# Applying the concept of comprehensible input to classical music



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

In second language acquisition theory there is a concept of comprehensible input. It's basically an idea that the best way to acquire a language is to be exposed to input in that language, that challanges you, but is still comprehensible, and you can understand it and correctly guess unknown words from context. And gradually, more and more advanced texts become comprehensible input to you, and thus you make progress in learning the language.

The theory also states:

Progress can't be made if the materials you're exposed to are way beyond your level, because then the input is not comprehensible, and you can't make much use of context.

Also naturally, input that's bellow your level while it might reinforce what's already learned, can't help you make much progres.

So the input needs to be well adjusted to the level of student to be most effective.

Now I'm wondering if we could apply this theory to classical music.

Perhaps by listening to ever more advanced works, that are still comprehensible to us at the time of listening, we can develop our intuitive understanding of the language of music.

Also, perhaps, the works could be classified according to their level, to help the listeners choose materials that's most suitable to them.

What do you guys say?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Continued exposure to unfamiliar or difficult-to-comprehend music is certainly a crucial way to expand our horizons. But the difficulty I see is, how do you define "more advanced"? There's enough anecdotal evidence from TC contributors that music that many find incomprehensible just clicked instantly with them.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

It's no different with physical exercise. If you continue to perform the same exercise day after day, week after week, with no alteration or variation your body assumes it, gets used to it, and finds ways to lessen its difficulty. Same with mental exercise including the art of music comprehension. Listening to music is a form of problem resolution, especially complex forms of music. The more you can manage intellectually the greater capacity you have to extend this art to other areas of life. It's the concept of Mozart makes you smarter.


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## mrdoc (Jan 3, 2020)

I don't know about language as my some what limited knowledge comes from being taught foreign languages in my own country, however with music I can comment from experience I was just this very minute listening to my local CM station on the radio when the host announced that the next piece was some composition from a composer of modern day music, I was not in the mood so not wishing spend the next hour or so listening to music that I find mostly ugly and not to my taste I switched off and put a CD on the system, it is not that I have not given this music a chance I have tried for the past 50 or so years to find something likeable in it but have given that up as a lost cause and no longer waste my time on it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

ZJovicic said:


> Perhaps by listening to ever more advanced works, that are still comprehensible to us at the time of listening, we can develop our intuitive understanding of the language of music.
> 
> Also, perhaps, the works could be classified according to their level, to help the listeners choose materials that's most suitable to them.
> 
> What do you guys say?


I think this theory would be most applicable to tonal music, excluding serialism or "art" music of pure sound.

As any jazz aficionado can tell you, the more you listen to jazz, the better you get at following the changes without getting lost. The best example is fast be-bop jazz, such as Charlie Parker, which can get tricky at times during the solos. 
The advantage is that these be-bop tunes are based on a 'harmonic scaffolding' which gives you a reference point. The forms are based on blues forms and standards like "I've Got Rhythm" and "What Is This Thing Called Love."The live Sonny Rollins trio recordings (with no piano for harmonic reference) are challenging to listen to. But this is why jazz is so enjoyable to me; it's like doing crossword puzzles.

Beyond this, there comes a point in non-harmonic music like Feldman, Cage, musique concrete, Varese, The Second Vienna School late works, Ligeti, etc, where the concept of "harmonic understanding" no longer applies, and one has to "just listen, accept, and believe."


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## mrdoc (Jan 3, 2020)

millionrainbows said:


> As any jazz aficionado can tell you, the more you listen to jazz, the better you get at following the changes without getting lost. The best example is fast be-bop jazz, such as Charlie Parker, which can get tricky at times during the solos.
> The advantage is that these be-bop tunes are based on a 'harmonic scaffolding' which gives you a reference point. The forms are based on blues forms and standards like "I've Got Rhythm" and "What Is This Thing Called Love."The live Sonny Rollins trio recordings (with no piano for harmonic reference) are challenging to listen to. But this is why jazz is so enjoyable to me; it's like doing crossword puzzles.


I played jazz for years and the one thing that is a constant through be bop to trad jazz is that it has rhythm, melody and follows a structure be it 12 bar or 32 bar and is easy to follow, I will exclude "free jazz" as I have never got my head around that.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Repeated listenings are often needed to understand and enjoy a piece of music. For me it was a gradual progression. I started out as a young teenager or about fourteen with my first part job and spending money I was just out to find great melodies that I had heard on TV (Tchaikovsky's _1812_, Rossini's _Barber of Seville Overture_, Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_). Then I remember hearing Sibelius' beautiful _Swan of Tounela_, and it took me to a new plateau where I could see the swan meandering the marsh in my mind. It was then that I saw how composers to arrange sound to create interesting effects. Apart from just finding new things to listen for, I think much of what I began to like was what I wanted to like. I really wanted to like composers such as Schoenberg and Messiean, and after sometimes years or decades of giving such music an even chance, have come to enjoy much music that I once thought of unlistenable.

I'm a big believer in what Aristotle said when he said "The roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet."

And I think this is epsecially true in classical music, because I remember when even a symphony by Beethoven or Tchaikovsky mystified me as being too long, too rambling, and I was sitting there saying to myself, "When does something good happen?"

As with food, I have a bent for sweets, though as I've become overweight and borderline diabetic, I now keep the cookies and cake to the absolute minimum. Fortunately silly and cloying pop and country songs don't add calories. Even so, I find that the more I play a pop/country song that I like, the more I dislike it, and after hearing it a bunch of times I can be done with it for about a year. Classical music is just the opposite for me, where the more I hear a symphony, a concerto, or an opera, the more I find to enjoy in it.

So ,yeah, sometimes you need to put some work into it, but you may find it worth the effort.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I guess that what music tells us cannot easily (or at all) be put into words. If it could it would have been. So, it's all comprehensible input but we don't so much guess as feel.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Continued exposure to unfamiliar or difficult-to-comprehend music is certainly a crucial way to expand our horizons. But the difficulty I see is, how do you define "more advanced"? There's enough anecdotal evidence from TC contributors that music that many find incomprehensible just clicked instantly with them.


And just as much evidence that such efforts, sincerely made, leave the music still as incomprehensible noise to others. (Indeed, I would suggest that the "clicked instantly" is by far the exception.)


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

JAS said:


> And just as much evidence that such efforts, sincerely made, leave the music still as incomprehensible noise to others. (Indeed, I would suggest that the "clicked instantly" is by far the exception.)


Yes, I'd say it's unusual certainly, but my point was more about what "more advanced" means. Does the fact that music is widely seen as "incomprehensible noise" mean it's more advanced? The language/music analogy doesn't quite work, because with language you can have, say, "The Cat in the Hat" versus "Finnegans Wake", and clearly in terms of language the latter is the more advanced and will be incomprehensible to someone who has only encountered books like the former. But with music this notion of "advanced" makes less sense. Surely the difference between, say, an early Haydn quartet and Crumb's "Black Angels" is less to do with one being more "advanced" than the other, and more to do with them just being in very different idioms. Most people prefer the idiom of the former, but some people readily take to that of the latter.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Yes, I'd say it's unusual certainly, but my point was more about what "more advanced" means. Does the fact that music is widely seen as "incomprehensible noise" mean it's more advanced? The language/music analogy doesn't quite work, because with language you can have, say, "The Cat in the Hat" versus "Finnegans Wake", and clearly in terms of language the latter is the more advanced and will be incomprehensible to someone who has only encountered books like the former. But with music this notion of "advanced" makes less sense. Surely the difference between, say, an early Haydn quartet and Crumb's "Black Angels" is less to do with one being more "advanced" than the other, and more to do with them just being in very different idioms. Most people prefer the idiom of the former, but some people readily take to that of the latter.


I think that is a good question, and I have often objected to the idea that it necessarily represents progress (which would at least imply more advanced). I think it would be hard to support the idea that much of it is not at least more complicated in terms of where the notes go and how the musicians interact (for a piece with more than one player). But, of course, complexity does not necessarily correlate to any other value.

In some cases, if it were not for the context, I would have no idea that the musicians are even playing the same piece. There is more traditional music where different things are going on at the same time, and yet they somehow seem related.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> No, I wouldn't put it that way. They invented jazz, so they wanted to free it from its commercial assimilation (and Latin associations, Bossa Nova) and take it back to its black roots. Art Blakey was well-known for asserting this with his Jazz Messengers recordings. Use your mind, JAS, and don't be so simplistic.
> 
> But if you listen to "free jazz" and it makes you feel punished, then that's just a bonus. Come to think of it, you SHOULD feel punished. This is a new era. They're talking about dismantling police departments. If you disagree, vote for Trump. :lol:


One hopes that we will find a happy medium between no police and a police state.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

We unapproved for further review some personal comments and many replies. Please refrain from such personal comments.


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## Guest (Jun 18, 2020)

ZJovicic said:


> What do you guys say?


Well, in one sense, it's obvious. Thinking of my learning of French at school, I couldn't have read La Peste in 6th Form without having spent some considerable time reading about La Famille Marsaud first. But the same applies in maths. I can hardly study trigonometry without having first understood some basic arithmetic.

I'm less inclined to think this relevant to music. I had no trouble listening to Dvorak and Holst when I was a kid. I didn't have to learn to listen to Three Blind Mice first (except to the extent that I would have acquired familiarity with nursery rhymes as a baby, of course).


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I'm a huge movie buff. I see the evolution of Classical Music somewhat similar to movies. Earlier in the evolution, music captured many similar moods and narratives as older films. More consonant endings, catharsis, etc. In the late 19th and 20th centuries the music had a lot more twists and turns, alternate dramatic arcs, similar to more recent movies. The idea was to make things go different than what was conventionally done before or expected, of which eventually became cliches. 

When I first listened to Ferneyhough, I wasn't used to the conventions used preceding, so I wasn't ready for any sort of comprehension, beyond just timbres and sounds. His music actually makes a lot of sense. This reminds of another thread that talked about the importance of chronology in music. Contemporary music would have much less impact or relevance without context of the preceding.

Ok, back to the analogy with film, there were also lots of 'art' films I had no clue to why they were acclaimed, since I wasn't used to the conventions used or preceding, which I later came to experience myself. I was at first put off by the expression 'more advanced' used in the original post, but I agree with its use in terms of advancement of experience or time.


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## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

I think it is a big assumption that enjoyment of a piece of music comes from some objective understanding of it


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