# Unfamiliar Music and "Chunking"



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

When presented with unconnected stimuli, the human brain will be able to recall only a handful of elements. In order to recall more than that, we need to organize them in some way. Put succinctly, chunking as a psychological term is the mental groupings that we use in order to remember longer strings, either consciously (mnemonics) or unconsciously. I think that much of the difficulty in remembering unfamiliar or difficult music can be attributed to an inability to place the individual elements into our normal psychological frameworks.

When I remember the first movement of Mahler's Sixth, I am not recalling each instrument, line, harmony, or note individually, I remember the way everything fits together and leads the piece forward. Similarly, in order to remember the form of the third movement of Mozart's Concerto in E-flat K276, I recall the elements that fit the schema I have for a rondo (a theme that will return throughout at intervals) and the elements that stick out as exceptional (a minuet section in the middle of the movement).

Upon encountering an unfamiliar piece of music, we may find ourselves at a loss to recall anything about it. Sometimes this is because of a lack of familiarity with the piece, but it can also be a lack of familiarity with the idiom. The form may be different from anything else we know. Perhaps the materials used may not fit into any of our psychological schemata.

The common practice period provided a relatively stable set of materials: functional tonality, rhythmic and formal periodicity, and melodies that reinforced both of the above. These were all abandoned or at least attenuated in the majority of 20th century music, including that considered "accessible." It is no surprise that some of this music, which may appear at first to be composed entirely of unfamiliar elements, strikes us as unfamiliar, even as something other than music, because it does not fit with our mental conceptions of what music is.

If our brain is unable to process the musical signal entering it, it shuts off and shuts it out as noise. This does not mean that it is noise, though, and studies have shown that familiarity with harmonies causes them to be perceived as more beautiful and less harsh. Taking the idea of chunking as a starting point, perhaps familiarity will also allow these harmonies to become a part of our internal schemata rather than something to be dealt with as discrete elements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

This might explain Webern was among the hardest early modernist composer for me to relate to. The form seems less familiar, and the language is less familiar(than most music before or after)

I had previously been listening to music with these "form and harmony molds"(in my mental expectations) that were less flexible in my aural imagination. The only solution I could think of, when I finally was thinking that there may be something worth experiencing with Webern, was to try to shut that off. I combined what I knew about meditative states and being very present, with the sense I had that when I was young my ears were sometimes a bit more "open." Probably the "groundwork" repetitive on and off listening to his Symphony op 21 along with a somewhat better appreciation of the earlier works helped more than I can factor in, but it had been maybe a year or more since I struggled through even a movement of that symphony. So, I tried to be 'as present' as I could be so the sounds themselves didn't drift by me unnoticed, and fortunately Webern is pretty sparse. I started experimenting with new patterns and contexts, and my listening went deeper to the point of some synesthesia. I went back and listened to carefully chosen music I was more familiar with, and it was even richer because I had unlocked some keener perception not as heavily based on built up experience, or perhaps more deeply so, it's hard to say which. The Webern experience and maybe the music itself, had provided a fresh sense, or maybe cleaned up a dirty one.

Another thing that helps sometimes is tapping into the fiction writer mindset. I just imagine a story sometimes, and not as a strict exercise, but as well and as entertainingly as I can.

Some people who maybe are satisfied with newer styles more quickly, have honed in on a solid baseline appreciation of sound itself. A bit different, but I remember researching different instruments and evaluating their timbre and the virtuosity of the instrumentalists, and I would know new pieces in a different way in that mindset.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> This might explain Webern was among the hardest early modernist composer for me to relate to. The form seems less familiar, and the language is less familiar(than most music before or after)
> 
> I had previously been listening to music with these "form and harmony molds"(in my mental expectations) that were less flexible in my aural imagination. The only solution I could think of, when I finally was thinking that there may be something worth experiencing with Webern, was to try to shut that off. I combined what I knew about meditative states and being very present, with the sense I had that when I was young my ears were sometimes a bit more "open." Probably the "groundwork" repetitive on and off listening to his Symphony op 21 along with a somewhat better appreciation of the earlier works helped more than I can factor in, but it had been maybe a year or more since I struggled through even a movement of that symphony. So, I tried to be 'as present' as I could be so the sounds themselves didn't drift by me unnoticed, and fortunately Webern is pretty sparse. I started experimenting with new patterns and contexts, and my listening went deeper to the point of some synesthesia. I went back and listened to carefully chosen music I was more familiar with, and it was even richer because I had unlocked some keener perception not as heavily based on built up experience, or perhaps more deeply so, it's hard to say which. The Webern experience and maybe the music itself, had provided a fresh sense, or maybe cleaned up a dirty one.
> 
> ...


Good post, clavichorder. It sounds to me like you have tapped into the secret of 'vertical listening' as I call it, where the narrative thread is abandoned in preference to a 'being in the moment' mode of perception, in which sounds and events are experienced just for what they are in the moment.


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> Good post, clavichorder. It sounds to me like you have tapped into the secret of 'vertical listening' as I call it, where the narrative thread is abandoned in preference to a 'being in the moment' mode of perception, in which sounds and events are experienced just for what they are in the moment.


This describes perfectly the few times I've been able to get any sort of appreciation for Webern at all, just being there and not having any preconceptions of where the music should be going next. Thanks for your insights Mahlerian, Clavichorder and Millionrainbows!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Is "chunking" in modern music listening anything like "blowing chunks?" I just had to say it. :lol:


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

clavichorder said:


> This might explain Webern was among the hardest early modernist composer for me to relate to. The form seems less familiar, and the language is less familiar(than most music before or after)
> 
> I had previously been listening to music with these "form and harmony molds"(in my mental expectations) that were less flexible in my aural imagination. The only solution I could think of, when I finally was thinking that there may be something worth experiencing with Webern, was to try to shut that off. I combined what I knew about meditative states and being very present, with the sense I had that when I was young my ears were sometimes a bit more "open." Probably the "groundwork" repetitive on and off listening to his Symphony op 21 along with a somewhat better appreciation of the earlier works helped more than I can factor in, but it had been maybe a year or more since I struggled through even a movement of that symphony. So, I tried to be 'as present' as I could be so the sounds themselves didn't drift by me unnoticed, and fortunately Webern is pretty sparse. I started experimenting with new patterns and contexts, and my listening went deeper to the point of some synesthesia. I went back and listened to carefully chosen music I was more familiar with, and it was even richer because I had unlocked some keener perception not as heavily based on built up experience, or perhaps more deeply so, it's hard to say which. The Webern experience and maybe the music itself, had provided a fresh sense, or maybe cleaned up a dirty one.
> 
> ...


Good observation. This explains why to me in the context of the original post above, I find it easier to remember the Mozart concerto than the Mahler symphony after initial listens. (These initial listens were of different points in time).


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

And then maybe this can be used for solidly _tonal _works too that have no harmonic obscurities but is simply new melodies, hm? A "vertical" appreciation?

Perhaps it's simply a good memory-retention technique. Eventually, the brain will be able to do this more easily with practice, I think. Chunking, vertical assessment, repetition.

All that's needed is motivation to actually do it. :tiphat:


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> And then maybe this can be used for solidly _tonal _works too that have no harmonic obscurities but is simply new melodies, hm? A "vertical" appreciation?


Well, I said nothing about "atonality." Of course it applies to all music, and everything in it that can be new to an individual listener.

I personally find Renaissance music harder to recall than most 20th century styles.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

clavichorder said:


> This might explain Webern was among the hardest early modernist composer for me to relate to. The form seems less familiar, and the language is less familiar(than most music before or after)
> 
> I had previously been listening to music with these "form and harmony molds"(in my mental expectations) that were less flexible in my aural imagination. The only solution I could think of, when I finally was thinking that there may be something worth experiencing with Webern, was to try to shut that off. I combined what I knew about meditative states and being very present, with the sense I had that when I was young my ears were sometimes a bit more "open." Probably the "groundwork" repetitive on and off listening to his Symphony op 21 along with a somewhat better appreciation of the earlier works helped more than I can factor in, but it had been maybe a year or more since I struggled through even a movement of that symphony. So, I tried to be 'as present' as I could be so the sounds themselves didn't drift by me unnoticed, and fortunately Webern is pretty sparse. I started experimenting with new patterns and contexts, and my listening went deeper to the point of some synesthesia. I went back and listened to carefully chosen music I was more familiar with, and it was even richer because I had unlocked some keener perception not as heavily based on built up experience, or perhaps more deeply so, it's hard to say which. The Webern experience and maybe the music itself, had provided a fresh sense, or maybe cleaned up a dirty one.


Webern indeed is really unique, although, then again, there are elements in his music that are also very conservative (not a pejorative, but in Webern's case, a praise).

1. Webern's music is intensely linear. Linear patterns and motifs, and their Klangfarben timbre, are extremely important. The linear activity plays a greater role than chord-progressional activity. The feeling of cadence comes not necessarily from a progression of set chords, but of a ending of linear motivic pattern. In one sense, this is radical, but yet, on the other hand, this what Ockeghem did! When one listens to Renaissance polyphony, the identity of the voices and lines are much more important than a chordal progression. Progression of lines always produces more interesting music than mere progression of chords (which Beethoven sometimes got locked into in his less contrapuntal sections).

2. The linear building blocks in Webern are novel. There are a lot of wide leaps, in particular, a lot of major sevenths and minor ninths. Take the string trio op 20 



 where every other note in the tone row is played as a major seventh or minor ninth, sometimes horizontally in a two-note figure, sometimes vertically together. If one doesn't "chunk" these wide leaping melodic figures as the expression of a given motivic voice, then one will not get much out of Webern. However: I think that realizing and internalizing this is not too difficult. Then one can enjoy the lines, the intervals, the chords built off of these intervals, and love the energy of line, motif, interval, harmony, timbre, texture.

3. Luckily, Webern's forms are actually quite classical. Binary forms, ternary forms, sonata forms, variation forms... Sections are demarcated with different textural/rhythmic/timbral activity in an almost regimented way to ease comprehension and ineligibility. In particular, the symphony op 21 you mention has a really famous "arc variation" form in its second movement: the agility and clarity of this form has a Mozartian grace to it. A clear overall structure with relations between the sections, a clear sectional structure of the individual variations, and a regularity of interval and motif.

Webern is a miracle, an amazing composer...


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Webern indeed is really unique, although, then again, there are elements in his music that are also very conservative (not a pejorative, but in Webern's case, a praise).
> 
> Webern is a miracle, an amazing composer...


I mean, since the topic of Webern _already _hijacked this discussion,_ I_ could push it a bit further in my classic fashion...









Webern practiced his memory retention,_ no doubt._ :tiphat:


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Yes, that makes sense to me. As long as I listen to something often enough, I will remember it and eventually I know what's coming at any given moment. This helps me a lot in getting to know and appreciating the music. Memory is the key.


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## Guest (Jun 3, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> Mozart's Concerto in E-flat K276, ...


"Do you mean K271?", he said obtusely, grabbing at the only thing about the post he could relate to - Mozart.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Jerome said:


> "Do you mean K271?", he said obtusely, grabbing at the only thing about the post he could relate to - Mozart.


Yes, you're right, I had the Kochel number wrong.

I'm surprised though; you don't employ your memory at all when listening to music? I should think everyone could relate to the processes described in the OP.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Webern indeed is really unique, although, then again, there are elements in his music that are also very conservative (not a pejorative, but in Webern's case, a praise).
> 
> 1. Webern's music is intensely linear. Linear patterns and motifs, and their Klangfarben timbre, are extremely important. The linear activity plays a greater role than chord-progressional activity. The feeling of cadence comes not necessarily from a progression of set chords, but of a ending of linear motivic pattern. In one sense, this is radical, but yet, on the other hand, this what Ockeghem did! When one listens to Renaissance polyphony, the identity of the voices and lines are much more important than a chordal progression. Progression of lines always produces more interesting music than mere progression of chords (which Beethoven sometimes got locked into in his less contrapuntal sections).
> 
> ...


These are good observations. In my case, I made a breakthrough when I started hearing certain interval-types in different sections. For instance, there would be a section with a lot of fifths, sometimes sounded together, sometimes following, or other intervals like major thirds. I wish I could cite an example; maybe the Symphony op. 21.
Even if there are not a lot of the same intervals in succession, I find it helpful to listen for intervals in Webern anyway. Sometimes it seems as if he is using 2-note intervals as 'themes.' In the String Trio op. 20 link you provided, I seem to hear a lot on minor 9ths at first, followed by m3's, tritones, and 4ths. This pattern seems to repeat. Perhaps it's the way the row is constructed. Let me refer to my index of tone rows...


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## Guest (Jun 3, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, you're right, I had the Kochel number wrong.
> 
> I'm surprised though; you don't employ your memory at all when listening to music? I should think everyone could relate to the processes described in the OP.


I understand what you are describing and I'm sure it applies to me like it would anybody. It's the idea of thinking about how I use my memory that I don't relate to. Maybe I'm a lazy listener, but I enjoy the the "common practice period" as you call it because I don't want listening to be work.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Jerome said:


> I understand what you are describing and I'm sure it applies to me like it would anybody. It's the idea of thinking about how I use my memory that I don't relate to. Maybe I'm a lazy listener, but I enjoy the the "common practice period" as you call it because I don't want listening to be work.


To me, 'work' or mental effort is a lot like a game, or a crossword puzzle, where the reward is in 'getting answers' for your mental efforts. A lot of music is like that. In Beethoven's Sixth, I hear all sorts of ways that he is 'playing with my head' in the way that he transforms things, and repeats them.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

DeepR said:


> Yes, that makes sense to me. As long as I listen to something often enough, I will remember it and eventually I know what's coming at any given moment. This helps me a lot in getting to know and appreciating the music. Memory is the key.


It is one of the keys. But too much of it can ruin 'in the moment listening' if not properly balanced. In a concert experience, I have to be finely sensitive to all the layers I am able to detect in a given moment and continuously noticing the changes and shifts. Sometimes they are very sudden, and sometimes they suddenly return. I would imagine that Mozart had a tremendous ability to do this, apart from his superb memory. It may be what initially lent him his superb memory, the supreme awareness and 'chunking capacity' of the present moment and the surrounding periphery of time to some extent. I wonder how someone like him would cope with music of a very different language, of the sort that was written a mere 50 years later even.

If you can really know a piece, and hear it new for many live performances, in different recordings, and even in the same recording(sometimes that's easier), you are listening at a high level. Always room to improve. I personally want to go to as many live concerts as I can afford...with music I know and music I don't know(not necessarily classical). Lately I've been feeling more acutely that I am not going to learn anymore about great artworks if I do not improve my capacity(which ironically can happen best inadvertently, when I am surprised with a new discovery).


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

For the conscious vs. unconscious part of Malerian's OP I can only relate my own experience. No amount of conscious effort seemed to do the trick for me I think because I was _consciously_ trying to control the music, to force it into patterns I recognize. Also, memorization was only partially successful. I had begun a few years back trying to memorize Varese's Arcana, (granted it's not that difficult or strange a work) only to find I was sick of the piece by the time I had it memorized.

I'm convinced only a background immersion gave my brain the freedom to start recognizing the newer patterns and appreciating the textures and timbres of the more "difficult" pieces I had not embraced before. Or, jokingly in Yoda's words, "Do or do not. There is no try."

Other's experiences of course may vary. I have only scratched the surface of this journey.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

As a small-town girl, I'm more likely to make sense of a piece if I already know one of its relatives 
It helps to "season" my ears with other things from the same period or same composer, or music that was in the air when this composer was first learning about music, or previous pieces that had been written in this form, etc.
I don't know if you'd call this chunking or maybe association?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

We must admit that the bar for what is considered difficult, even impossible to appreciate, can and does shift continually.

I stumbled across this article from the mid-60s, from an author who seems just ill-informed enough to pronounce a death sentence for all of the music he calls atonal (meaning Bartok, the Second Viennese School, mid-late Stravinsky, and just about all contemporary trends):
https://fee.org/articles/music-forced-feeding/

Having never associated the name David Diamond with difficult or "atonal" music, I was interested to find out what the piece mentioned in the article as so torturous was like. Based on the info with Munch giving the premiere with the Boston Symphony, I discovered that it was this:






THIS is what he considered the most awful kind of cacophony. It was his example of atonality, of "an unbelievable chaos of clashing, discordant sounds." Can't we see that the way the average listener interacts with 20th century music has completely changed since then? Bartok and middle Stravinsky and Honegger and Diamond are not considered beyond the pale of acceptability anymore, and it is this, not any musical characteristic, that has led to their redefinition as outside the bounds of "atonality."


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

^I was reading Aaron Copland's 'The New Music"(the later revised and annotated version). Copland certainly had a very keen aesthetic sense and yet limitations and just things that don't exactly compute for me exist in bits of his writing. He usually has a tremendous virtue of observing how these things are subject to change. The thoughts on Hindemith are really interesting from the dual 30s and 60s perspectives he gives. He gives extreme praise in the 30s and his annotations from the 60s make a big stink about how Hindemith smoothed over the most inspired aspects of his style with his own codified theoretical system. While this observation of his and others from around that time and maybe a little before, still hovers over much of Hindemith's legacy, I think he's balanced out a little over time from that dip as we remember him for his best works and also come to admire more once again, the 'craft of composition' as well as the traditionally more exalted composers' 'artistic obligation'(or however you'd put it).

Anyway, I'm familiar with Diamond's symphonic style. My appreciation of it perhaps does not run deep, and I've always thought of him as sort of a member of the Walter Piston americana symphonist school(and I certainly like Piston's work a little better). When I was first getting into 'americana' Roy Harris's 3rd was the first one I really knew well(followed by Schuman's 3rd and some of Piston's). The Roy Harris sounded cool to me, but because my ears were used to, without me really understanding the mechanism behind it, the 'good voice leading' of the baroque/classical and probably some other things I can't articulate well, I found the music interesting but forced and harmonically random, was unable to sense it's organicism or 'virtuous' lack thereof. There are different ways that music can have integrity and it takes time to get a sense of all those dimensions(and the less prominent dimensions that composers may enlarge upon so they can be free of the self criticism from comparing themselves to what others did before them, with space to only use their own logic, intuition, etc. for development of aesthetic sense). 

I guess that can get back to the 'chunking' and how music that spreads (possibly)different material over (possibly)different 'dimensions' can take time and the right perspective, so you can get a good aesthetic, emotional, and architectural idea of a piece within an unfamiliar idiom.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> THIS is what he considered the most awful kind of cacophony. It was his example of atonality, of "an unbelievable chaos of clashing, discordant sounds." Can't we see that the way the average listener interacts with 20th century music has completely changed since then? Bartok and middle Stravinsky and Honegger and Diamond are not considered beyond the pale of acceptability anymore, and it is this, not any musical characteristic, that has led to their redefinition as outside the bounds of "atonality."


I would hesitate to draw broad conclusions based on the writing of one borderline musical illiterate. The man wasn't even a music critic.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> I would hesitate to draw broad conclusions based on the writing of one borderline musical illiterate. The man wasn't even a music critic.


My only conclusion is against the idea that "atonality" is something immediately understood and perceived by the average listener.

So often the argument is presented (without any evidence) that atonality is a unitary and consistent concept which people understand and which applies to a specific group of pieces (or composers). Any evidence that an interested observer does not have the same perception of what is, in fact, atonal, should count against that idea.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I had a listening experience live tonight that was 'of the heart.' I've been using my flawed and sometimes tired intellect way too much in my listening(usually I get into 'imaginative listening and that at least feels more fluid), and this experience of a piece I did not know well at all(Dvorak Piano Quintet 2), reminded me that the ears can hear and the heart can react, it doesn't necessarily need to pass through the mind or even through the heights of the imagination. Sometimes you just aren't able to be open to it, but when that happens on the highest level and you have 'good ears'(which most classical listeners probably do), it reminds you why you started listening in the first place.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> My only conclusion is against the idea that "atonality" is something immediately understood and perceived by the average listener.
> 
> So often the argument is presented (without any evidence) that atonality is a unitary and consistent concept which people understand and which applies to a specific group of pieces (or composers). Any evidence that an interested observer does not have the same perception of what is, in fact, atonal, should count against that idea.


I have always agreed with your general point that the term atonal is used in an incoherent way by the public, usually as a synonym for "stuff I don't like." That seems self-evident to me. Specialists, however, still find it useful, applied judiciously, and the rantings of musical illiterates are not relevant to those cases.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> I have always agreed with your general point that the term atonal is used in an incoherent way by the public, usually as a synonym for "stuff I don't like." That seems self-evident to me. Specialists, however, still find it useful, applied judiciously, and the rantings of musical illiterates are not relevant to those cases.


Many specialists, including the writers in the Grove Dictionary as well as the majority of composers I know of who have expressed an opinion on the term, consider it incoherent or at least not applicable to their own work.

I have no problem with the term if it is used meaningfully, and thus non-literally, but in general discussion it is unhelpful, because it says nothing whatsoever about the dimension of the music it purports to describe. Taken literally, it is false if applied to the music that is most associated with the term. It adds nothing to our understanding of how the music thus described is constructed, nor does it give any indication of how it sounds, except to the lay listener who is unfamiliar with all or the majority of such music and perceives it as noise.

But isn't criticizing someone's reaction and calling them a musical illiterate the definition of the "blaming the audience" attitude that people are so quick to criticize here (even when no blame is actually being leveled in that direction)?


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