# Knowing, understanding and forming an opinion on music



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think there's a link between knowing, understanding and forming opinions about things, including music.

*Knowing *is experience with something, in this case listening to a piece of music.

*Understanding *implies something more, perhaps prolonged experience, or delving deeper in some way. In terms of music this can be listening many times, or learning more about the piece.

*Opinions *are what you think about the music, what's your reaction, do you enjoy it or not, etc.

These are all related and I'm not arguing there's clear boundaries between them. Once we have knowledge of or experience with something, it inevitably leads to other things learnt along the way. A lot of this depends on our own innate preferences and inclinations. We also tend to link new knowledge with old knowledge.

Another issue is your background. In terms of music, there will be differences between musicians and those who don't play an instrument or read music.

The first two are more or less prerequisites for the third one. Its hard to talk about some piece of music, let alone judge it, if we haven't heard it. I've been guilty of prejudging, but the issue is that this type of judgement isn't of much use. Actual judgement is based on experiences.

*So what do you think about all this?* I raise it because its something that crosses my mind in relation to our discussions on this forum, especially the more controversial discussions.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I like your differentiation of knowledge & understanding. Opinions and how they are expressed seem to have a lot to do with the mindset and character of the poster. I have a feeling that those with most knowledge and understanding are charier about expressing a dogmatic or prescriptive opinion than some with shallower knowledge. Maybe this is because to reach this stage of wide knowledge and deep understanding someone has spent a long time listening to and/or playing music. Along the way they will have realised at various points that they don't know everything, that they are mistaken, that some other poster knows more than them etc, and their understanding will incorporate knowledge of music discussion and what it can achieve.

I am speaking of course about opinions which go beyond 'I like or dislike'; we can all say that, even if we know little, but we should make it clear how far our knowledge of a particular topic extends. 

Interesting thread. :tiphat:


----------



## Guest (May 13, 2014)

Sid James said:


> Its [sic] hard to talk about some piece of music, let alone judge it, if we haven't heard it.


If only 'twere true.

In online discussions, it is much easier, and more common, to judge things one is not familiar with. In fact, I have noticed that the (untrue) cliche that everyone is entitled to their opinion only applies to people whose opinions are based on prejudice rather than knowledge. People whose opinions are based on knowledge and experience are routinely criticized for even having opinions at all.

"You know things. How dare you have opinions??!!"

:lol::lol:


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> If only 'twere true.
> 
> In online discussions, it is much easier, and more common, to judge things one is not familiar with. In fact, I have noticed that the (untrue) cliche that everyone is entitled to their opinion only applies to people whose opinions are based on prejudice rather than knowledge. People whose opinions are based on knowledge and experience are routinely criticized for even having opinions at all.
> 
> ...


Sorry to be so cynically in agreement with Some Guy, but listening to a piece dozens of times does not mean you know anything about it at all. Besides, it is a forum, where what people feel seems to quite often pass for thoughts, and from that we get....


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Sid James said:


> The first two are more or less prerequisites for the third one.


Well, certainly your opinion about music you've not heard is of little value, but I don't see how understanding is a prerequisite for having an opinion. Actually I'm inclined to believe that understanding a piece of music is useful mainly as a way of devising an after-the-fact explanation for one's "gut" reaction to that music. You might change your opinion of a piece through greater understanding, but I don't think it's understanding, in of itself, that effects this change - here, personality's the main factor.


----------



## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

I see understanding in the sense of technical knowledge to be less relevant here, when we are talking about music. For example, in recent discussions, it has been proposed that we don't need to know that a piece is serial, atonal etc in order to enjoy it, any more than we need to know the key of a piece composed in the CPP. 

PetrB says you can play a piece dozens of times and not know it. This I feel is true. If you keep trying a piece, over and over again, and still don't like it, then you simply do not know or understand what the composer and performers are communicating to you.

In terms of the OP, and my response to it, I cannot really split knowledge and understanding very easily.

Finally, I think it is possible to have opinions without much familiarity of a work. When I listen to a new style for the first time, I often have strong positive reactions to new sounds that I hear. Also, there is that rare but wonderful sensation of being 'blown away'!

These maybe more intense than after I've been hearing these sounds for several years. To the extent that I could put these sensations into words, I would consider these opinions to have validity.


----------



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Wood said:


> PetrB says you can play a piece dozens of times and not know it. This I feel is true. If you keep trying a piece, over and over again, and still don't like it, then you simply do not know or understand what the composer and performers are communicating to you.


You may know and / or understand exactly what the composer and performers are communicating to you. You may admire their technical proficiency, their musicianship, their skill, their ensemble work. You may be able to say that the piece is "better" than another by the same composer or that this performance is better (or worse) than another. But you may still not like what they are saying.

Some people have that reaction to early music or to Renaissance or Baroque - they can identify the skill set, but don't like the result. Others to some other period of music. It's like preferring Jane Austen to Charles Dickens. You can identify the skill set, analyse the content and still come up saying that you can't stand Dickens because .....


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Taggart said:


> You may know and / or understand exactly what the composer and performers are communicating to you. You may admire their technical proficiency, their musicianship, their skill, their ensemble work. You may be able to say that the piece is "better" than another by the same composer or that this performance is better (or worse) than another. But you may still not like what they are saying.
> 
> Some people have that reaction to early music or to Renaissance or Baroque - they can identify the skill set, but don't like the result. Others to some other period of music. It's like preferring Jane Austen to Charles Dickens. You can identify the skill set, analyse the content and still come up saying that you can't stand Dickens because .....


For a Pure Listener (love that term) 'analyzing the content' is a useless exercise - no tools available. Listening to medieval and/or Renaissance music can be unfruitful simply because the sounds of the instruments are distracting enough to preclude following the music itself. This is especially true of 'outdoors' instruments. The music itself, at least from 1200 or so on, seems to follow rules also utilized in later periods. Gregorian chant may be a challenge, and Ambrosian chant may seem excessively simple, but neither of those are simpler than some R&R hits from the 50s. Or, for me, Arvo Part.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Knowing and understanding can perhaps mean different things to different people. Someone who is well versed in music theory may understand works in a way that I never will. For "pure listeners" I will accept Sid's definitions. When I begin to listen to certain works, I hear them and may form opinions, but I may not have enough experience to "hear" the work "properly". A few years ago I could listen to an unheard Classic era work and form an opinion based on years of hearing Classical era works. I would not require much more listening to understand that work and form a reasonable opinion of it because I understood the Classical era language.

When I listened to Berg, I did not yet understand the new (to me) language so I formed an opinion, but that opinion was clearly subject to change. Later I came to understand the language better and my opinions of some of Berg's works changed enormously. Earlier I had _knowledge_ of Berg's works, but I did not have an _understanding_ of them.

I will say that understanding a work does not necessarily mean one will like it. It simply gives one the opportunity to like it.


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Sorry to be so cynically in agreement with Some Guy, but listening to a piece dozens of times does not mean you know anything about it at all. Besides, it is a forum, where what people feel seems to quite often pass for thoughts, and from that we get....
> View attachment 41875


I thoroughly agree with PetrB here. Nevertheless, I'm not ready to dismiss musically inspired feelings and their potential role in gaining knowledge and understanding of musical works. I have skills in music analysis and I am capable of taking apart complex pieces to figure out their inner workings. But when I approach new or relatively unfamiliar works, especially those informed by expressive aesthetic theories (Beethoven to well into the twentieth century), I try to put all of that aside and to focus on expression and letting the music inhabit me. I try to become the music, to imagine that it is experience and impressions my mind is singing, if that makes any sense. Of course it is impossible for a trained musician or theorist not to recognize all sorts of technical details, motivic connections, and so on, but it helps me to keep those in the background at first. When I listen this way I will often reach some sort of intuition like: That passage there, the one that just made me shiver, that is the crucial bit! If I can explain what is behind that intuition - all the musical forces that culminated in that effect - I will understand the piece. I had an epiphany like this hearing a pianist performing the slow movement of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata. A subtle emphasis she put on a certain passage (mm. 89 and following) sent shivers up my spine, particularly the way she stressed the last 16th note of measure 90, and I felt intuitively that that one detail was absolutely critical to the structure and significance of the movement. It took me about three years, off and on, to come up with an explanation for why this is so. And if I had simply launched into a formal analysis without the initial intense emotional and aesthetic engagement, I would have missed it because the passage does not stand out in any obvious specifically technical sense.

That story had a strange sequel: A few days later, still under the spell of the magical performance, I was sitting in the student lounge at my school studying that specific passage of the Prokofiev sonata when another pianist I highly respected walked by, looked over my shoulder, and said: "Oh yeah! That passage is it! Wonderful." He didn't explain what he meant at all, but I took it as the best possible confirmation that I was onto something.


----------



## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Taggart said:


> You may know and / or understand exactly what the composer and performers are communicating to you. You may admire their *technical proficiency, their musicianship, their skill, their ensemble work*. You may be able to say that the piece is "better" than another by the same composer or that this performance is better (or worse) than another. But you may still not like what they are saying.
> 
> Some people have that reaction to early music or to Renaissance or Baroque - they can identify the skill set, but don't like the result. Others to some other period of music. It's like preferring Jane Austen to Charles Dickens. You can* identify the skill set, analyse the content *and still come up saying that you can't stand Dickens because .....


This is difficult to discuss because the words we are using can have different meanings according to where we place the emphasis.

The bolded things above fall into the category of 'technical knowledge' which may be helpful but should not be necessary in understanding a piece.

Artists talk about their work in terms of whether it is 'right' or not. There are intangible properties in these pieces which are beyond the skill set. It is these that I am thinking of in terms of understanding a piece of music and what the artist is communicating.

I'm not sure if what I'm saying carries over into literature. Probably it doesn't.


----------



## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

PetrB said:


> but listening to a piece dozens of times does not mean you know anything about it at all


I should point out that the music _was_ rather loud when I listened to it.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Sid James said:


> *So what do you think about all this?*


Summing up:

1. Experience it (by listening to it)
2. (Try to) Understand it (by listening repeatedly and critically, reading about it, and/or learning to play it)
3. Form an Opinion about it (unavoidable consequence, I think  )

That is a working model for me. It pretty much describes how I approach music, literature, visual art, etc. Of course, my opinion matures as my exposure (to the piece in question, and to other pieces) increases.



PetrB said:


> ...listening to a piece dozens of times does not mean you know anything about it at all.


I don't agree at all. By listening many times, you begin to understand the themes, the development, the instrumentation, the structure of the piece, the feelings the music gives you, etc. For a listener, this familiarity is the goal, is it not?



Couac Addict said:


> I should point out that the music _was_ rather loud when I listened to it.


When all else fails, this is sure to work


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> Originally Posted by *PetrB*
> 
> ...listening to a piece dozens of times does not mean you know anything about it at all.
> 
> ...


What I'm beginning to understand is that a lot of folks listen to music hoping to understand it. I have no wish to understand. Certainly no wish for familiarity beyond the realization that I've heard the piece before - that much seems unavoidable.

[What do you folks mean by 'understand' anyway?]


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Ukko said:


> Certainly no wish for familiarity beyond the realization that I've heard the piece before...


You can't be serious  That's so uninvolved. Maybe you just don't like classical music? 



Ukko said:


> [What do you folks mean by 'understand' anyway?]


Understanding "the themes, the development, the instrumentation, the structure of the piece, the feelings the music gives you, etc." That's what I wrote above. I cannot speak for others.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> You can't be serious  That's so uninvolved. Maybe you just don't like classical music?
> 
> Understanding "the themes, the development, the instrumentation, the structure of the piece, the feelings the music gives you, etc." That's what I wrote above. I cannot speak for others.


I don't want to know where the music is going _before_ I hear it; simultaneously is OK, but not ideal. I suspect your 'understanding' would be a grinding bore for me. The process of not processing is fairly easy for me, perhaps "a gif' God gi' me".


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Ukko said:


> I suspect your 'understanding' would be a grinding bore for me. The process of not processing is fairly easy for me, perhaps "a gif' God gi' me".


Tell me more about "my 'understanding'"  I must have missed something.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for all your responses. I'll just comment on a few of them here:



Ingélou said:


> I like your differentiation of knowledge & understanding. Opinions and how they are expressed seem to have a lot to do with the mindset and character of the poster. I have a feeling that those with most knowledge and understanding are charier about expressing a dogmatic or prescriptive opinion than some with shallower knowledge. Maybe this is because to reach this stage of wide knowledge and deep understanding someone has spent a long time listening to and/or playing music. *Along the way they will have realised at various points that they don't know everything, that they are mistaken, that some other poster knows more than them etc, and their understanding will incorporate knowledge of music discussion and what it can achieve*.
> 
> I am speaking of course about opinions which go beyond 'I like or dislike'; we can all say that, even if we know little, but we should make it clear how far our knowledge of a particular topic extends.
> 
> Interesting thread. :tiphat:


I think that's true, the more we learn, the more questions are open to us. So things become complicated and its harder to lock down an opinion on a piece. I have changed the way I think about many things, to a large part because of accumulating experiences with music over the years. I know that I had fairly strongly held opinions before that now, with hindsight and more listening/reading time under my belt on various topics of interest, I have reversed position on.

So its healthy to want answers and learn new things, thus get more experiences and reassess our opinions.

The flipside of more knowledge and expertise is that we become very close to our love, or obsession, and we develop a focus. Then it can go the other way, from broad to narrow. We don't broach differences of opinion, but we know that the same piece of music can be analysed in different ways, and very different but equally valid opinions can result from this.

Perhaps its like the different interpreations of scores we listen to here? There's not just one interp there's several, all offer various viewpoints or if you like takes/opinions on the piece.

Regarding what *Nereffid* says, also *Wood*, I think that it highlights what I said. I can't divide these three things, and I don't want to. Perhaps its an issue of differentiating between the gut/blown away type of opinion as a reaction, or more reactive. Whereas some opinion that has resulted from more time and more considered approach to the music, that's closer to informed opinion. Its not even an issue of what is more valid, they are equally so, just different. They're coming from different angles, from different types/aspects/stages of experience.



Taggart said:


> You may know and / or understand exactly what the composer and performers are communicating to you. You may admire their technical proficiency, their musicianship, their skill, their ensemble work. You may be able to say that the piece is "better" than another by the same composer or that this performance is better (or worse) than another. But you may still not like what they are saying.
> 
> Some people have that reaction to early music or to Renaissance or Baroque - *they can identify the skill set, but don't like the result.* Others to some other period of music. It's like preferring Jane Austen to Charles Dickens. *You can identify the skill set, analyse the content and still come up saying that you can't stand Dickens because ....*.





mmsbls said:


> ...
> I will say that understanding a work does not necessarily mean one will like it. It simply gives one the opportunity to like it.


Regarding what you two gents are saying, I think thats true, because I come across conflicting opinions all the time from equally well informed and experienced experts.

One such example is Webern, who I have read a bit about, and one opinion I read that he's a Modernist, another that he's a Romantic. I was surprised by the latter assessment, and the writer said he's more Romantic that Schoenberg! So this is the thing, one can come to different conclusions, and that kind of diversity of opinion is interesting.

Another thing that made me do this thread was recent reading about another musician, who I won't name. But there is an anecdote in the book, about a fellow musician rubbishing this musician's work. Then when he actually heard some of his latest music, he had to revise his formerly critical opinion. He actually reversed totally, did a back flip. His opinion became positive, his earlier opinion was based on old information. So this is another thing, if we don't keep up to date with such things, our opinions can go stale. I am not saying that every listener has to be up on the latest trends and buy the latest cd's and so on. Its just to point out that maybe opinions, like music itself, is of a certain time. Things change, and with it, opinions can radically change.

Re *ukko *Vladimir Ashkenazy would understand your type of approach:

http://www.talkclassical.com/24082-vladimir-ashkenazy-not-talking.html

For listeners and musicians sharing this type of view, music will not be about talking or trying to understand, but to experience. _Just do it_ as the famous slogan goes.

But brotagonist hit the nail on the head as regards my own approach:



brotagonist said:


> Summing up:
> 
> 1. Experience it (by listening to it)
> 2. (Try to) Understand it (by listening repeatedly and critically, reading about it, and/or learning to play it)
> ...


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> You may know and / or understand exactly what the composer and performers are communicating to you. You may admire their technical proficiency, their musicianship, their skill, their ensemble work. You may be able to say that the piece is "better" than another by the same composer or that this performance is better (or worse) than another. But you may still not like what they are saying.
> 
> Some people have that reaction to early music or to Renaissance or Baroque - they can identify the skill set, but don't like the result. Others to some other period of music. It's like preferring Jane Austen to Charles Dickens. You can identify the skill set, analyse the content and still come up saying that you can't stand Dickens because .....


When it turns to discussion, "from your mouth to...."

_If only more listeners were nearly as objective_


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> Tell me more about "my 'understanding'"  I must have missed something.


Probably not. And no thanks.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ukko said:


> I don't want to know where the music is going _before_ I hear it; simultaneously is OK, but not ideal. I suspect your 'understanding' would be a grinding bore for me. The process of not processing is fairly easy for me, perhaps "a gif' God gi' me".


Highly trained musician here, and yet I more than suspect, but know, that I initially 'just listen' and whatever thinking may come into that first listen is pretty much dismissed with an _'oh, shut up, self.'_

For me, a first listen is very much like what a friend said about how she approaches reading books: "I read it once to see if I want to read it."

Plenty of time to further 'think about' a piece upon a second or more repeat listen(s).

I'm with Ukko, too, on it is really 'no fun' if you can pretty much tell where the ride is going and where you are going to end up... one reason Philip Glass' music has never caught me up, after a minute or not much more, I know and 'get' pretty much exactly what "I am in for, and for the entire duration," and it is like I've 'been there' already.... just not my kinda ride, I guess.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I initially 'just listen'... Plenty of time to further 'think about' a piece upon a second or more repeat listen(s).... it is really 'no fun' if you can pretty much tell where the ride is going and where you are going to end up.


As a "highly trained musician," you likely *can* think about a piece after only two or so listens, PetrB. It takes me quite a while (no specific number of listens) to feel like I can tell "where the ride is going." But here I do differ, in that, once I can tell (only snippets, as I am unable to hold an entire piece in memory), I get really excited when I know that a certain section is coming up (but I am not quite sure exactly when). I thought that this anticipation of favourite passages is something most listeners enjoy and cherish  Clearly not, as we have now established.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

brotagonist said:


> As a "highly trained musician," you likely *can* think about a piece after only two or so listens, PetrB. It takes me quite a while (no specific number of listens) to feel like I can tell "where the ride is going." But here I do differ, in that, once I can tell (only snippets, as I am unable to hold an entire piece in memory), I get really excited when I know that a certain section is coming up (but I am not quite sure exactly when). I thought that this anticipation of favourite passages is something most listeners enjoy and cherish  Clearly not, as we have now established.


Anticipating what is coming up, how it fits in the logic of a piece, is a kind of fun sport, and if the style is older and we are generally familiar, it is somewhat reflexively done. A piece 'new to you' from Mozart is likely going to find you doing just that, while a piece really new to you altogether, with little of any of the composers' work known to you, and from the modern or contemporary era, then I think a lot of bets are off, and I prefer to 'not know nuttin' and have any and all of it 'surprise' upon that initial exposure.

Yes, a trained and highly practiced musical memory does come along with retaining more of what one has heard and less surprises the second time around. But there are still other things quickly recognized on second listening or more, foreshadowing of an upcoming change, etc. which will still delight anew (if what the composer has done delights you, that is.)

And trained or other, many of us 'use' western classical music, ironically, since all of it highly structured in one way or another, as a form of relaxation, an escape from the constant rational linear left-brain 'thinking' to which westerners are prone, i.e. "Not Thinking at all," -- like a meditation. In those moments, whether the composer has put a lot of thinking into the piece or not, who 'wants to think,' instead of react to it moment by moment only on a visceral level?


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Taggart said:


> You may know and / or understand exactly what the composer and performers are communicating to you. You may admire their technical proficiency, their musicianship, their skill, their ensemble work. You may be able to say that the piece is "better" than another by the same composer or that this performance is better (or worse) than another. But you may still not like what they are saying.


More or less my relation to Richard Strauss and Carl Nielsen.


----------



## Alypius (Jan 23, 2013)

Sid James said:


> I think there's a link between knowing, understanding and forming opinions about things, including music.
> 
> *Knowing *is experience with something, in this case listening to a piece of music.
> 
> ...


Sid, It sounds like you are interested in investigating aesthetics, specifically the epistemology of aesthetics. A couple of recommended works. The first is:

*Jerrold Levinson, The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2005). *










Philosophers have been debating issues of knowing, opinion, and the arts since Plato. And they have lots of helpful insights (and terminology). Another very good starting point is:

*Peter Kivy, An Introduction to a Philosophy of Music (Oxford University Press, 2002)*

Concerning your three proposed categories, there is considerable overlap between them (and exchange between them) -- in other words, they are too porous to serve as clear-and-distinct categories. Also a number of further distinctions need to be made. For example, the knowledge that a musician has of a work that comes from reading the score, performing it, perhaps memorizing it is different from the knowledge of a conductor who worries less about the nitty-gritty of each note and more about seeing the big picture, seeing the forest from the trees. And then there is the knowledge of the scholar -- who might know the composer's biography, social context; or of the musicologist who has analyzed the score, its history, its various editions, its place within the history of a given genre. Opinion, I would argue, is in fact based on knowledge, perhaps good knowledge, perhaps poor, but it is a judgment usually based on knowledge of some sort. There is the quality of verbalization. Some can talk about music better because of training and natural gifts while others may well intuit important things about music but lack formal vocabulary of training. Here I've listed more intellectual and performative dimensions, but in music the affective is no less critical. There is the affective knowledge -- the affective sympathy of the performer who inhabits the piece that he or she plays (vs. the performer who simply plays the notes). And then there is the affective encounter by listeners who hear the music against the horizon of their own life experience. We all know how a piece of music has the ability to latch onto a particular period in our lives and so when we hear it many years later it catalyzes an upsurge of memories. What kind of knowledge is that? I toss out all these issues because these are all points of reflection in contemporary aesthetic reflections.

A couple of others books that I've seen recommended and have been meaning to explore are these:
Peter Szendy, _Listen: A History of Our Ears_ (Fordham University Press, 2008), and 
Jean-Luc Nancy, _Listening_ (Fordham University Press, 2007)


----------

