# Aesthetic Discernment and Pleasure In Music



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Before I begin all I ask is that everyone stay on topic which is music appreciation and aesthetics. If you want to discuss art in general, paintings or museums please start another thread.

@ StlukesguildOhio



> *Ultimately this comes down to an ignorant and arrogant kid who is outraged that the opinions of those with far greater experience and knowledge are held is greater esteem than his or her own. Certainly I can "appreciate" this as I remember that not too long ago I was an ignorant and arrogant kid who had a little knowledge of art under his belt and assumed that he knew everything about art... certainly as much or more than his professors.*



Why do you keep doing this? Seriously, why do you keep saying "knowledge of art". For the umpty-umpth time, the other thread was NOT about art or literature. I made that very clear on _the first page_ and I also said that I personally would need *ALL* the outside help I could get to understand the literary masterpieces and other forms. So please, this is not at all about 'arrogance'

The topic was aesthetic discernment and pleasure in music. And the notion that some people hear music more more exquisitely than others just because they studied an instrument or theory or music history. And the conceit that they can make others 'come to their level of aural perception/understanding' by sharing their individual.... _"broad-based toolbox"_

Nope sorry, I don't require another human being to help me recognize beauty and perceive nuances in a musical composition, this intangible and subjective thing. Introspection and personal study are everything. We already know from research that a brain network linked to solitary introspection gets switched on when we encounter particularly moving artworks. Once I feel that initial 'stab of communication' I am on my way to further passionate exploration and the last thing I'd care about are someone else's observations. The interest in other people's thoughts would come much later at the end but only as a type of *diversion* to see if their enthusiasms about the work match your own.

Another person here wrote:



> *To receive pleasure from intense listening IS understanding. What else do we listen to music for? I also do not understand the concept of 'newbie' when it comes to music. My mother used to play a little of the opening of the Moonlight sonata on our piano when I was a child. I loved it then and I love it now. Now I know all about how it is constructed, I know harmony and classical sonata form, I can view it in it's historical position and appreciate it's originality and genius but do I love it more now than when I was six?
> 
> I don't think so.*



Of course I agree with this.

Finally I'd like to highlight one of Starry's posts:



> *You can read up on music all you want but unless you bother listening closely you won't get to like the music. Altering your own brain does take some personal effort, piggybacking on others won't get you that far. And you seem to intentionally confuse listening appreciation with learning technical aspects for performance. Yes, people are very copycat like even when maybe they should put in some of their own initiative, one of the weaker aspects of the species arguably.
> 
> [........]
> 
> ...



Yes, that seems to be the taboo. I agree with him.... And it seems like some people today have lost faith in the idea that formal and emotional aesthetic experience in and of itself is enough.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Hoo, boy! I think someone needs to realize that the word art is is known to have two meanings, i.e one usage is specific to the visual arts, the other refers to any and all of the (fine) arts.

The last I heard, and having heard absolutely zero arguments to the contrary, music is an art, and "art."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Yes, I will stay exactly on topic. A "native" appreciation without any further knowledge can lead to true discernment, an example being the intuitively obvious superiority of Ravel's music to that of Debussy. :devil:


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2014)

Before I begin, let me make it clear that this is an attempt to provide a serious answer to your renewed thread on aesthetic discernment etc. Feel free to respond to my points.



Xavier said:


> The topic was aesthetic discernment and pleasure in music. And the notion that some people hear music more more exquisitely than others just because they studied an instrument or theory or music history. And the conceit that they can make others 'come to their level of aural perception/understanding' by sharing their individual.... _"broad-based toolbox"
> _
> I'm sure some can. It's not for me or you to deny that this is the case.
> 
> ...


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Why do you keep doing this? Seriously, why do you keep saying "knowledge of art". For the umpty-umpth time, the other thread was NOT about art or literature. I made that very clear on the first page and I also said that I personally would need ALL the outside help I could get to understand the literary masterpieces and other forms. So please, this is not at all about 'arrogance'

The topic was aesthetic discernment and pleasure in music.

The problem is that there is no difference between music and other art forms, be they painting, poetry, etc... One may take pleasure... like... enjoy any given painting or poem without the least understanding of these works... just as you may take similar pleasure in a work of music. Just as some learning would likely change your appreciation for painting or poetry, the same holds true of music... regardless of your thinking to the contrary. There are works of music that I appreciate in ways that are more multi-layered now after having learned a bit about the work... about music in general... about the artist...etc... Is this multi-layered appreciation better than that of one's first love of a marvelous work of music? That is debatable. The fact is that I... and many others... would be far more likely to listen to the opinions of experienced and educated individuals than the "newbie"... but certainly feel free to carry on with your delusion that all opinions are equal.

I am on my way to further passionate exploration and the last thing I'd care about are someone else's observations.

Ultimately, it is my own opinion that matters in evaluating a work of music... or any artistic endeavor. No one can make me like a work... even if I come to understand and even appreciate it. On the other hand, I certainly value the opinions and observations of others, and have come to appreciate... even love works that I once hated... or worse yet... merely ignored... because they allowed me to see such works in a whole new light. What you fail to even begin to grasp is just how much one artist or work of art acts as a critical commentary upon the work of the artist's predecessors. After reading William Blake I cannot help but see Milton's _Paradise Lost_ with different eyes. Picasso, Matisse, Francis Bacon, and William DeKooning are led to a new experience of Ingres. The same is true of music. Biber, Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli, Rameau, Scarlatti... and any number of other composers have resulted in a more complex experience of Bach

Music is not some entity that can be experienced wholly in and of itself... as if we were blank slates.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2014)

I would be glad to engage in discussion with you if you hadn't already established that you would dodge most relevant questions and commentaries.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Yes, I will stay exactly on topic. A "native" appreciation without any further knowledge can lead to true discernment, an example being the intuitively obvious superiority of Ravel's music to that of Debussy. :devil:


Yeah, and that's only because Debussy had an ambivalent masculine/feminine name. In French, at least.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2014)

@ Xavier: For those of us new to this post, could you résumé your main points? I do hope this is not going to be some sort of rehash of Roger Scruton.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

I'd like to make one more point:

As StLukeGuildOhio wrote:



> *Ultimately this comes down to an ignorant and arrogant kid who is outraged that the opinions of those with far greater experience and knowledge are held is greater esteem than his or her own. Certainly I can "appreciate" this as I remember that not too long ago I was an ignorant and arrogant kid who had a little knowledge of art under his belt and assumed that he knew everything about art... certainly as much or more than his professors.*






> *"Certainly as much or more than his professors"*




Ok, since opera is my main passion I'd like to draw your attention to an excerpt from last year's new opera history book by two of the world's prominent musicologists and opera scholars -- Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker -- that made me shake my head in baffled disbelief:

In the introduction (page 30) to their new book *A History of Opera*



> *Boredom can even overcome us at excellent performances of a canonic work. Opera lasts for hours and hours, and there is no operatic work, not even the greatest, without its moments of tedium"*




Really professor? Well, I can think of at least 7 operas (among others) that I find absolutely riveting from start to finish, no longueurs.

_Falstaff

Moses and Aron

Katya Kabanova

Das Rheingold

L'enfant et Les Sortilèges

Elektra

Doktor Faust_

And they continue:



> *What is more, we are nowadays further encouraged to be bored by the conditions under which opera is performed: we are forced to sit in the dark without interacting with our friends; we are forbidden to leave the auditorium during a performance; rapt and above all silent attention is demanded as a courtesy to the performers and fellow attendees -- and, strangely, because they are almost always dead, as a courtesy to composers"*



I fell of my chair when I read this.... The fact that two *opera scholars*(!) are complaining that any of these things are somehow restrictive is just mind-boggling.

So again, reading the observations of scholars and musicologists is something I will do as a leisure activity LONG AFTER I have gotten to know a particular masterpiece *on my own*.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Seems like the authors of A History of Opera hate opera. Never seen anything like that before. Complaining that you can't leave during a performance? Ridiculous, unless it's one big put on.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Seems like the authors of A History of Opera hate opera. Never seen anything like that before. Scandalous!!


Tell me about it!

It's on page 30.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

I can only rehash what was said on the previous thread. If someone likes a piece, it is only natural that they might want to find out why they like it, and that can be perhaps achieved by going into the technical details. Nevertheless, I don't think any amount of technical and theoretical knowledge can make the listener like a piece which they previously disliked. There are many pieces which make me think to myself "well that's darn clever" from a purely technical point of view, but that's not the same as actually liking it.


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## Xiansheng (Feb 20, 2013)

> Once I feel that initial 'stab of communication' I am on my way to further passionate exploration and the last thing I'd care about are someone else's observations.


Wouldn't it be tragic if we couldn't communicate with each other by any means other than music? I agree that thoughts and feelings cover somewhat independent provinces and that a symphony worthy of the name can never by fully reduced to a program, for example, but at the point when feelings become completely inarticulable, I begin to lose interest in them. If I can't even begin to explain why I like something, my enjoyment of it goes no further than sensory experience, and I think that means missing out on a lot. The more thought I put into my enjoyment of a piece, the more pleasure I get out of it. I play zero instruments and my knowledge of music theory is limited to pretty basic tonal harmonic analysis.

Language will always be at best a mere approximation of our feelings, but I see thought and sensation as dialectical complements, each capable of leaving some sort of impression on the other. Have you never read a really brilliant book or essay and come to understand your own thoughts and feelings better? That happens to me all the time. We have little seeds of thoughts that we don't all have the time to cultivate. That's why reading and talking with other people are so important.

I've started running recently. My 5K time is a little under half an hour, which is really slow for someone on a track team. But I'm not comparing my time to anyone else's. I know I'm not going to look good compared to most people who run seriously. I do, however, keep track of my progress and delight in my small but discernible improvements. Only a jerk will tell you he enjoys music more than you do because he knows more about it. Only a liar will tell you that you wouldn't enjoy it more if you put a bit of thought into it and opened yourself up to the insights of others.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Xavier said:


> Lol... Tell me about it!
> 
> It's on page 30.


They seem to hate everything about it. I can't believe they are serious. Imagine, we should come and go as we please, keep the lights on, talk to our friends during the performance, perhaps throw popcorn at each other during every (!!!) operas' tedious parts so we don't get bored to death?

Sounds like they are describing kindergarten.


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## Berlioznestpasmort (Jan 24, 2014)

I am sympathetic to Xavier's point, though he may find me an unwelcome supporter. My first introduction that I can recall to classical music was an LP I purchased for 99 cents of the _New World Symphony _, helmed by Antal Dorati. It bowled me over from the very first listen and it soon became many things to me: a _real place _that seemed to beckon; a most eloquent expression of adolescent tumult; and the symphony's ultimate resolution suggested courage in the face of adversity - an option I hadn't previously considered. That these responses said more about me than the symphony itself surely doesn't negate the 'legitimacy' of my aesthetic experience. But I would have - even at the time - given much more than 99 cents to have had a "toolbox," broad-based or otherwise, to help me with important questions: - Who was this Dvorak? Why was it called the _New World _? Why did it speak to me so in ways that seemed more powerful than most of the Top 40? Why was it broke up into sections like paragraphs, each one distinct and yet all seemingly joined in single purpose? Is the rest of Classical Music this moving? These and many more questions and _no toolbox _whatsoever at that time (until I discovered Music Reference books and LPs I could actually sign-out from the Public Library). I agree that there is nothing wrong with "the aesthetic experience in and of itself," as you describe it, though I sure would have welcomed some of the toolbox.

Just an aside - years later I met - at a performance of the _New World_, an Eastman School grad, a horn player and an embittered one. He was selling fire extinguishers, the only job he could find. We discovered that each of us had purchased that _very same recording _as our first classical disk. It had inspired him in even more direct and powerful ways than me. I was deeply envious of his knowledge of the mystical musical toolbox, but not of his fate.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2014)

Xiansheng said:


> Wouldn't it be tragic if we couldn't communicate with each other by any means other than music? [...]


Well, have you ever read that novel by *Kurt Vonnegut* (_Breakfast of Champions_, IIRC) that features aliens landing on Earth who are only able to communicate by dancing.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I really don't understand what the OP is trying to prove. For every thing he says the only possible response is "Ok good for you", because he is talking about his own personal responses to music and expecting every other person on earth to have the same responses.

Also, about the opera book you complained about, it sounds like it was written for an audience just trying to get into opera. Is it supposed to be a beginner's guide type book? Or was it heavy reading material?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Seems like the authors of A History of Opera hate opera.


Does it? Just because they said sitting in darkness for four hours is not always flawlessly enjoyable? Is that really the same thing as hating opera?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

violadude:



> *Also, about the opera book you complained about, it sounds like it was written for an audience just trying to get into opera. Is it supposed to be a beginner's guide type book? *



A beginner's guide, no.... I think it was aimed at both a somewhat knowledgeable general audience and scholars because the main blurb on the back cover was written by Richard Taruskin, America's most famous musicologist from Berkeley.



> *"Writers on opera tend to fall into two mutually hostile camps: the mind people and the body people, the Kermans and the Koestenbaums. Abbate and Parker are in possession of minds AND bodies, alive to pleasures rational as well as sensual. Their take on opera is generous - singers and audiences and directors claim their attention and people their pages, alongside composers and librettists - and their prose is gorgeous, combining scholarly precision with the ardor of true lovers.
> 
> Their history is elegiac: their beloved genre, they acknowledge, is dying, living off its past. But what a past it is, and the book pays it fitting tribute: it sings"*



Also, Ellen Rosand from Yale University, one of the world's Monteverdi experts wrote:



> *An extended duet of intertwined voices, this inspiring book is at once a history of opera and a poetic meditation on the genre itself, its complexity, depth, and allure"*


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

*Joke about aesthetics of opera deleted*


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Seems a bit strange seeing a quote of mine (partial but I'm sure quoted accurately) outside of the context of the other thread. 

I do think you can compare music to other arts in some discussions, it's interesting to see similarities as well as differences. But music has such a prominent place in people's lives now compared to painting or poetry for instance. People hear music every day and have for probably most of their lives. There is a wide range of music that people process and enjoy as listeners without having great technical knowledge but by a growing understanding through close and repeated listening. This applies not just to simpler popular music but more complex jazz music and all other styles, much of which may not be available as scores anyway. So it's not that surprising that many have grown to enjoy classical music like that too.

That's not to say that greater technical knowledge for a listener isn't interesting, but would is it really a way to make most like a piece more than finding a convincing performance would? Knowing the full technicalites of music is obviously of primary importance to composers and performers but it feels more an extra for listeners. _Even someone with a complete grasp of music theory may hate some styles of music just because it's not something they are used to listening to._ Each style of music has it's conventions and yet they also use some of the same theory, but you have to grow to like and understand (accept the conventions), and people do that by listening. Or they don't accept them by not listening.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

p.s. There's a lot of irony in bringing up this opera book. One of the co-authors, Carolyn Abbate, has espoused almost the same view that this OP is espousing. Abbate is also the author of "Music: Drastic or Gnostic?", an article that argued that the most important moments in music are the ones that can't be put into words and therefore cannot be internalized through any means other than direct, intuitive, un-interfered-with experience with the music. Everything else is external and secondary. I don't see much difference between this and the OP.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> Does it? Just because they said sitting in darkness for four hours is not always flawlessly enjoyable? Is that really the same thing as hating opera?


Maybe not but your avatar scares me.


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## Berlioznestpasmort (Jan 24, 2014)

I think his point is simply the primacy of the musical experience above all else, untutored, and _sans_ the much-discussed _toolbox_. He has a point - speak-up Xavier! - and some support (though more, I think, in the visual arts and in the museum world which ironically he wants left out of the equation). It could be effectively argued that for _initial_ contact with classical music, perhaps he's right. As for me, in this late stage of the game, I'll take all the toolbox I can get.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Ok, since opera is my main passion I'd like to draw your attention to an excerpt from last year's new opera history book by two of the world's prominent musicologists and opera scholars -- Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker -- that made me shake my head in baffled disbelief:

In the introduction (page 30) to their new book A History of Opera

Boredom can even overcome us at excellent performances of a canonic work. Opera lasts for hours and hours, and there is no operatic work, not even the greatest, without its moments of tedium"

Really professor? Well, I can think of at least 7 operas (among others) that I find absolutely riveting from start to finish, no longueurs.

What is your point? That the "experts" such as professors are sometimes wrong... or that you sometimes disagree with them? This proves what? That nothing can be gleaned from those with more knowledge or experience than yourself. Again, such complaints strike me as the sort of drivel one expects from the precocious yet arrogant grade school student.

Honestly, I suspect any of us with an equally profound love of opera has had moments of boredom... just not into it today... and even found some passages of our most beloved works to be less than thrilling.

What is more, we are nowadays further encouraged to be bored by the conditions under which opera is performed: we are forced to sit in the dark without interacting with our friends; we are forbidden to leave the auditorium during a performance; rapt and above all silent attention is demanded as a courtesy to the performers and fellow attendees -- and, strangely, because they are almost always dead, as a courtesy to composers"

I fell of my chair when I read this.... The fact that two opera scholars(!) are complaining that any of these things are somehow restrictive is just mind-boggling.

If you knew just a modicum about the history of operatic performance... or the performance of classical music as a whole... you would know that performances prior to the later 19th century were quite removed from what we now know. The audience was able to mill about, eat and drink, talk... call out and cheer favorite singers, yell for repeats of favorite arias, etc... In many ways the performances were closer to what we know of jazz or blues or rock concerts where the audience might call out for favorite songs, sing along, etc... I doubt that these audience are any less enamored of the music and performers/composers.

In the late 19th century, classical music and the art museum took on something of the status once reserved for the church. Art became seen as a spiritual experience and attending the opera or symphony or museum became a more reverential experience. More than a few classical music lovers have questioned this extreme reverence as something that makes classical music seem unapproachable, inaccessible, and hoity-toity to many outsiders. More than a few orchestras and other classical music ensembles have made efforts to counter these notions. My own orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, performs outdoor concerts during the Summer in which families are invited to pack a picnic lunch, bring a bottle of wine, and enjoy the music in a more relaxed... less rigid environment. These concerts are quite popular and enjoyable and go far in making classical music seem more accessible to all.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio,



> *Honestly, I suspect any of us with an equally profound love of opera has had moments of boredom... just not into it today... and even found some passages of our most beloved works to be less than thrilling. *



For the record: I agree with you here of course. A good number of the great operas have some musically uneven sections or dull patches. To give a recent example: in early January I emerged from a long 3 month deep immersion/study of _The Return of Ulysses_ using the original complete 3 hour and 18 minute recording:

http://jean-claude.brenac.pagesperso-orange.fr/Ulysse_Harnoncourt_2.jpg

(Yes, I'm ashamed to say that I still didn't know this work at this late stage but we all have repertoire gaps and Monteverdi's penultimate was one of mine)

Well I was blown away by this magnificent opera. Definitely one of those.... _"Where the hell has this opera been all my life!"_ moments. I've come to love it so much that I had to include it in my list of 12.

BUT YES, even I will admit that I found a couple musically weak passages.

*1)* In Act 3 right after Iro's fantastic parody lament when Melanto and Penelope react to the slaughter of the suitors and the whole "Chi fu... chi fu l'ardito"....

This is definitely a weak section (the quality of their recitative is not up to what it was before) but thankfully this whole scene lasts only about 4 minutes.

*2)* The first 3 minutes or so of Penelope's 11 minute lament (Misera Regina) that opens Act 1 which I find a bit dry sometimes.... It's just a teeny criticism though.

But I still find it inconceivable that the country's leading opera scholar would write... *"there is no operatic work, not even the greatest, without its moments of tedium" *

Had they instead written *"a good number of the finest operas have moments of tedium"*... I wouldn't have brought any of this up.



> *If you knew just a modicum about the history of operatic performance... or the performance of classical music as a whole... you would know that performances prior to the later 19th century were quite removed from what we now know. The audience was able to mill about, eat and drink, talk... call out and cheer favorite singers, yell for repeats of favorite arias, etc... In many ways the performances were closer to what we know of jazz or blues or rock concerts where the audience might call out for favorite songs, sing along, etc... *



Yes I've read about the habits of past opera audiences. But, why should we tolerate it now? I've never found it difficult to remain focused, still and quiet during a long performance. Is it really so difficult for fully grown adults to give that special concentration? We also have intermissions, remember?

Anyway, I don't know about you but I sure as hell don't want people munching, chatting or shuffling around the aisles during a performance of, say, _Pelleas et Melisande_. (And that's just for starters)


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Boredom in opera is usually a lack of visual interest. Hearing an opera on CD may allow you to hear the finest orchestras and singers in the world, but it only gives you half a loaf. The staging is as important as the music.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Musical Training and Performance Experience*



Berlioznestpasmort said:


> I think his point is simply the primacy of the musical experience above all else, untutored, and _sans_ the much-discussed _toolbox_. He has a point - speak-up Xavier! - and some support (though more, I think, in the visual arts and in the museum world which ironically he wants left out of the equation). It could be effectively argued that for _initial_ contact with classical music, perhaps he's right. As for me, in this late stage of the game, I'll take all the toolbox I can get.


But this addresses an aspect of this discussion that drives me nuts.

A person who has musical training and a background in performing music has experiences which influence how he will react to music. If we take the hypothesis of this thread to its logical end all of my training and performance experiences have actually no bearing on how I appreciate music. That these experiences are completely bogus.

I mentioned the following in another thread.

One of the great works by Schubert that I never could get was his _Unfinished Symphony_. Whenever I listened to it the music came in my right ear, rattled around in my brain and left by the left ear. Even with my training the music for me was a dud.

Our orchestra will be performing the _Unfinished Symphony_ at our next concert. When I saw that we would be performing it I thought, "Oh well, another boring concert to play." I had never played it before but I have heard many, many times and I am very familiar with the work.

At our first rehearsal my mind was completely blown away. It was an awesome musical experience. In order to understand this work I had to actually play it.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Boredom in opera is usually a lack of visual interest. Hearing an opera on CD may allow you to hear the finest orchestras and singers in the world, but it only gives you half a loaf.
> 
> The staging is as important as the music.


As important?

Absolutely not.... The basis of an opera is musical (instrumental and vocal), not visual. That's why we can revelatory experiences in records or concert performances. It is dramaturgy, but primarily conveyed in the music. Yes, the libretto will determine the structure of the music, but it's the music that makes the story what it is, not the text, and certainly not the staging.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

arpeggio,



> One of the great works by Schubert that I never could get was his _Unfinished Symphony_.
> 
> Whenever I listened to it the music came in my right ear, rattled around in my brain and left by the left ear. Even with my training the music for me was a dud.


See?

This is something I find bizarre... Not being able to 'get' one of the most moving of all symphonies until you actually played it in orchestra?

I would have thought Schubert's _Unfinished_ is one of the most direct and melodically accessible of all masterpieces. I first discovered it in my early teens and the impact was immediate.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Xavier said:


> This is something I find bizarre... Not being able to 'get' one of the most moving of all synphonies until you actually played it in orchestra?
> 
> I would have thought Schubert's great _Unfinished_ is one of the most direct and melodically accessible of all masterpieces. I first discovered it in my early teens and the impact was immediate.


I've heard this sentiment many times from performers. They will play music that they've heard before, and after several rehearsals they have a much greater appreciation of the work sometimes going from being rather ambivalent to distinct enjoyment.

I have always enjoyed the Moonlight Sonata, but since I learned to play the first movement, I definitely enjoy the piece more. I hear more in the music, appreciate the harmony better, and generally love the piece more. Rather than finding this bizarre, I suspect this reaction is rather commonplace.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Thanks*



mmsbls said:


> I've heard this sentiment many times from performers. They will play music that they've heard before, and after several rehearsals they have a much greater appreciation of the work sometimes going from being rather ambivalent to distinct enjoyment.
> 
> I have always enjoyed the Moonlight Sonata, but since I learned to play the first movement, I definitely enjoy the piece more. I hear more in the music, appreciate the harmony better, and generally love the piece more. Rather than finding this bizarre, I suspect this reaction is rather commonplace.


Thanks. For me it happened after just one rehearsal.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Xavier said:


> No, no
> 
> I just don't understand how you could describe this tremendous symphony as a .... "dud"... and then radically change your mind about it simply by performing your part in the orchestra.
> 
> I find it a little odd, that's all...


I find it more than a little bit odd that someone cannot accept that a direct, immediate and first hand inside experience via actually learning and performing a piece would not be more telling, informative, and _intimate_ than a thousand less direct experiences "just listening."

The same comparison is true for those who can really read and study a score vs. those who just listen to it.

Directly learning and being a part (one player of a part) or whole (solo instrumental) of a piece is _the inside dope_; the listener's is an outside experience -- being inside trumps, every time.


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2014)

PetrB said:


> being inside trumps, every time.


Your analysis is no more acceptable than Xavier's. This is not a competition to determine whose method of listening is the _more _objectively valuable (though Xavier seems to want to make it so, by rejecting the idea that technical knowledge and understanding can improve the experience.)

Your experience of music, and Xavier's and arpeggio's and mmsbls's and St Luke's and mine are not comparable. We can't rank them. One is not more valid than another. They are different experiences, personal, subjective. I'm not going to put on a hair shirt and lament my failure to have attained the 'trumping' heights of a technically informed inside experience of music, thus rejecting my past 50 years of enjoying everything from Abba to Zappa.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Talented Listeners*



PetrB said:


> I find it more than a little bit odd that someone cannot accept that a direct, immediate and first hand inside experience via actually learning and performing a piece would not be more telling, informative, and _intimate_ than a thousand less direct experiences "just listening."
> 
> The same comparison is true for those who can really read and study a score vs. those who just listen to it.
> 
> Directly learning and being a part (one player of a part) or whole (solo instrumental) of a piece is _the inside dope_; the listener's is an outside experience -- being inside trumps, every time.


I would like to defend talented listers. I have met here and elsewhere many talented listeners who can derive perceptive experiences from listening to music.

A problem arises when listeners who have a very narrow view of the musical world try to justify their biases by claiming that the observations of anyone with a musical background as bogus.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> I've heard this sentiment many times from performers. They will play music that they've heard before, and after several rehearsals they have a much greater appreciation of the work sometimes going from being rather ambivalent to distinct enjoyment.


OTOH I have a few friends who I go to concerts with. They can talk volubly about their parts in compositions (viola, flute, whatever) but have nothing to offer and essentially no opinions re the works as a whole. Go figure!


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2014)

arpeggio said:


> A problem arises when listeners who have a very narrow view of the musical world try to justify their biases by claiming that the observations of anyone with a musical background as bogus.


I agree and would go further: a problem arises when anyone tries to impose the value of their _experience_, no matter how broadly-based, on some one else.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Music and in-laws*

Even with my background I would be the first to admit that my preferences in music are highly subjective. Even though I am hesitant to impose my musical tastes on others, I get very frustrated when non-musicians claim that my observations are bogus.

I can not begin to describe all of the jabs my wife and I have taken from my in-laws. Like the time they discovered we attended a performance of Mahler's _Eighth_. We live in Washington, DC. On the way to visit her family in North Carolina, we went to Williamsburg, VA to hear Jo Ann Faletta conduct Mahler's _Eighth_ with the Virginia Symphony. For the rest of the weekend we had to listen to them saying how I had to drag my poor wife to hear a symphony concert.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Your analysis is no more acceptable than Xavier's. This is not a competition to determine whose method of listening is the _more _objectively valuable (though Xavier seems to want to make it so, by rejecting the idea that technical knowledge and understanding can improve the experience.)
> 
> Your experience of music, and Xavier's and arpeggio's and mmsbls's and St Luke's and mine are not comparable. We can't rank them. One is not more valid than another. They are different experiences, personal, subjective. I'm not going to put on a hair shirt and lament my failure to have attained the 'trumping' heights of a technically informed inside experience of music, thus rejecting my past 50 years of enjoying everything from Abba to Zappa.


"Intuitive listening genius with the most rare and highest degree of refined discernment, capable of feeling more deeply and hearing the finest of nuances more acutely than any other listener in the world. Learn more about this phenomenal listener, and what it is like to have such a gift that puts you at near complete isolation from the rest of humanity.

Stay tuned for this featured segment ~ Film at Eleven."

Discuss.

I mean, what can you do with _that?_


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2014)

PetrB said:


> "Intuitive listening genius with the most rare and highest degree of refined discernment, capable of feeling more deeply and hearing the finest of nuances more acutely than any other listener in the world. Learn more about this phenomenal listener, and what it is like to have such a gift that puts you at near complete isolation from the rest of humanity.
> 
> Stay tuned for this featured segment ~ Film at Eleven."
> 
> ...


Er...I don't know...who are you quoting? It bears no resemblance to anything _I've_ said.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

violadude said:


> because he is talking about his own personal responses to music and expecting every other person on earth to have the same responses.


Because nobody on a forum, including you, ever talks about their own personal responses and argues them against other responses? I don't believe that. Hard to understand the anti-discussion responses. If people start to make it purely about the people in the thread rather than the issues in any way maybe it's better for them to avoid the thread. You can't expect to be interested in the ideas behind every thread created here, just like nobody is interested in every piece of music discussed here.

Getting back to the recent discussion, there are obviously different ways of approaching music, _and that's fine_. But it's hard to ignore what the majority of people do as well, so that has to be worthy of discussion. And the points I made earlier I guess are generally agreed with as nobody addressed them.


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2014)

starry said:


> Seems a bit strange seeing a quote of mine (partial but I'm sure quoted accurately) outside of the context of the other thread.
> 
> I do think you can compare music to other arts in some discussions, it's interesting to see similarities as well as differences. But music has such a prominent place in people's lives now compared to painting or poetry for instance. People hear music every day and have for probably most of their lives. There is a wide range of music that people process and enjoy as listeners without having great technical knowledge but by a growing understanding through close and repeated listening. This applies not just to simpler popular music but more complex jazz music and all other styles, much of which may not be available as scores anyway. So it's not that surprising that many have grown to enjoy classical music like that too.
> 
> That's not to say that greater technical knowledge for a listener isn't interesting, but would is it really a way to make most like a piece more than finding a convincing performance would? Knowing the full technicalites of music is obviously of primary importance to composers and performers but it feels more an extra for listeners. _Even someone with a complete grasp of music theory may hate some styles of music just because it's not something they are used to listening to._ Each style of music has it's conventions and yet they also use some of the same theory, but you have to grow to like and understand (accept the conventions), and people do that by listening. Or they don't accept them by not listening.


Prompted by your recent post wondering whether anyone agreed with you, I came back to look again. Your point about comparing music with other arts, and the greater ubiquity of music compared to poetry and painting, yes, agreed. I'm not quite sure about your second para - there's a typo, I think, that makes it slightly obscure - but if I've got it right, I'd also agree with the idea that deriving pleasure from a piece doesn't _depend _on technical understanding, and technical understanding doesn't _guarantee _pleasure. To that extent, even the most knowledgeable are prone to personal preferences.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> OTOH I have a few friends who I go to concerts with. They can talk volubly about their parts in compositions (viola, flute, whatever) but have nothing to offer and essentially no opinions re the works as a whole. Go figure!


LOL. There is a sort of player whose near entire take is near completely inclined toward their instrument, the horn player pal of mine (it's not so bad, but he does it often) whose most frequent musical comment on a piece is, "Great Horn Part!"


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> even the most knowledgeable are prone to personal preferences.


Even what may seem relatively simple pieces could be quite hard to someone with technical knowledge to digest and enjoy just because they aren't used to hearing the conventions of that music. So while the technical knowledge can be useful sometimes, and interesting of itself, I don't see how it's the golden key to unlocking music as a whole.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Technical knowledge can certainly aid our appreciation of music. However, music surely should communicate to people of all spheres, whether they have technical knowledge or not. The great composers of the 18th and 19th century did not write their music for people who were necessarily technically knowledgeable about music. But it communicated then and still does today to people who have the desire to listen.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

PetrB said:


> LOL. There is a sort of player whose near entire take is near completely inclined toward their instrument, the horn player pal of mine (it's not so bad, but he does it often) whose most frequent musical comment on a piece is, "Great Horn Part!"


Not every instrumentalist is a saint. Except bassoonists. We're perfect. :lol:

Of course bassoonist are mentally unbalenced. Comes from playing such a large instrument through a small reed. Cuts off the flow of blood to the brain. Contrabassoonist are outright crazy.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Okay, I helped derail the other thread with an "analogy" about viewing the Mona Lisa, for which I apologize. But the point remains, that there are many people who come to classical music intimidated by it -- by it's complexity, time scale, elite status, whatever -- who will not surrender to the grand effect it makes in the way XAvier thinks they ought to. In my student days, I was a classical person when 99%of my age cohort was grooving to rock music. And when friends asked about something they might "like" to help get into it, I spent a lot of time playing pieces that I would have thought they couldn't help but appreciate, only to find that they were nonplussed, disinterested, or just plain lost. They were just unable to get into it, and I think a "tool box" would have helped. This was not my fault, the music's fault, their fault, or Xavier's fault. It was just the way either they approached it, or their brains were wired. Everyone is different, and, as I said before, a little help in "what to listen for" can do wonders for some people.

PS For instance, Handel opera bores me to tears. Nothing wrong with that -- just the way I am. Someday I may appreciate it, with or without a tool box. And as someone wonderfully quipped/confessed on this forum a year or so ago, (paraphrased) "I once listened to Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" for about four hours before I realized my iPod was on Shuffle.".


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2014)

arpeggio said:


> [...] Of course bassooninst are mentally unbalenced. Comes from playing such a large instrument through a small reed. Cuts off the flow of blood to the brain. Contrabassoonist are outright crazy.


Hah! I took precisely 5 lessons on the bassoon but gave it up. This is why I am today a totally sane person. Still, I do rather like the sound of the bassoon, not the least the opening of the Rite of Spring.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

If you can play Weber's Andante and Hungarian Rondo, TH, you are okay in my book, soup or no soup!


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2014)

Hah! I can't play a damn thing on the bassoon, when I was learning (5 lessons only, I remind you!) I kept singing around the reed and couldn't produce anything but lip farts*.
Anyway, I would have loved to be able to play this Berio piece (Sequenza XII for bassoon). Hey, Arpeggio, did you ever study this piece?









* _Lip farts_. *Note to trigger-happy moderators*: this is an accepted term in extended vocal technique, and not a vulgarity. A technique much used in the music of UK composer Trevor Wishart. Please take note.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Someone compared scores to an architect's sketches before. There's a big jump in the imagination between the instructions for something and the finished work. And finding out how something is constructed tells you something about it but it doesn't in the case of a work of art give you the final finished experience, which is what the artist wants the viewer/listener to perceive. Indeed they may even want to hide away _some_ aspect of the construction so it doesn't interfere with the final experience, while revealing other parts. With music it's up to the performer to realise what the composer wants, which is putting trust in someone, but that's always been the case with performance art. But it's a strength as well as it means there isn't one version even if there is one score, and it means it can be brought alive again and again.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

arpeggio said:


> At our first rehearsal my mind was completely blown away. It was an awesome musical experience. In order to understand this work I had to actually play it.


maybe you've simply paid to it more attention than in the past. I mean, if the technical knowledge of music adds something to the musical experience why even the famous composers have a dislike for the work of others? 
I don't think that Delius didn't have the knowledge to understand the music of Mozart, and still he hated it. Naturally this doesn't say anything about the value of Mozart's music, but it suggests that a deeper appreciation of a musical work (even if it's the work of a composers widely considered a genius) doesn't pass for the technical understanding of it.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Bizarre Bassooning*



TalkingHead said:


> Anyway, I would have loved to be able to play this Berio piece (Sequenza XII for bassoon). Hey, Arpeggio, did you ever study this piece?


If we started talking about my bizarre bassooning would we be derailing the thread? 

Note: Unfamiliar with the Berio. Thanks for the links. I am familiar with the techniques Berio employs in this music. This an incredibly difficult piece and way beyond my modest abilities.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> maybe you've simply paid to it more attention than in the past. I mean, if the technical knowledge of music adds something to the musical experience why even the famous composers have a dislike for the work of others?
> I don't think that Delius didn't have the knowledge to understand the music of Mozart, and still he hated it. Naturally this doesn't say anything about the value of Mozart's music, but it suggests that a deeper appreciation of a musical work (even if it's the work of a composers widely considered a genius) doesn't pass for the technical understanding of it.


No one here is saying (at least as far as I've noticed) that if you do not like something that is great, studying its construction will necessarily make you like it. It can, in some instances, but not in others, where distaste may prevail.

Composers tend to have extremely strong opinions because they, being themselves involved in creating art, naturally turn away from those whose methods or tastes are alien to them.

In arpeggio's case, he was very clear that his new-found appreciation for the Schubert came through experiencing it in a different way. He did not say exactly what about the experience changed his perception, and perhaps he himself does not know exactly why it has changed. We are never fully aware of the reasons for our reactions to complex works of art.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Xavier said:


> I would have thought Schubert's _Unfinished_ is one of the most direct and melodically accessible of all masterpieces. I first discovered it in my early teens and the impact was immediate.


This attitude is one I despise.

Accessibility is not an absolute quantity. It depends *entirely* on the individual and their own personal experiences.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> In arpeggio's case, he was very clear that his new-found appreciation for the Schubert came through experiencing it in a different way. He did not say exactly what about the experience changed his perception, and perhaps he himself does not know exactly why it has changed. We are never fully aware of the reasons for our reactions to complex works of art.


Exactly. Thanks.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> No one here is saying (at least as far as I've noticed) that if you do not like something that is great, studying its construction will necessarily make you like it. * It can, in some instances*, but not in others, where distaste may prevail.


I think it could be useful at this point of the discussion make an example of those cases where it happens. In the other thread I've mentioned Ives and his The unanswered question, because to know what Ives meant with the sound of the trumpet and with the sound of strings adds to the understanding of the work, but the fact is that that is program music and more important if I didn't like the music itself the explaination of it would not add anything.

Composers tend to have extremely strong opinions because they, being themselves involved in creating art, naturally turn away from those whose methods or tastes are alien to them.



Mahlerian said:


> In arpeggio's case, he was very clear that his new-found appreciation for the Schubert came through experiencing it in a different way. He did not say exactly what about the experience changed his perception, and perhaps he himself does not know exactly why it has changed. We are never fully aware of the reasons for our reactions to complex works of art.


To me the simple explaination is that he listened more. I don't think that Xavier suggested anywhere that music does not requests a process of learning, but just that the real learning could be made only listening. That is basically the old "talking about music is like dancing about architecture", we could study on the books all the theory and the historical context but nevertheless that could be at most only a motivation to listen more and again (the real understanding).


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Hah! I can't play a damn thing on the bassoon, when I was learning (5 lessons only, I remind you!) I kept singing around the reed and couldn't produce anything but lip farts*.
> Anyway, I would have loved to be able to play this Berio piece (Sequenza XII for bassoon). Hey, Arpeggio, did you ever study this piece?
> 
> 
> ...


Too bad. I was about to send you 3 quid for your CD of solo stuff.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

norman bates said:


> To me the simple explaination is that he listened more. I don't think that Xavier suggested anywhere that music does not requests a process of learning, but just that the real learning could be made only listening. That is basically the old "talking about music is like dancing about architecture", we could study on the books all the theory and the historical context but nevertheless that could be at most only a motivation to listen more and again (the real understanding).


Anyway, getting back to discussion. I think talking about music is fine, but that's what it is, a bit of philosophizing, a bit of debate, not something that's going to change minds. There isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer it's simply something to stretch our brains a bit, at least for the those who want to do that. Music is a decent pretext for that as it is very popular and people are curious about why people are creative and what they are expressing and why we need it. And the technical aspect is interesting as people like to know how things are made. That's a big part of the point in a forum. But to enjoy and understand music at the practical level people just tend to listen to it, closely and repeatedly. Some do make money out of claiming they can make people like music, such as Alex Ross, but I wonder if he really just gives some a 'placebo' for what they see as their problem by saying modern music isn't scary, the real effort comes from the listener still.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Mahlerian,



Mahlerian said:


> This attitude is one I despise.
> 
> Accessibility is not an absolute quantity. It depends *entirely* on the individual and their own personal experiences.


You are absolutely right. I agree 100 percent... I simply didn't get my point across very well.

What I found a little odd was arpeggio's extreme reaction to the _Unfinished_ (a 'dud', really?) and his belief that playing the work himself was the decisive factor in coming to recognize its greatness.

I believe that if he were locked in a room and forced to listen to it on a continuous loop he would eventually have gotten it.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

One man's ecstasy is another man's torture. I would prefer cyanide.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Well, I'm not gonna read thru all this thread but the answer is that aesthetic discernment in music develops better in brains that are relatively plastic -- young children -- and primarily by listening to music. So kids who spend a lot of time listening to classical music will appreciate it more. Native intelligence and such biological things also play a role I'm sure, but not nearly as great a role as experience (listening).

Knowledge of music does become relevant when the listener doesn't know how to listen to something without knowledge of, say, rhythm and how to group the notes mentally in his mind (an issue especially in pieces with complex rhythm and no audible beat). And knowledge of motivic development may help the listener notice structural features of the piece that will help him appreciate the music more, even to the point that where something sounded kind of dull before it will sound kind of ingenius and fitting now with the added knowledge of how it fits structurally.

And so on.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> We are never fully aware of the reasons for our reactions to complex works of art.


That's true and I think that's why we want to talk about it partly. Familiarity probably helps though, either with a style or with a piece, to focus our reception and reaction more


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Edward:



> In a thread, like two or three days ago, the OP was making similar arguments. He claimed that, because music is heard differently by each successive generation, understanding music in its cultural and historical context is inimical to music qua music, or words to that effect. I scoffed;


I ignored it because I think it's a total non-issue.

The late anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss and the writer Suzanne Langer summed it up for me:



> *"Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man"*






> *In music, we have an unconsummated symbol, a significant form without conventional significance. It exists probably below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking, and thus no assignment of meaning is permanent beyond the sound that passes.*


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

The moderators have deleted a number of posts that are off-topic or personally insulting. Whatever you may think of the topic or even other posters, please do not resort in this way to insults and ad homs.

We are leaving this thread open for the time being because there is plenty of on-topic discussion which indicates that TC members are interested in this topic.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I think there is some intellectual processing in listening to music, it may not always be readily apparent to us but I think we do make sense of it. Our brains can sometimes work in a less overt way, feeling its way through what we hear as well as using basic structural principles we may have learnt. We take the path that has been created for us and navigate it. The exact purpose of music is the bigger mystery to me, and that tends to be discussed a lot as a result. Whereas where is this theme or that development doesn't get talked about as much as in many cases (if not all) it might become self evident through more listening, but that still requires an openness to the work and style.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

And...



> *The difficulty with music is that it does not essentially exist in an intellectual construct.
> 
> True, music has form and that can be analyzed with logic and music has harmony and that, also, can be analyzed within a logic construct but the intellectual analysis of music is most unimportant when compared to the effect music has on our deep emotions. Analysis of emotional content is not unusual but it, ultimately, is little more than the water running off the leaves of trees during a rain; it has little effect on the leaves and it is not a primary source of nourishment for the tree.
> 
> Music affects us much as the sense of smell influences us. It speaks directly to the emotional content of our lives. It is the art the does not require any understanding, explanation, nor analysis. All of these things can add to the art of music but, ultimately, they are little more than rain on the leaves.*


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

What I found a little odd was arpeggio's extreme reaction to the Unfinished (a 'dud', really?) and his belief that playing the work himself was the decisive factor in coming to recognize its greatness.

I believe that if he were locked in a room and forced to listen to it on a continuous loop he would eventually have gotten it.

Isn't such a Pavlovian methodology part of why teenagers rush along like lemmings following the latest pop star... because they have been endlessly bombarded with the same tunes on the radio, TV, etc...? And this method of coming to "appreciate" or "like" a work of music is better than listening to the work after having had a knowledgeable guide explain what he or she likes about the work... offer up some analysis or point out some interesting details?


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Isn't such a Pavlovian methodology why teenagers rush along like lemmings following the latest pop star... because they have been endlessly bombarded with the same tunes on the radio, TV, etc...? And this method of coming to "appreciate" or "like" a work of music is better than listening to the work after having had a knowledgeable guide explain what he or she likes about the work... offer up some analysis or point out some interesting details?


I thought _some_ teenagers (I won't say all) just jump on the latest hyped thing, even without properly listening to it, because it's considered the thing to like among their peers. If they bothered listening to other stuff they might actually actually realise how boring some of these hyped up musicians are. So more listening would actually improve their knowledge. Most don't listen to much, just what is hyped.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Emotion obviously plays a part in music and it is very hard to talk about. But I think it's guided by our brain which must feel it's way through the path of the music. The music itself isn't as disorganised as the distribution of rain or smell, and our responses must be guided by the music, even more so in longer works which have a dramatic ebb and flow.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

Xavier said:


> Mahlerian,
> 
> You are absolutely right. I agree 100 percent... I simply didn't get my point across very well.
> 
> ...


Yes, that's a sure way to get someone to like a piece of music. _Force_ them to listen to it.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

By the way, here is something that drives me nuts:



> *For those far more knowledgeable about all things musical and I am in utter awe of how transparent a work is to these folks. They get the nuances. They understand why this string of notes sounds better than that, why the harmony I can only listen to in wonderment comes to be, bifurcate their attention to pay equal attention to the orchestra and the singers, articulate why one singer's voice sounds like its soaked in potatoes and another floats like clouds. I envy them this informed, educated approach.*




And my question would be: how can anybody know whether another person who hasn't studied theory or an instrument isn't also... *'getting the nuances'*?

Really, *HOW* can anyone really know this? Or how much another individual is perceiving and feeling in a musical work?

As I've said a million times, I am extolling the virtues of patient, intensive, repeated listenings that take one deeper into a work and make the listener aware of the workings of the music… Just because one doesn't know, say, the nomenclature of the harmonic patterns (or how to verbalize any other structure/detail) it does not mean he or she is not also aware of these goings-on.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Xavier said:


> By the way, here is something that drives me nuts:
> 
> [/font][/size][/b]
> 
> ...


If there is ever a new category of the Pulitzer Prize* for, "the most intense and profound untrained listener who gets as many or more of all the emotional import and nuances of music," I know who I would nominate, if nothing else so they get the recognition they seem to crave and to stop the spate.

*means I hope and pray they are an American.


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Isn't such a Pavlovian methodology part of why teenagers rush along like lemmings following the latest pop star... because they have been endlessly bombarded with the same tunes on the radio, TV, etc...?





starry said:


> If they bothered listening to other stuff they might actually actually realise how boring some of these hyped up musicians are. So more listening would actually improve their knowledge. Most don't listen to much, just what is hyped.


Instead, they must be forced to listen to something others deem worthy. This is as much rejection of the notion of individual response as Xavier's insistence that no-one (but no-one) can appreciate music by learning about it.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> Instead, they must be forced to listen to something others deem worthy. This is as much rejection of the notion of individual response as Xavier's insistence that no-one (but no-one) can appreciate music by learning about it.


They aren't forced to listen, but their choice often is often very limited by the influence of their peers. It's an insecurity maybe you can get with some young people. They want to join a club with the safe backing of others and extol some musician as being a genius even if they don't have the musical context by more listening. I'd actually respect them more if they came to their own conclusions independantly. And all it takes is more listening, though more listening obviously does take some time and effort. But they just want some kind of identity through music, I feel that's more important to them than the actual music itself. Meanwhile some musicians who aren't hyped up by the latest trendsetting websites are largely forgotten about simply because they aren't heard.

And with nuances hearing different performances can obviously point out some nuances and repeated listening (which is what really makes us love a work) can make us more familiar as well. But I also wouldn't want to lose the overall trajectory of the piece, I don't want to lose the sight of the wood for the trees as the phrase goes. Getting caught up too much in detail could make you lose track of what the overall end of the music actually is. The performer is meant to make us hear the detail which is important to our understanding of the overall structure.


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2014)

starry said:


> They aren't forced to listen, but their choice often is often very limited by the influence of their peers. It's an insecurity maybe you can get with some young people. They want to join a club with the safe backing of others and extol some musician as being a genius even if they don't have the musical context by more listening. I'd actually respect them more if they came to their own conclusions independantly. And all it takes is more listening, though more listening obviously does take some time and effort. But they just want some kind of identity through music, I feel that's more important to them than the actual music itself. Meanwhile some musicians who aren't hyped up by the latest trendsetting websites are largely forgotten about simply because they aren't heard.


I don't think we need to worry too much about teenagers making hyperbolic claims for the pop star of their choice. We might worry a little if they don't grow past the hyperbolic, and we might worry if the consequences of their hyperbole were to have a significant impact on the rest of us (eg, prevent us oldies from listening to what we want to).

Given the comments on the recent thread on Lang Lang, and the ubiquity of Andre Rieu on some TV channels, it seems it's not only the teenagers who could do with their horizons broadening...but at least teenagers have an excuse.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

We're lucky because of the internet now that we are able to listen to more than we ever had access to in the past, though some obviously don't take much advantage of that. It's not just about pop stars though, rock music of various kinds can be subject to exactly the same marketing hype. And yes, you can get it in classical music too, though that's a relatively small niche area now.


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2014)

starry said:


> It's not just about pop stars though, rock music of various kinds can be subject to exactly the same marketing hype.


I was using 'pop star' to stand for any brand of lauded celebrity - rock star, anti-hero, whichever personality bandwagon is being hyped.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> I was using 'pop star' to stand for any brand of lauded celebrity - rock star, anti-hero, whichever personality bandwagon is being hyped.


Yeh I wasn't sure, so I wanted to clarify on that.

Also in relation to my points I think you see the same thing here, younger people coming here from popular music saying 'what should I listen to?', basically it can sound just like wanting to join a club. The same thing I see on popular music forums in some ways.


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2014)

starry said:


> Yeh I wasn't sure, so I wanted to clarify on that.
> 
> Also in relation to my points I think you see the same thing here, younger people coming here from popular music saying 'what should I listen to?', basically it can sound just like wanting to join a club. The same thing I see on popular music forums in some ways.


Wanting to join a club is a common desire, not just among teenagers. Here am I, in a club, discussing classical music (or more often, discussing discussions about classical music). I could probably have found out almost everything I have learned here about music from either solo study or solo listening, but it wouldn't have been as much fun. It's not the only forum I belong to, but in real life, I don't like to join clubs. If I have a role model (and I don't really hold to such an idea) it's Fielding, a character in E M Forster's _A Passage to India_, who was "raised where the herd instinct did not flourish". (This may not be an exact quote - I can't find my copy of the book!)

My point is that whether young listeners come here to join a club or to find out about music, they've come here.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I totally agree it's very common, a very human thing, but it can annoy me at times anyhow, can't help it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Xavier said:


> B
> And my question would be: how can anybody know whether another person who hasn't studied theory or an instrument isn't also... *'getting the nuances'*?


Comprehension in listening to music is not entirely unlike comprehension in reading. There are interconnections among motives and themes that are central to many works' expressive continuity and sense of order. If one does not recognizing their existence, one is likely missing much of the essential substance.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Perhaps, but it is not necessary. I think I get all of the "essential substance" I'll ever need without having a formal ear training/theory background. I'm an emotional listener. I don't give a crap about intervals, counterpoint and the like.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

> *Perhaps, but it is not necessary.
> 
> I think I get all of the "essential substance" I'll ever need without having a formal ear training/theory background. I'm an emotional listener. I don't give a crap about intervals, counterpoint and the like.*



Exactly right, hp.

All of those things: intervals, counterpoint, motives, etc. are (through careful, repeated hearings) _subconsciously apprehended_... the handmaiden of the expressivity of the piece.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Xavier said:


> [/font][/size][/b]
> Exactly right, hp.
> 
> All of those things: intervals, counterpoint, motives, etc. are (through careful, repeated hearings) _subconsciously apprehended_... the handmaiden of the expressivity of the piece.


I once took a beginning course in music theory. I dropped it after two weeks. Sapped the music of all pleasure. Not for me.

I defiantly remain an instinctive, emotional listener.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I once took a beginning course in music theory. I dropped it after two weeks. Sapped the music of all pleasure. Not for me.
> 
> I defiantly remain an instinctive, emotional listener.


Just two weeks? Sometimes rewards come only after time, and some amount of effort.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hpowders said:


> Perhaps, but it is not necessary. I think I get all of the "essential substance" I'll ever need without having a formal ear training/theory background. I'm an emotional listener. I don't give a crap about intervals, counterpoint and the like.


What I said has absolutely nothing to do with formal training or theory background. I'm talking about simply recognizing that two themes are related, that one was designed to be heard as a transformation of the other. Such recognition almost always happens intuitively, but it can be surprisingly easy to miss. And there are many works for which missing such connections is like not understanding that Edmond Dantes and the Count of Monte Cristo are the same person. (The Count is Edmond under a new identity returning to avenge wrongs done to him in his youth.)

For example, there are no doubt thousands of people who have listened to Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, felt completely involved in it, transported emotionally by it, and who could, perhaps, even sing most of its melodies. But surprisingly few of them recognize that every theme of the finale derives from a particular source earlier in the concerto. Returning to your point, is it necessary to recognize this in order to appreciate the work? One can certainly love it and find it fulfilling without grasping these connections. But when one has formed a strong emotional impression of two themes, one quiet, delicate and yearning, the other forceful and heroic, it can be a startling revelation to learn that one is an extroverted form of the other - and it can change ones impression of the work as a whole. It adds depth to ones appreciation.

I have a good ear for recognizing this sort of thing, but I am not so arrogant as to assume that other listeners have not picked up things I have missed. I have benefited over the years from having friends (or, GASP!, even critics or musicologists) point out things I have missed.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Xavier said:


> [/font][/size][/b]
> Exactly right, hp.
> 
> All of those things: intervals, counterpoint, motives, etc. are (through careful, repeated hearings) _subconsciously apprehended_... the handmaiden of the expressivity of the piece.


The logical problem with this idea is obvious: If the apprehension is subconscious, one will be unaware of it - by definition. Therefore, it is impossible to ever know if one has "subconsciously apprehended" what a work has to offer. More to the point, a claim that one has subconsciously apprehended music is meaningless for all intents and purposes of communication.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Of course you may pick up some details like that, but not everyone wants to study the scores to find that. Not that it's bad to study the scores, just that it's the primary sphere of the composer/performer. I have to like the material and what's done with it first before I could get curious about thematic transformations/connections. It's up to the performer to convey some of the unity of a piece too. Realistically I don't think most of us have time to study the scores for everything anyway, if we could even find the scores, or even good musical information on some pieces. With famous pieces of course you can probably find some information reasonably easily on the internet, so if really curious about a piece someone might want to do that. But I doubt they'd do it for most pieces, it would take too much time.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

starry said:


> Of course you may pick up some details like that, but not everyone wants to study the scores to find that. Not that it's bad to study the scores, just that it's the primary sphere of the composer/performer. I have to like the material and what's done with it first before I could get curious about thematic transformations/connections. It's up to the performer to convey some of the unity of a piece too. Realistically I don't think most of us have time to study the scores for everything anyway, if we could even find the scores, or even good musical information on some pieces. With famous pieces of course you can probably find some information reasonably easily on the internet, so if really curious about a piece someone might want to do that. But I doubt they'd do it for most pieces, it would take too much time.


It doesn't necessarily require score study. Sometimes just being told to listen carefully for a particular feature or relationship is enough. Good program notes can work wonders. And I am not arguing that everyone should get this deeply into every work they hear. I'm just trying to point out that there is a conceivable benefit for doing so, which is what is being denied in this thread.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

EdwardBast said:


> which is what is being denied in this thread.


I don't think that has been the general idea of most. That's like saying that it's been expressed that everyone thinks you need to study a score and understand all music theory to appreciate music. Some may think that too, but most don't. The question has mainly been can you appreciate music simply by listening to it, and most here and outside this board think you can. That's not denying people extras for works if they are curious to find more on a particular piece.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

> *The logical problem with this idea is obvious: If the apprehension is subconscious, one will be unaware of it - by definition. Therefore, it is impossible to ever know if one has "subconsciously apprehended" what a work has to offer.
> 
> More to the point, a claim that one has subconsciously apprehended music is meaningless for all intents and purposes of communication.*




This is the crux of the matter:

An intellectual understanding of the technical side of a composition is utterly irrelevant to its emotional purpose. Perhaps it's greatly fascinating to some people, which is fair enough, but for me it seems kind of trivial next to the fact of being profoundly moved on an emotional level.

Just because a person can rationalize what is going on structurally in a piece of music is *NOT* evidence that they've received the 'emotional message' of the piece.

To be clear: I don't consider the structural architecture of a piece of music to be irrelevant. Far from it, I think it's extremely important. Utterly crucial. And to build the architecture of a large-scale work I'm sure would require great intelligence on the part of the composer. My point is, as far as the listening experience goes, what is important is that the architecture is FELT, and whether it is consciously observed is academic.

Of course, this gets confusing if someone is conscious of the structural implications of the music, notices how much power this gives the work, then assumes that they feel that power because they are aware of the musical thought behind it. I would suggest that this power is accessible to anyone with a natural musical "ear" and the *patience* to listen, and that the relevant "connections" will be made on a *subconscious* level, which is where the visceral power of the music really operates.

And musical "knowledge" is a different thing entirely from aesthetic sensitivity towards music. Although to confuse matters further, many people with a sensitive "ear" are likely to have acquired some knowledge and then credit this knowledge with their ability to appreciate music. I would suggest they could have loved it all along without this "knowledge". Perhaps they would have had less motivation to listen in the first place, but again, I believe the emotion is communicated with or without "knowledge".

What can be gained from a technical understanding of the score or the historical context of the music is *incidental and superficial*. The fact that these things can be "understood" without actually hearing a note should suggest that they are ultimately extraneous to musical communication.

In my view, it is that which can only be understood by hearing the music in greater depth on your own which holds its true power.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Xavier said:


> [/font][/size][/b]
> 
> This is the crux of the matter:
> 
> ...


Now that "we" have settled this question once and for all, I am now looking forward to an OP from you on another as equally interesting a topic.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

apricissimus said:


> Just two weeks? Sometimes rewards come only after time, and some amount of effort.


I only had enough migraine tablets to last two weeks. Perhaps it was the "Professor". They can easily make or break a course.

This one seemed to be going through the motions. No pun intended.

My bad luck.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I think there are intellectual not just emotional things that are subconscious. So I would define feeling as not just being pure emotion but also an intellectual feeling of the way of the music. And some things are received in our mind but we are conscious of them as they are quite evident such as the start of a new theme.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> What I said has absolutely nothing to do with formal training or theory background. I'm talking about simply recognizing that two themes are related, that one was designed to be heard as a transformation of the other. Such recognition almost always happens intuitively, but it can be surprisingly easy to miss. And there are many works for which missing such connections is like not understanding that Edmond Dantes and the Count of Monte Cristo are the same person. (The Count is Edmond under a new identity returning to avenge wrongs done to him in his youth.)
> 
> For example, there are no doubt thousands of people who have listened to Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, felt completely involved in it, transported emotionally by it, and who could, perhaps, even sing most of its melodies. But surprisingly few of them recognize that every theme of the finale derives from a particular source earlier in the concerto. Returning to your point, is it necessary to recognize this in order to appreciate the work? One can certainly love it and find it fulfilling without grasping these connections. But when one has formed a strong emotional impression of two themes, one quiet, delicate and yearning, the other forceful and heroic, it can be a startling revelation to learn that one is an extroverted form of the other - and it can change ones impression of the work as a whole. It adds depth to ones appreciation.
> 
> I have a good ear for recognizing this sort of thing, but I am not so arrogant as to assume that other listeners have not picked up things I have missed. I have benefited over the years from having friends (or, GASP!, even critics or musicologists) point out things I have missed.


What you say is true. It's just that not everybody wants to analyze the music. Some folks don't care that themes from the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto's finale are related to themes from the first movement or that the glorious, triumphal final coda of the Bruckner Third Symphony (abridged, revised version)) that Karajan conducts, is simply the minor key opening of the symphony, transformed to the major.

It would have been nice to have taken a course where the instructor would have pointed out such examples with the actual music. I would have liked that! I'm sure there are many more connections I'm not aware of, despite years of listening.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

hpowders said:


> What you say is true. It's just that not everybody wants to analyze the music. Some folks don't care that themes from the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto's finale are related to themes from the first movement or that the glorious, triumphal final coda of the Bruckner Third Symphony (abridged, revised version)) that Karajan conducts, is simply the minor key opening of the symphony, transformed to the major.


...wait, what?

That's not analysis. That's basic understanding, requiring no technical knowledge or explanation whatsoever.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

And it should be said that connections are sometimes chance or just overrated in importance, and a musicologist may read too much into something. Of course other times there could be very valid connections that the composer may want to be heard or seen by the performer and listener.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

starry said:


> And it should be said that connections are sometimes chance or just overrated in importance, and a musicologist may read too much into something. Of course other times there could be very valid connections that the composer may want to be heard or seen by the performer and listener.


Sometimes the connections that are unheard, ones that perhaps even the composer was unaware of, make the most subtle impact. Schoenberg used the example of the finale of Beethoven's F major String Quartet to show how everything could be traced back to variations of a single figure.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

What this seems to be coming down to is a debate between a rather simplistic notion that music is a wholly emotional experience versus the possibility that it might also involve the mind as well.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Sometimes musicologists can be quite creative and you wonder how much what they say is their own creativity or the composer's.  Not that that can't be interesting of itself sometimes of course. I'm not commenting on your example here I'm just talking in general. But really we don't exactly what a composer would want the listener to be aware of sometimes anyway, it's up to the performer to work out how to articulate aspects of the piece while keeping in mind the broader perspective of the whole work.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> What this seems to be coming down to is a debate between a rather simplistic notion that music is a wholly emotional experience versus the possibility that it might also involve the mind as well.


Versus? The emotional experience is made with the mind. To me it seems that the discussion is if music could be experienced only listening to it and it's self-sufficient or it requires extra musical notions to be fully understood at an emotional level.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> What this seems to be coming down to is a debate between a rather simplistic notion that music is a wholly emotional experience versus the possibility that it might also involve the mind as well.


It isn't. Because emotion and intellect are both part of the mind and they are both part of what the listener does. I think it's more the % of importance you give to listening as opposed to the % to a closer technical study of the work or other outside information. I think it's just the balance between them that differs between people, though most I think devote much more importance to listening.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

> Sometimes musicologists can be quite creative and you wonder how much what they say is their own creativity or the composer's.


And here is a good example:

http://www.talkclassical.com/25899-pseudo-intellectual-drivel-about.html


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Xavier said:


> [/font][/size][/b]
> 
> An intellectual understanding of the technical side of a composition is utterly irrelevant to its *emotional purpose*. Perhaps it's greatly fascinating to some people, which is fair enough, but for me it seems kind of trivial next to the fact of being profoundly moved on an emotional level.
> 
> Just because a person can rationalize what is going on structurally in a piece of music is *NOT* evidence that they've received the *'emotional message'* of the piece.


[Emphases mine]
Your assumption that music has a message at all, or emotional content that can be disentangled from its structural underpinnings, is dubious. There is no medium versus message dichotomy here.



Xavier said:


> What can be gained from a technical understanding of the score or the historical context of the music is *incidental and superficial*. The fact that these things can be "understood" without actually hearing a note should suggest that they are ultimately extraneous to musical communication.


As I have pointed out before, you have no idea what I, or anyone else on this forum, can gain from the understanding of a score or the historical context of a musical work. You can say with authority only that what you gain is *incidental and superficial*. And do you really think that those of us who read scores do so "without actually hearing a note?" If so, you are mistaken.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> What I have gained from these things is neither incidental nor superficial.


Probably is difficult, but can you make an example?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

norman bates said:


> Probably is difficult, but can you make an example?


Not difficult at all. Just time consuming. I will gladly do so - after dinner; I'm starving.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Xavier said:


> And here is a good example:
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/25899-pseudo-intellectual-drivel-about.html


 I guess in line with _"for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"_: 
*pseudo non-intellectual drivel from the sensitive non-academic aesthete.*


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Ugh - your OP that you linked to had a yucky tone to it with the non-stop reference to this, that etc "woman". In common with your other thread - hmmm


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> ...wait, what?
> 
> That's not analysis. That's basic understanding, requiring no technical knowledge or explanation whatsoever.


Exactly! Three cheers for basic understanding!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

norman bates said:


> Probably is difficult, but can you make an example?


I'll stick with Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto, which I cited above, explaining how knowing its historical context and untangling the relationships between the themes of the finale and the first movement yielded insight that was neither incidental nor superficial. I will avoid technical language as much as possible.

Tchaikovsky was Rachmaninoff's idol, mentor, and the director of the Moscow Conservatory when he was studying there. Rachmaninoff (henceforth R) knew his music thoroughly, making piano arrangements of some of his larger orchestra works for the purposes of study. When Tchaikovsky composed large movements in the minor mode, especially movements in sonata form, the contrasting themes in the major mode tended to represent unattainable ideal states. This is perfectly clear in the programmatic works. I will put the proof in a footnote so as not to bog down the argument.(1) In a letter to his patroness, Nadejda von Meck, about the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky describes the second theme group of the first movement as a "sweet and tender dream" during which "all that was gloomy and joyless is forgotten," contrasting it with the lamentation of the first theme. He offers a similar interpretation for its counterpart in the Fifth (roughly, Faith vs. Fate), and one might extrapolate a similar interpretation to the first movement of the Sixth. In each case, the principal themes represent an opposition of the real and the (unattainable) ideal.

As it happens, it is fairly clear that Tchaikovsky's thinking on this matter was inspired by Adolf Bernhard Marx's Beethoven criticism. Marx interpreted a number of Beethoven's second themes in this manner - the second theme of the "Appassionata" he described as Elysium, contrasted with the Tartarus of the first theme, in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony it is a longing for peace versus the struggle of the first theme, etc. We know Tchaikovsky had this writing in mind because when he described the program of his Fourth Symphony to Sergei Taneyev, he cribbed language directly from Marx's _Beethoven Leben und Schaffen_, in which these interpretations appeared.

Now, R was reticent about his aesthetic values and left few written clues to the interpretation of his instrumental works. Nevertheless, there is ample reason to believe that the contrast of grim truth and dreams or, more broadly, the real and the ideal, that Tchaikovsky sought to embody in his movements in sonata form, was central to the form and content of R's major works as well.(See note 2) And unlike Tchaikovsky, R doesn't just let those ideal states die in the first movement. In his Second Symphony, Third Symphony, Third Piano Concerto, and Second Piano Sonata they are the basis for the triumphant principal themes of their respective finales. If, as seems likely, he meant to impart to their initial statements something like the significance Tchaikovsky ascribes to his second themes, then this procedure is fraught with significance: the seemingly unattainable ideals envisioned in the first movement are, against all odds, brought to fruition in the finales.

In the Third Concerto, not just the principal theme, but every theme of the finale derives from the second theme group (there are a couple of related strands of melody there) of the first movement. Now if one has developed affection for those themes in the first movement, it is wrenching to hear them unfulfilled and overpowered by the time the movement ends. And it makes it doubly moving when they are finally allowed to win the day in their new forms in the finale. The connection between the first movement and the finale is therefore not a matter of incidental or superficial details. It is the essence of the overall structure, both expressively and formally. None of the history is essential to know, of course, but it helped me to understand the expressive dimension of the concerto. And the thematic connections are all pretty easy to hear once one knows to listen for them. No score study required.

Anyway. I've learned my lesson, Norman. Don't make promises on an empty stomach. ;-)

(1)In the orchestral fantasy Romeo and Juliet, for example, the second theme represents a vision of ideal love, that of the title characters, contrasted with the reality of violent conflict. Similarly, in the major-mode section of Francesca da Rimini we hear a memory of amorous bliss amid the tormenting winds of hell, and in the opening movement of the Manfred Symphony it is ideal visions of his beloved Astarte that plague the tortured hero of the principal sections. 
(2)First, Tchaikovksy's letters to Taneyev and von Meck were available to R, and would have been of great interest to him, especially given that Taneyev was one of his teachers. His close imitation of Tchaikovsky's approach to first movement form, therefore, was undoubtedly informed by the elder composer's conception of content in such movements. The most compelling evidence, however, is musical. In composing the only life-affirming section of his symphonic poem, _The Isle of the Dead_, for example, he chooses the remote major key a tritone from the tonic, the same choice Tchaikovsky made for the "sweet and tender dreams" in his Fourth Symphony. This is especially telling since the overall key scheme of The Isle of the Dead is an exact transposition of that Tchaikovsky used in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony (A-minor, C-minor, E-flat, F#-minor, A-Minor; F-minor, A-flat-minor, B-major, D-minor, F-minor respectively).


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

To me what you know is that Rachamninoff had a model in Tchaikovsky, and the intentions of the composer. And this 


> In the Third Concerto, not just the principal theme, but every theme of the finale derives from the second theme group (there are a couple of related strands of melody there) of the first movement


it's something one could learn just listening. So I don't see how all the extra-musical informations helped you to understand more the music. You understand more the intentions of the composer, but I wonder if that is really important. For instance one of my favorite symphonies the second of Matthijs Vermeulen. For what I've read his intention was to convey a sense of joy and happiness. Now, there's isn't a second in the entire work that make me think of anything like that. To me it sounds nervous, rugged, dark, mysterious, powerful. But if I had to judge the intention of Vermeulen I should consider it a complete failure. But who cares if it's music that I really like?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> [Emphases mine]Your assumption that music has a message at all, or emotional content that can be disentangled from its structural underpinnings, is dubious. There is no medium versus message dichotomy here.


That's not what I said.

My point is this: the ability to expound at length on the structure of a musical composition is no indication at all that one has engaged with a piece on a deep emotional level.

As an aside: here is a good quote by Bernard Holland that gets to what we've been discussing.



> *"Music is terrifyingly simple, something the inquiring intellectual has a hard time dealing with. Its effects can be profound and lasting, but its processes render the word ''meaning'' meaningless.
> 
> Music bypasses reason. It attacks us directly and unthinkingly. Music wears its illiteracy proudly, like a medal. I know this from my work as a music critic. I am helpless to write about what music is; I can only record the aftershocks it leaves behind"*



http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/16/b...ainful-to-describe.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

And for the umpteenth time let's be clear: he is obviously NOT talking about instant gratification, nor is he saying that the experience cannot be deepened or improved over time.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Considering that my own experience often contradicts the asserted premise of the OP, I'm inclined to discount it.

After all, I trust my own experience of my own emotions far more than people who presume to know better than I do the internal workings of my mind. It may also confound such people to know that I don't enjoy sweets, that I like my job, that I am not impressed by zealotry, and that I am utterly bored with the legions of self-styled prodigies and seers who populate the internet by the millions.

Q.E.D.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Violadude,



violadude said:


> I really don't understand what the OP is trying to prove.


What I'm saying is that 'the experts' such as a musicologist can understand a lot about a work, but can at the same time be an emotional invalid.

It's always seemed obvious to me that the capacity to enjoy / appreciate (yes, ALL senses) / understand music in NO WAY depends upon its technicalities, or even ability to read its notation. If music could only be apprehended by its experts, its appeal would be tiny.

Its communication is affective, physical, sensory.


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