# What is the music listener's task?



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What I mean is, I guess the job of the composer and the musicians is to make some noise. What's the listener supposed to do? Buy a ticket for the concert and then sit back and let it effect them? Or something else?


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

The job of the composer and musicians is to produce meaningful sound stimuli, i.e. characterized by having certain regularities and internal relations about them, and convey a meaningful signal for human brains to interpret.

The listeners have no task. Their brains decode sound stimuli into _sound_ passively.

If some have a libretto and a chart of Wagner's motifs with them, that's their business.

Of course music can be made in different ways. Some smarty pants composers can argue that everything can be a regularity or internal relation.

Compare this experimental piece:

"I was sad
I was sed
I was sod
I was süd"
...
but now I'm siiiiiiiid"

and

"It took all the strength I had not to fall apart
Kept trying hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart
And I spent, oh, so many nights just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry but now I hold my head up high".

The latter is a cliche piece of poetry about love that could have been written two hundred years ago, or even earlier. We will not waste time on this pastiche. Just read Goethe again instead.

The former, however, is a very interesting little composition, full of exploration potential: the various vowels symbolize worse and worse emotions, until the final "i", which is very bright. Or: notice how this "i" looks like a symbol of a torch, and signifies coming to the light, and happiness that awaits after long suffering. Or maybe the word "süd" which means south in German has some significance. After all we have an expression that things go south... Or maybe it's about sadness because of not having an identity? Maybe the singing character declared him or herself to have a name of "Sid". In fact, everyone can interpret it differently, and nobody can make a conclusive case what is it really about. And that's what's so great about it.

Make of it what you will.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

The answer is highly subjective.

I don't even think I could provide a single answer as to my own goals as a listener. Sometimes I listen purely for enjoyment, sometimes for elucidation, sometimes for inspiration, etc. Music is a truly wonderful thing, and can provide so much in all aspects of life. I hardly ever view it as a "task".


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

If you're speaking of composers/musicians, it sounds like you're referring to art music rather than popular music. Art music is supposed to confront the listeners, soothe them, reveal something to them, or at least distract them from the drudgery of life. The task of listeners is to respond to what they have heard in some sort of enriching way. If they leave a concert and haven't had something happen to alter their preconcert state, either they haven't done it right or the musicians have failed.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

To enjoy themselves, and hopefully have a wonderful, uplifting experience.


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

If listening to music is a task - why bother, life's too short.

Enjoy the sounds even if you can't fully comprehend why you do so - I have never and will probably never understand the need to over analyse something as subjective to individual listeners as music. I repeat enjoy it while you can.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It depends on the music. Is it for dancing to? Or drinking and chatting with? Or saying "yeah" during a particularly felicitous passage? It may also depend on when you were hearing it - in the 17th century or the 19th? Or maybe it is just for listening to to see where it takes you?

Mandryka - do you have something in mind with this question?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

The listener? Enjoy the music! What I do. If I don't then I don't listen to it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Mandryka - do you have something in mind with this question?


A comment of John Cage's in an interview with Richard Kostelanetz



Richard Kostelanetz said:


> RK: Are some pieces better than others
> 
> JC: Why do you waste your time and mine by trying to get value judgements? Don't you see that when you get a value judgement, that's all you have. *They are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness*.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

> Originally Posted by Richard Kostelanetz, John Cage, An Anthology (New York 1970), my emphasis
> 
> RK: Are some pieces better than others
> 
> JC: Why do you waste your time and mine by trying to get value judgements? Don't you see that when you get a value judgement, that's all you have. They are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.


It seems like Cage is avoiding talking about 'the pieces' themselves, and would rather talk about our subjective experiences, which is the only thing we can really count on.

So much for 'objective' definitions of music. :lol:


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I would say the whole process of the composer to performer to listener is to affect the listener in some way with music, whether or not the music was fully detailed or not. This is my attempt at a catch-all phrase.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Just don't bother the other listeners.


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

I have enough tasks like cleaning house, balancing the checkbook and others. Music listening is not one of them.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I like this statement from Lawrence Kramer in Why Classical Music Still Matters: Art music is addressed to someone who has a certain independence of mind and in listening to the music is expected to respond in an idiosyncratic and special way.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

The listener is non-profit , most at home when the whole experience is .


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> A comment of John Cage's in an interview with Richard Kostelanetz


Value judgements are useful for discernment. Without discernment it would be very difficult to make any choices in life, or to form preferences. Interesting that one of the more controversial composers among the well known names, who by his own admittance 'has nothing to say' is claiming value judgements are destructive.

Why bother choosing to listen to anything? That act in itself is a value judgement. Better to just let oneself be immersed in the mundane sounds of traffic or whatever other noise happens to be going on around them at the moment. To do anything else would be an act of discrimination and a value judgement.

By contrast most of the recognized big names from the past seemed to have very passionate ideas about what they liked and did not like in music. So were they wrong? Is the key in not forming value judgements? Do we need more Cage-like composers and less Mozarts, or Chopins or Mahlers?

In a wider sense this is an important concept and something to contemplate. It is a concept corruption hides behind today I think. The concept of "Accept everything, love everything, don't focus on the negative". It is a clever strategy.


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## Iota (Jun 20, 2018)

tdc said:


> .. claiming value judgements are destructive.


Certainly at the time of listening I think they can be, or at least get in the way.

I personally try to be as mentally receptive/quiet as possible when listening, with varying degrees of success. Thoughts tend to obscure in the way the atmosphere obscures the vision of a night-sky gazing telescope, the less intervening 'stuff' there is, the clearer the impression, and the more vivid the experience.



tdc said:


> Value judgements are useful for discernment.


They are. Though the judgements made subsequent to listening in quiet brain mode (for want of a better expression), seem more true in my experience.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I think the John Cage quote is great. He is a philosopher. I don't understand "Value judgements are useful for discernment"...


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

"Our proper business is curiosity and awareness " ... seems fine to me .


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*What is the music listener's task?*



Fabulin said:


> ... The listeners have no task. Their brains decode sound stimuli into _sound_ passively....





Manxfeeder said:


> ...The task of listeners is to respond to what they have heard in some sort of enriching way. If they leave a concert and haven't had something happen to alter their preconcert state, either they haven't done it right or the musicians have failed.





Heck148 said:


> To enjoy themselves, and hopefully have a wonderful, uplifting experience.


What is the music listener's task?
Two other questions go with this one, equally: (1) What is the music composer's task?, and (2) What is the music performer's task?
And the answer to all three of these questions is exactly the same. Determine one, you've determined the others.

One of the very first things I learned in a freshman college class on the Arts was that Art exists in a tri-fold manner. It consists of a Creator, an Interpreter (or Performer), and an Audience (a Viewer, a Listener, A Feeler … an Appreciator). By the term "appreciation" we don't necessarily mean "one who likes something", but rather one who experiences it.

The creative artist is a primary artist, making the work. The interpretive artist or performer is a secondary artist, bringing the work to life. Sometimes (as in a painting or a poem) the primary and secondary artist are the same person. But that third component, the audience, is ever important, and it need not consist of an artist at all. That's a real powerful beauty of the audience's role.

Of course, that third role can consist of the Art creator or Art interpreter (one or more persons) as well and have no other (outside) audience for appreciation. A painter can create his image, putting onto the canvas his own "idea", step back and examine it, in a sense becoming both Interpreter and Appreciator, especially in case where he or she (the Creator) finds something new or previously unthought of in the piece. Both Creative Artists and Interpretive Audiences constantly revise initial ideas about a work in their roles as Appreciators.

But to make a work of art with not Audience in mind is an absurdity, and in actuality cannot be done. The first audience is always the maker of the piece.

The audience to a work of art certainly has a task, but it is not necessarily to be enriched or uplifted; nor does the audience have to find enjoyment. The audience_ might _be enriched, _might_ be uplifted, and _might _even find enjoyment, but these are not necessary. What _is _necessary on the audience's part is to bear witness to the Creation -- to Appreciate it, to know it, to have seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled or experienced it.

When someone says "Art is for Man's sake" they mean exactly that. Art is what sets us apart from the animals. Just as a worm or crawfish or crow or gizelle or Airedale Terrier or whatever beast you can name is incapable of creating or performing/interpreting art, so too such an animal is equally incapable of appreciating art.

Be pleased that you can appreciate art. Your task is no small matter. It makes you human.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MY task - and I don't want to impose it anyone who doesn't find it compelling in their own heart - is to understand the music in as many ways as I can.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

For me, the purpose of Art is engagement. Whether it's a painting, novel, poem, play, film, or musical work; I try to devote myself wholeheartedly to the task of communion with the artist and what they have to say to us. Appreciation and enjoyment (two very different things, it must be noted) of great art requires attention and diligence. I revel in the richness of imagination, ideas, emotions, sensations, ambitions, etc. that the artist imbues the work with; and each repeated experience reveals new layers of wonder. The consumption of art is an inherently subjective matter, and so is "value" to an extent. I have some opinions on universal standards for evaluating art and its relationship with aesthetics and ethics, etc. informed by my worldview, but I think we should not place undue emphasis on either the inherently objective or subjective sides of art. So, for me: the music listener's task is to allow themselves to be moved, challenged, and affected by the art unfolding before their ears. With the performing arts there is the added factor of the necessity of experiencing the art as "filtered" through the medium of the performer, which is an ongoing fascination for me in music and theater. We look at a painting and we see the artist's intentions clearly layed out before us. But I don't buy the idea that the score is the ultimate statement of a composer's intention, since we have recordings of several composers who deviated and improvised radically from their own scores. Interpretation is itself an art, adding an extra layer of depth to the musical idiom; just one reason why I find such enjoyment from classical music.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

science said:


> MY task - and I don't want to impose it anyone who doesn't find it compelling in their own heart - is to understand the music in as many ways as I can.


Even wrong ways?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

AeolianStrains said:


> Even wrong ways?


If you mean "incorrect" that doesn't fit in my idea of "understand," but if you mean something like "aesthetically immoral" then, well, very much so!


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

science said:


> If you mean "incorrect" that doesn't fit in my idea of "understand," but if you mean something like "aesthetically immoral" then, well, very much so!


You and I might have different meanings of "understand." When watching a book or reading a movie, do you also understand its meaning in every possible way? Sometimes, the author does not intend things to be understood as so.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

AeolianStrains said:


> You and I might have different meanings of "understand." When watching a book or reading a movie, do you also understand its meaning in every possible way? Sometimes, the author does not intend things to be understood as so.


Well, I don't know exactly what you mean, but I do ascribe to the principle that once the book is born, the author is dead. The most I'm willing to say is something like, "Milton probably didn't mean to make Satan so much more charismatic than any other character." But who cares? Perhaps his art surpassed his intention. All the better for us -- and even scripture is not exempt.

Anyway, by "every possible way" I mean something like "through as many lenses as possible" but I don't like the implicit postmodernity of the "lens" metaphor. I mean understand the work of art in terms of its construction, how its elements relate to each other, its historical context and subsequent historical contexts (such as social history, political history, and technological history), any interesting theories or controversies it's occasioned, any influence it might have had, how it relates to what went before, how various performers have interpreted it (in the case of arts like theater and classical music).... I don't know if you can think of such a "lens" that wouldn't interest me.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

In 4'33", the listener's task is to hear whatever sounds occur as music. The listener has intent, and so meaning is created. 
In other Cage works, the performers become the creators of sound and meaning through their interpretation of the score. Usually, Cage tries to stay out of the picture. Whatever happens, happens, as long as it is sincere and the players don't make fools of themselves with this new-found freedom.
In other works, using keyboards, the performer reads the notes as written, like with the early piano pieces and the prepared piano works. Imagine a pianist hitting middle C and hearing 'bong!'
Some of the prepared piano works are quite percussive, and sound like drum ensembles that you could dance to.
Fontana Mix, in its original tape form, is a very interesting assemblage of various sounds cut up and spliced together in a prescribed form, with detailed instructions.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

science said:


> Well, I don't know exactly what you mean, but I do ascribe to the principle that once the book is born, the author is dead. The most I'm willing to say is something like, "Milton probably didn't mean to make Satan so much more charismatic than any other character." But who cares? Perhaps his art surpassed his intention. All the better for us -- and even scripture is not exempt.


We can agree to disagree. I never could get behind the Barthian le morte d'auteur.



> Anyway, by "every possible way" I mean something like "through as many lenses as possible" but I don't like the implicit postmodernity of the "lens" metaphor. I mean understand the work of art in terms of its construction, how its elements relate to each other, its historical context and subsequent historical contexts (such as social history, political history, and technological history), any interesting theories or controversies it's occasioned, any influence it might have had, how it relates to what went before, how various performers have interpreted it (in the case of arts like theater and classical music).... I don't know if you can think of such a "lens" that wouldn't interest me.


From an intellectual standpoint, maybe, but I'm not interested in how a work of art proves the superiority of a certain race, to give an extreme example, or otherwise advocates injustice. But I know that's not what you intend. I'm also a contextualist through and through, so I'm on board with this endeavor.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

The listener may hallucinate , and likely does quite often . This dream we share . Be thou responsible and
kind . I have sometimes behaved badly in music and gratefully appreciated being corrected . Oops .


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Mandryka said:


> What I mean is, I guess the job of the composer and the musicians is to make some noise. What's the listener supposed to do? Buy a ticket for the concert and then sit back and let it effect them? Or something else?


I think this is an excellent question. One of the tasks of the listener, I believe, is to avoid expectations. An apple is a funny tasting orange and vice-versa. If I go to a concert and expect the music to be <_like this_> and it isn't, I am probably going to be disappointed. This is especially true if it is a composer that is new to me.

Part of this question is also: should the listener try to hear the piece (recording) in advance?

There is also the idea of passive vs active listening.

At the very least the listener should be respectful of other listeners. I think that is ground zero for a listener.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

The listener will assume the performance is the composition . Should the composer be present , oh , there may come a hellish and disagreeable outburst of passion . Cool .


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

And what if the composition is titled *ZOOZ *and the score is read upside-down and backwards ? *oboe* will be* aoqo *. The performance is the compostion .


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