# Idée fixe



## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Have you ever experienced an urge to listen to just one piece of music again and again? It's as if listening to this piece becomes your "idée fixe" and you can't stop listening to it everyday for many days and you don't get bored with it.

It happens to me quite often, these days it was Schubert Mass in E-flat , before his last Sonata.
Before that it was Poulenc's Stabat Mater , not to mention Bruckner's symphonies


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I know the feeling: this is one disc I've listen to the most.
​
:tiphat:


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

This happens to me occasionally, usually when some underlying design seems to be revealing itself gradually with each hearing. Most often it is a matter of subtle thematic relationships that are adding up to a kind of overall narrative. When this happens I know I could accelerate the process by listening with a score and doing a formal analysis of some kind, but I prefer to get to know pieces by ear and intuition alone. Then, when I think I have "got it," I will sometimes get a score to verify what I think I have heard.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

just now I was listening to 3 arias of Dalila by Saint-Saens and I remember some years ago the third one was both an idee fixe and an earworm, etc LOL in short higly pleasant unavoidable unstoppable compulsive piece of music.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> This happens to me occasionally, usually when some underlying design seems to be revealing itself gradually with each hearing. Most often it is a matter of subtle thematic relationships that are adding up to a kind of overall narrative. When this happens I know I could accelerate the process by listening with a score and doing a formal analysis of some kind, but I prefer to get to know pieces by ear and intuition alone. Then, when I think I have "got it," I will sometimes get a score to verify what I think I have heard.


That's true. It's not just about repeating a pleasure of re-listening, but again a piece itself reveals new layers and one realizes how many more things are to be heard and understood. It's not just about technique of composition , it's as well about finding a substance pf a piece through repeated listening. I agree about listening with a score and even with this help when you know a formal structure of this piece and almost learned it by heart , yet still you keep listening to it as if for you it was new forever.....


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> This happens to me occasionally, usually when some underlying design seems to be revealing itself gradually with each hearing. Most often it is a matter of subtle thematic relationships that are adding up to a kind of overall narrative. When this happens I know I could accelerate the process by listening with a score and doing a formal analysis of some kind, but I prefer to get to know pieces by ear and intuition alone. T*hen, when I think I have "got it," I will sometimes get a score to verify what I think I have heard.*


I share this approach. However, there is, Ed, an important caveat that I'd like to add, which is that the score cannot confirm everything that you have heard (or even thought you have heard). Which is why we need to accept the primacy of the ear and all that we hear that is not in the score and all that is written "between the lines" of the score. 
But yes, to answer Helenora's OP, I too often spend an inordinate amount of time on certain music until my "need" (whatever that may be) is satisfied.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

There is sometimes a feeling that I want to absorb or assimilate the piece into my own DNA or something. In my experience this usually happens with shorter pieces, works that are like finely crafted flawless jewels that I feel I have a chance of assimilating. Longer works can be too involved for this to kick in, or it may happen with just a moment out of a longer work.


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

Yes, that sounds familiar, Helenora.
It happens all the time; pianosonata by Mozart, sometimes a part of WTC or a movement from a concerto by Shostakovich, or some part of a stringquartet, recently it was a part of a Prokofiev ballet.
I actually enjoy these spells, just dropping the needle again and again. Saves the problem of "what to listen to next"


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Various ones throughout the years, most recently Stravinsky's _Violin Concerto_ and Schoenberg's _Serenade_, but there was a time when I listened to Messiaen's _Turangalîla-Symphonie_ several times a week, and even a period in which I would listen to all of Sibelius' symphonies in a single sitting with about the same regularity.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2015)

I recently spent about two hours replaying the last four minutes of _Lulu_ in a loop. I know the feels <3


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Happens to me all the time. I would hear a piece I really, really like, and then I would want to listen to nothing but that piece for a week. There was at least one time I got up at 4 am just because I had an overwhelming need to listen to a certain Schubert lied.



nathanb said:


> I recently spent about two hours replaying the last four minutes of _Lulu_ in a loop. I know the feels <3


And the above is my curse. I am slowly learning NOT to replay anything. A Wagner opera that lasts almost four hours turns into an opera which lasts six hours when you listen to each of the preludes and other favorite moments two or three times.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> And the above is my curse. I am slowly learning NOT to replay anything. A Wagner opera that lasts almost four hours turns into an opera which lasts six hours when you listen to each of the preludes and other favorite moments two or three times.


I don't believe that I am [physically/emotionally/neurologically/biologically/etc] capable of hearing the beginning of Das Rheingold's second scene (the first entrance of Wotan).... without AT LEAST two rewinds.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

It happens too many times to even begin to tell you.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Quite often, yes - usually pieces with an attractive but complicated sound - like Takemitsu´s Riverrun (BIS), Nørgård´s Piano Concerto, or the intricate web of Medtner´s 3rd Concerto (Ponti), or the mosaique in Bruckner symphonies. But sometimes also more sentimental pieces, that are somehow irresistible - Silvestrov´s Metamusik, or very engaged, nuanced recordings of a piece, like Schubert´s Forellenquintet (currently !).


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

helenora said:


> Have you ever experienced an urge to listen to just one piece of music again and again? It's as if listening to this piece becomes your "idée fixe" and you can't stop listening to it everyday for many days and you don't get bored with it.
> 
> It happens to me quite often, these days it was Schubert Mass in E-flat , before his last Sonata.
> Before that it was Poulenc's Stabat Mater , not to mention Bruckner's symphonies


By chance I happened to listen to the Poulenc Stabat Mater just the other day. I can recommend this recording, though it is very lushly reverberant. Fine performance.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

helenora said:


> Have you ever experienced an urge to listen to just one piece of music again and again? It's as if listening to this piece becomes your "idée fixe" and you can't stop listening to it everyday for many days and you don't get bored with it.
> 
> It happens to me quite often, these days it was Schubert Mass in E-flat , before his last Sonata.
> Before that it was Poulenc's Stabat Mater , not to mention Bruckner's symphonies


GG's 1981 recording of the Goldberg variations.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> I share this approach. However, there is, Ed, an important caveat that I'd like to add, which is that the score cannot confirm everything that you have heard (or even thought you have heard). Which is why we need to accept the primacy of the ear and all that we hear that is not in the score and all that is written "between the lines" of the score.
> But yes, to answer Helenora's OP, I too often spend an inordinate amount of time on certain music until my "need" (whatever that may be) is satisfied.


Sloppy writing on my part. I probably should have said "confirm or disconfirm." I'm not sure I agree with you. What my ear decides is important, more often than not, seems to derive from something more or less objectively present in the score -- unless this is evidence of many cases of confirmation bias


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Yes, all the time. Sometimes it becomes powerful enough I have to play it on the piano (either the original, or a transcription, if I can find one) to get it out of my head. But that pretty much is the foolproof method to resolve it. The music's trying to say something to me, and only in that way can I get to it, even if I can't do so consciously.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

When I was in high school I made a tape of Chopin's _Funeral March_ repeated over and over, and every Saturday morning I would listen to it while I read _Ecclesiastes_. I still think "Vanity of vanities" every time I hear the beginning of that piece.


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