfamiliar. (Discovery.) What happens is the listener with an open mind accepts the "fact" of the sounds heard, and builds an intellectual model based on that experience; the listener with a closed mind will continue to base expectations upon the notion of a small number of existing, acceptable intellectual models within which the musical experience ought to "fit." Hence, you can get a situation where the latter listener is continually frustrated by "not understanding" the music -- that is, not having a convenient model at hand into which the experience can be placed and easily (and intellectually) dismissed as "understood" (which, unfortunately, often means the listener has stopped listening actually listening because he thinks he's already "got it.") The intellectual model one builds while listening, BTW, need not be the same as the one (or several) in the composer's mind while composing, nor need the methods of modeling be the same. The truth is, they are RARELY if EVER the same! (More evidence that music is NOT a language). Incidentally, consider this: you sit outdoors and experience a sunset. Is the sunset a language? You watch and enjoy (and even intellectually understand) a game of baseball. Is the game of baseball a language? You enjoy riding a bicycle. Is that a language? I would argue that the experience of listening to music is far more like those things than reading a book or listening to the dialogue of a play. Each of them also has their own aspects of intellectual stimulation, too. If your enjoyment of music comes entirely from the intellectual "understanding" of the music, then it is, in my estimation, the enjoyment of the models of the music, and not the music itself. And I'm afraid you will spend a lot of time in frustration trying to "get the message" while other people around you are experiencing and enjoying the music. Waiting to "get the message" in music when they decipher its "Rosetta Stone"?? You are waiting for Godot, and Godot will never come. Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (07/02/90)
In article <588@sdl.scs.com> dan@sdl.scs.com (Dan Adler) writes: > Sure, you can enjoy pop songs more when you're non musical. To me that's what >pop (and the more progressive forms of brain damage) are all about. Taking all >the intellect out of it, and leaving just the caveman-instinct level. The culmination >of course is rap, where through diligent research and the full utilization of modern >drug technology, even the anachronistic concept of melody has finally been disposed >of. Melody was disposed of long before rap, and in some of the *most* intellectually oriented music. As for 'diligent research' and comments that followed, I sincerely doubt that the developers of rap used those methods in order to dispose of melody. Did you forget to include the smiley? Otherwise, I'd place those comments in the neighborhood of some of the nuttier book and record burners. (And I am far from being a fan of rap, BTW.) I would guess, by your inclinations, that if someone doesn't care to decipher all the microscopic structural aspects of a Boulez sonata that they are too stupid to be musical, or do you reserve intellectual viability only for Mozart and Bach, or whoever's music it is you happen to like (led there those nasty caveman instincts, of course)? Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (07/02/90)
In article <2119@mindlink.UUCP> a577@mindlink.UUCP (Curt Sampson) writes: =>> dan@sdl.scs.com writes: =>> =>> The culmination of course is rap, where through diligent research and the =>> full utilization of modern drug technology, even the anachronistic concept of =>> melody has finally been disposed of. => =>Sheesh! No melody? That's practially a non-western form of music, then! Of =>course, we *all* know that western, and in particular European, music that's =>been developed over the last milinium or so is the only *real* music, and that =>the rest of it is all just heathen banging on drums and the like. => =>[insert more sarcasm here] inserted sarcasm {...like Berlioz, Varese, and Paul Whear, eh?} :-) [end of sarcasm] Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (07/02/90)
In article <10209.267b825d@vax1.cc.lehigh.edu> lukrw@vax1.cc.lehigh.edu writes: >In article <1990Jun17.043120.14077@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, pmy@vivaldi.acc.virginia.edu (Pete Yadlowsky) writes: > >> Firstly: >> - There are no untrained ears. If you have some idea of what >> music is and is not, consider yourself trained. > >Skirting to the extremes and asserting that there's "no such thing" is >certainly a clever, but tiresome way of avoiding the issue. Why? Because it sucessfully points out that 'training' need not mean one particular kind of training? It hardly avoids the issue, but rather lays the foundation for some genuine considerations of the limitations and possibilities of our training processes, and what it is we train people to do. >meaning of "training", as in systematic study, was pretty clear. But which systematic study? >> - When I listen to Cage's Variations II, I don't think >> about science. > >Good for you. Perhaps you've developed an intuitive understanding of >the science and no longer have to think about it. In other words, he listens to the music, not the structural model for the music. >[...various argumants and misunderstandings...] Look, guys, you're both trying to defend very different points that are points of style! As indicated below, both of you are in essential agreement! But you're both defending a portion of your emotional 'turf' that often gets attacked (popular styles for one, complex/experimental music for the other) but mistakenly against each other! >Ok, so your opinion on the original subject is that you don't have to >be a musician? Good news for the 3 billion+ individuals in the world >who probably won't ever get around to any serious music study. But >why worry about them...we've got more important things to do... After all, they're not worried about us, are they? Instead, they go on making music, listening to it, and responding to it. Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (07/03/90)
In article <4307@milton.u.washington.edu> allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) writes: >I hear many more details now, after a few years of reading about music >history, learning to play an instrument, starting figured base realization, >and whatever my teacher comes up with this week. True, music that I used to >like a lot a few years ago I mostly don't care for any more. But that's >because I've been spending lots more time _listening to details_ instead of >just enjoying the surface reaction. Orin Moe, one of the world-authorities on Haydn (look up his articles in the Haydn yearbooks pointed out how many accomplished listeners who enjoy very contemporary music miss out on a great deal in Eliott Carter's music because the focus so much on the details and completely miss the broad musical gestures). >Now that I'm beginning to know in some >detail what I really like, my tastes have changed drastically, from >classical-romantic to a strong preference for early and modern music; I no >longer feel the same emotions as I used to when I hear Beethoven. Sure >enough, knowledge makes you look at things differently. Knowledge isn't the only thing that makes you look at things differently. However, Dan Adler's assertion was that a listener is *INCAPABLE* of enjoying or appreciating music except through intellectual activity. >Some people want >things to be, feel, sound, the same always. So easy; so safe; so dull. (Ah, I would say that's true especially for the "pure intellectualist" who wants all pieces of music to fit into one convenient set of rules. The problem, I think, is not one of development and use of intellect while listening, but one of using "pure" intellect for the purposes of "aesthetic enforcement," which, in Dan's case appears to be more of a social issue than an aesthetic one, with music as the scapegoat. >The important part is indeed the _totality_; the emotional effect alone is not >all there is to a piece of music. The best thing about music is how big that >totality is, and how many places it leads you to: harmony and form; history; >physics and acoustics; building an instrument; coordinating with other people >in an ensemble; typesetting; psychology and perception; snazzy synthesis >algorithms; semantics arguments :-) Even while I'm thinking about that stuff, >I have no trouble 'getting lost' in Monteverdi, or Ligeti. And it's all so >much more fun now. I agree with totality, and as much as that means not only "emotional" it also means not only "intellectual." Nor does it mean primacy of intellectual knowledge, either. I must say that over the last 15 years I've moved AWAY from a highly intellectualized point of view, so I feel I can justifiably argue against the primacy of the god Intellect the All-Holy. I've been there before, and since moving away from it I've had a much better time with music, and much deeper, richer, and more meaningful musical experiences. (No, that doesn't mean I think music has semantic value! :-)) But then, I also have a different concept of what constitutes "knowledge" nowadays. Cheers, --Mark He was a physicist and computer-composer in his spare time. Why was he so stupid? Because he was of the opinion that the only thing that will engage the intellect is measurement of the relations between things? When told his mind could change, his response was, "How? Why?" --John Cage ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================
a739@mindlink.UUCP (Brad Couch) (07/04/90)
> hm0w+@andrew.cmu.edu writes: > > I don't think someone has to be a musician to "derive pleasure" from > music, nor to say "I like that music" or "I don't like that music." > But I do think one has to be a musician to try to rate the value of > music or to try to rate how good the musicians are. The only advantage in listening to music as a musician, is that you can appreciate how difficult the piece is to play. A producer can appreciate the quality of the production, a songwriter can appreciate the craftsmanship in the songwriting and arrangements. An "uneducated" ear just hears music. What is the preoccupation with "the value of music"? Is there a general consensus that the more complex the piece or the more finely crafted the music is, the more value it holds? Is the opinion that musicians like complex music because of their advanced knowledge a common one? I'd be inclined to say that some of the more intricate pieces of music around can only be appreciated by musicians, because the music is just not appealing on any other facet other than its complexity. In short, the piece is appreciated less on aesthetic grounds and more because the player has to be a virtuoso. Is this really desirable? Personally I don't think so, but there are obviously people who disagree with this...which is of course their opinion. They're entitled to it. The bottom line is that whether or not you are a musician, you are still constrained by your personal opinions as to what music is good and what is crap. Just because you might be able to play an instrument does not mean that you are any better at judging music because it all comes down to comparing it against your opinion....and absolutely everybody has one of those. - Brad I don't have a sig. So there.
maverick@oak.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) (07/05/90)
In article <saYa1u_00WB9M5HUQI@andrew.cmu.edu>, hm0w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Harry Stanley Marshall) writes: > I don't think someone has to be a musician to "derive pleasure" from > music, nor to say "I like that music" or "I don't like that music." > But I do think one has to be a musician to try to rate the value of > music or to try to rate how good the musicians are. Music has no value outside of the involvement of particular people. It has a value for each of its creators, and a value for each of its perceivers. This value varies with everything in their personal makeup, including whether they are musicians or not. Why any of these values should be the "right" value is unclear. I realize there are people who believe that good music is music without parallel fifths, or variations on this sort of rule (which might explain your point of view), but I disagree. I don't think there is a fundamental difference between liking/disliking and "rating the value" of music. Anyway, as Duchamp pointed out for the visual realm, half of the artistic creation in a given piece is carried out by the perceiver, so anyone who is involved with musical experience is perforce a musician. True, anyone who reacts strongly to music will probably get physically involved and become in [what I take to be] your sense as well a musician, but it doesn't always happen that way.
ROGER@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) (07/06/90)
In article <2340@mindlink.UUCP>, a739@mindlink.UUCP (Brad Couch) writes: >> hm0w+@andrew.cmu.edu writes: >> I don't think someone has to be a musician to "derive pleasure" from >> music, nor to say "I like that music" or "I don't like that music." >> But I do think one has to be a musician to try to rate the value of >> music or to try to rate how good the musicians are. >The only advantage in listening to music as a musician, is that you can >appreciate how difficult the piece is to play. True in the narrowest sense, but not otherwise. Musicians tend to have a great deal of experience listening to music, too; as a class, they are perhaps more experienced than any other. Also, difficulty is not the only thing one learns from playing a piece. (And besides, you don't need to be a pianist to know how tough _Scarbo_ is.) By MAKING the music, one gets a QUALITATIVELY different listening experience out of it -- hearing other parts in relation to one's own, if it's not soloist music, and gearing one's whole body to the progress of the piece in time, in any case. The act of listening is forced into a much more active mode when one plays and listens at the same time. >A producer can appreciate the >quality of the production, a songwriter can appreciate the craftsmanship in the >songwriting and arrangements. An "uneducated" ear just hears music. Or not, as the case may be. Uneducated ears very often DON'T hear a lot of the music, and DON'T recognize the relationships between parts of a piece, for instance, or the relationship between words and sounds. Musical education (done right, that is) is the sensitization of the listener to these aspects. Playing and singing is a good way to learn this. >What is the preoccupation with "the value of music"? Is there a general >consensus that the more complex the piece or the more finely crafted the music >is, the more value it holds? No, and I don't think that's been claimed here. I think what's been said about experience and training refers to listening to ANY music. >Is the opinion that musicians like complex music >because of their advanced knowledge a common one? No. Musicians like GOOD music, i.e., music that holds their attention through repeated playings. It's a living, you know. Well-written music is more likely to hold their attention. If you think playing 300 Beethoven's 5ths in a lifetime is bad, try 300 of a Dittersdorf symphony. >I'd be inclined to say that >some of the more intricate pieces of music around can only be appreciated by >musicians, because the music is just not appealing on any other facet other >than its complexity. Name a few! In fact, name some pieces that ARE only apreciated by musicians. >In short, the piece is appreciated less on aesthetic >grounds and more because the player has to be a virtuoso. Gee, and I always thought those pieces were the crowd-pleasers. You know, Liszt operatic transcriptions; the Vieuxtemps fiddle concerto; Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen. >Is this really >desirable? Personally I don't think so, but there are obviously people who >disagree with this...which is of course their opinion. They're entitled to it. Well, perhaps you could make your opinion a little clearer. I think you've got several things confused. >The bottom line is that whether or not you are a musician, you are still >constrained by your personal opinions as to what music is good and what is >crap. "The only bad music is boring music." -- Rossini .... and musicians have much greater opportunities to get bored. Moreover, experience and education will teach you to listen to pieces that, without the proper preparation, you might find boring, simply because you did not know the assumptions behind the piece. If you don't like a piece, make sure you've given the piece a chance, and not just turned it off because you didn't immediately understand it. You see, listening is not all of one quality either, just like music. There are degrees of involvement, of activity. Like playing, listening is learned. And getting musical training is often a good way to learn to listen. >Just because you might be able to play an instrument does not mean that >you are any better at judging music because it all comes down to comparing it >against your opinion....and absolutely everybody has one of those. Well, so much for experience, for education, for learning background information, for getting different points of view. All opinions have the same value, you say; not only do we start out naive, we STAY that way. I think you're going a little far with that assertion. Do all OPINIONS really have the same value? Is that true, say, in politics? Roger Lustig (ROGER@PUCC.BITNET roger@pucc.princeton.edu) Disclaimer: I thought it was a costume party!
allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) (07/09/90)
I started out doing blow-by-blow replies to Paul Smith and Mark Gresham, but
besides getting way too long, it started looking like a bunch of us are
talking at cross-purposes. For one thing, I've been accused of agreeing
whole-heartedly with Dan Adler, when I didn't even answer his question - I was
replying to David Sandberg's proposal that knowledge actively interferes with
being emotionally involved with the music. So to try to reduce (at least my)
confusion, and to keep things shorter (well, it is shorter, take my word for
it!), I'm going to start from scratch, try to define what we're talking about,
state my position, then hide :-)
It all started as the question, 'do you have to know a lot of stuff to
appreciate music at all', spread to 'does knowing stuff keep you from enjoying
music', and then degenerated into people answering both at once, or neither,
or something else entirely. These are really different issues. Restating
things more specifically:
1) How much do you need to know to enjoy music?
a) nothing at all
b) whatever you pick up by living is enough to enjoy _any_ kind of
music, on first hearing
c) whatever you pick up by living in a society is enough to enjoy
that society's music, but maybe not some other society's
d) you have to know at least enough to be able to compose or perform
at some level (be a musician) to begin to enjoy it
2a) Does knowledge distract from enjoyment of music?
2b) Does knowledge add to the enjoyment of music?
(I assume that these questions apply to a single individual - I don't believe
that it's possible to say that A enjoys something more than B does, assuming
that both A and B claim to like the thing.)
Some related problems:
3) How do you define 'enjoy'? What's the difference (if any) between enjoy
and appreciate? Does it matter?
4) What is knowledge?
5) What does the 'totality' of music consist of?
Realizing that the singular of 'data' is not 'anecdote', here are my answers
to the above.
1) I define 'nothing' strictly, so if I accept a) as a possibility, I would
have to accept that rocks can enjoy music. Even an infant doesn't know
'nothing', because it can hear and is learning for at least a couple of weeks
before being born. Scratch a).
On my own experience, I throw out b) - I almost never like a style of music
when I hear it for the first time. Oriental music in particular still seems
completely incomprehensible. But I know that with experience, if I listen to
enough of a new style (Celtic, Indian classical, jazz) I can come to terms
with it, and usually learn to like it.
Which gets me to my preference, c). The amount of exposure you get by hearing
a normal amount of music in society is certainly enough to let you enjoy that
music, otherwise professional musicians would be out of business. By
listening to lots of music, it's almost impossible for a normal person not to
learn something about it: make generalizations, build up expectations, start
hearing some subtleties.
On a different level (different species, actually) wolves and sled dogs get
great pleasure from group sings (and they prefer to sing in chords.) I don't
think this is purely innate behaviour, since I know several half-wolves who
never learned to sing (no one tried to teach them), and at least two dogs
(Husky and Malemute) that had to be taught how to sing during middle age
(about 6 years old). Took one dog two weeks to catch on; the other took two
months and was never as enthusiastic about it. The slow learner, by the way,
was the smarter dog at everything else.
Breaking to my subsidiary questions:
What is enjoyment, and appreciation? From the American Heritage Dictionary,
paper edition:
Enjoy: to experience joy
Joy: 1. a feeling of delight; happiness; gladness. 2. a source of pleasure.
Appreciate: 1. to estimate the quality or value of. 2. to value highly.
3. to be fully aware of; realize. 4. to be thankful for
Fully: 1. totally. 2. adequately; sufficiently.
So according to the dictionary it's quite possible to enjoy something without
appreciating it, and vercy vicey. It's tempting to say at this point that
'enjoyment' is the emotional component, and appreciation the intellectual
component of the 'totality', but wait - what is the source of the pleasure in
the enjoyment? Even if enjoyment is an emotion, it doesn't follow that only
emotions can cause it.
What is knowledge?
Paul Smith seems to think that knowledge is a pile of facts and nomenclature
all rattling around getting in the way when it's not wanted, and you can't
really use it for anything - all you can do is think about it. Ever present,
ever distracting.
I don't see knowledge that way at all - I use what I know as a tool to operate
directly on what I hear or see. By enlarging my knowledge, I enlarge my tool
chest, so I can find a screwdriver when appropriate, instead of using a hammer
for everything. When first learning something, it might rattle a bit until
enough connections get made for it to be properly integrated with everything
else. The integration itself is a positive, physical joy; I can _feel_ it
come together. Once integrated, its use is virtually effortless. And before
it's integrated, it really isn't in the way; it's easier to ignore random
inappropriate facts than it is to ignore traffic noise or audience annoyances.
Knowledge isn't strictly book-learning, either. The things you discover/learn
for yourself are just as valuable, if not more so. But learning from a book
(or better yet a teacher) is more efficient, and gives you a common vocabulary
so that you can talk about your experiences with others; do-it-yourself is
great, but slower and harder.
Understanding speeds things up, so you can think more thoughts (use more
tools) in the same amount of time. If I understand the concept of 'major
key', it's much faster to just think, 'ok, major key, and there's a twist'
than it is to be thinking, 'gee, this sounds like a lot of stuff I've heard
before, but is it really? There's something that just went by that doesn't
seem to fit the pattern...'
What is the 'totality' of music?
The emotional effect and sweeping lines and all that are certainly a huge part
of it. But the underlying structure, and the sounds of the instruments and
the interactions between the parts are certainly part of it too. Remember the
discussion a while ago on r.m.classical about anticipation and the frustration
thereof? If you're completely unaware of what to anticipate, how can you be
frustrated (surprised, delighted) at an evasive cadence? After all, even
emotion is often a learned response. I somehow never learned that major keys
are 'happy' and minor keys are 'sad' - I think of major as plain vanilla, and
minor as rich and interesting. Happy and sad are more a matter of tempo and
how much the melody skips around.
Back to question 2:
a) Knowing things has _not_ distracted me and spoiled any enjoyment. I can
still hear all the same emotions I used to hear, though mostly in different
pieces now. But now I hear much more at the same time. Not everything
simultaneously - I choose what I want to concentrate on. To the best of my
memory, I now feel more emotion, more intensely, not less, *along with* the
more detailed things. And much to our planet's distress, it's always much
easier to turn off the intellect than to turn off the emotions, if it ever
seems warranted.
b) There's no doubt that in my case I started enjoying music more when I
started learning more about it. Before Education I was a fairly average
listener; I went to concerts every now and then, and listened to the radio a
lot in the background. In spite of poor listening habits, I didn't have much
trouble getting 'lost' in the music. But it usually wasn't all that intense,
and I was easily distracted by coughing and such.
Then I started learning recorder, and some theory, and other closely and
not-so-closely related things, each of which is fun on it's own, and most of
which makes me actively enjoy listening to music more, emotionally as well as
intellectually. Playing has increased my enjoyment of listening, because I
can better appreciate what the performers are doing, and why. I'm no longer
chained to just hearing the melodies. I often don't much like a piece when I
start learning it, but the familiarity I get by working on it, sometimes
fighting with it, almost always leads to my falling in love with it. (It
helps that my teacher has good taste :-)
Generally I don't think about 'theory' while listening (unless I'm trying to
learn something specific). But the pieces that I have analyzed, I appreciate
and enjoy much more. I now get an active thrill out of a certain sudden key
change in a Telemann duet that I started out just thinking had kind of a nice
weird note. I find it strange that anyone could think that chills down the
spine is somehow emotionally less satisfying than a mild pleasant impression.
By knowing many different kinds of things, I can choose how I want to listen.
When I know more, I'll have even more ways to hear the things I love. If you
only know one thing, and vaguely at that, you don't have a choice - you always
have to listen to everything the same way. Always hearing a piece of music
the same way makes it stale quickly.
Mark: you say that you've gone back to listening less intellectually; can you
honesly say that all that you know doesn't contribute in any way, even in the
background? And in any case, how can you have lost anything by having the
knowledge, since you have a choice of how to listen?
I guess I'll always find an attitude of "I really like such-and-so, but I
certainly don't want to know anything about it!" to be incomprehensible.
-----
Allyn Weaks
allyn@milton.u.washington.edu sweaks@phast.phys.washington.edu
{backbone}!uw-beaver!milton!allyn sweaks@uwaphast (bitnet)
If there is any such thing as sin, then it is a sin not to be able to play a
musical instrument; ... if there is any such thing as crime, then it is a
crime to be uneducated. -- Halldor Laxness, The Atom Stationmo@messy.bellcore.com (Michael O'Dell) (07/09/90)
Mr. Weaks' comments very much mirror my own sentiments. Earlier this
year I heard (sat-through, endured) the revival performance of Philip
Glass' *Music in 12 Parts*. Some of it was truly wonderful and worth
the trouble, some of it was the most aggressively boring stuff I've
ever been exposed to, and in all of it, being able to listen critically
and knowledgeably was quite important. (turns out being able to
recognize shift-register sequences helped, too, but that's a different
comment.)
Now, not all music is *Music in 12 Parts* (Thank God!), so I think it
is a function of the "complexity" ("ambiguity", Bernstein might say)
within the music.
Simple tunes are composed and understood by almost everyone - people
humming and whistling - they connect very directly with the person
emotionally. Even some other Glass pieces, particuarly some off 1000
Airplanes on the Roof, are much more accessible - meaning that I can
play them for people not as directly interested in what is happening
musically and they can still readily connect with the music, probably
because they are about as "tuney" as Glass writes.
SO, I think the more "direct" the music is, the less you need to
understand to feel really connected with what the composer was doing or
trying to say. More subtle, complex prose, however, requires a more
sophisticated reader (not smarter - just more willing to grab hold with
both hands), and more complex music requires a more sophisticated
listener TO GET THE SAME LEVEL OF CONNECTION with the work. Note that
I didn't say you can't connect perfrectly well and rewardingly without
that, but to get the same level of connection, more involvement by the
listener is required.
-Mikerdempsey@vax1.tcd.ie (07/11/90)
> 2a) Does knowledge distract from enjoyment of music? > 2b) Does knowledge add to the enjoyment of music? My view is that knowledge of music can distract from the specific enjoyment of music but adds to the general enjoyment. The knowledge can lead one to say that a given performance is *bad* which will lessen the enjoyment experienced, but only for that particular performance. In the broader case, a greater appreciation is felt if one has an understanding of what is happening. An interesting related question is about how music affects us emotionally. Usually, dark or sad music is linked with minor keys and happy, bright music with major keys. Do our emotions sense this because the keys inherently have this feeling linked to them or is it due to programming - we have (since birth) heard those keys linked to those emotions? Does our mind tell us if this is in a minor key it should therefore sum up a given set of emotions or is the music bypassing that logical, reasoning stage? It is known that listening to music can easily induce a trance-like state where the concious mind has, so to speak, switched off. Jeffrey.