What's the point of listening to so much music?

[karlhenning]

But indeed, if you find him not within
this month, you shall nose him as you go up the
stairs into the lobby.

[Sef]

Is starting to smell?  That will help you find it.

Hilarious! 
I remember bringing some smelly French cheese back with me from holiday a few years ago. Stank the car out for months, and put me off soft runny cheese for years!

[Saul]

Saul, I think I understand some of where you're coming from.  You and I are creative musicians--you maybe more than I since you spend more time composing--and for us, mere listening will not satisfy.  But I myself have many versions of certain pieces.  I think I counted 5 Mahler Seconds at last count, 3 on vinyl.  I don't consider one better than another, say, Kaplan's as opposed to Solti's.  However, one or two may be more "authentic" than certain others.  Among my stacks are the 1924 Oskar Fried recording (Fried worked with Mahler himself) and one by Bruno Walter, Mahler's protégé, probably from the late 1950s or early 1960s.  Obsessive?  Not really, in my opinion, since M2 is such a seminal work.

Ultimately, though, when I listen I usually imagine myself playing or even conducting these pieces.  So I'm less "hooked on listening" than many here.  Yet as for those who do not play, but merely listen, I say more power to them!  Someday they might be listening to you, or me, or the esteemed Mr. Henning or one of the other working musicians on this forum.

(Do I dare bring up my own judgment that maybe musicians SHOULD spend less effort in recording The Old Masters and more in finding good new music to play and record? )

Great Post, thank  you.

[Saul]

Well, you know, Saul is fond to decree that Schoenberg and Stravinsky are "bad" composers, so his use of the adjective is suspect at best ; )

I mean, apart from his asking if I was serious with the Viola Sonata, nyuk-nyuk.

I was serious about that question and it still stands:

"Are you serious Karl"?

100 years from now two listeners sit together and chat about that work.


One says to the other :

"I believe that this violist screwed up when he played the runs so unintentionally".

The other says: "no I really liked that interpretation, sometimes the score can fool you but my ear is still intact"...

And then the other one fires back:

"What? You got to be kidding me? you know that Henning didn't mean the violist to do that, so what's up with 'you liked it'?

And I say:

'Oh...someone pass the coffee... who needs to hear this... '

Or in short:

'Next'.

[jochanaan]

...And I concur that the interpreter is of little importance next to the composer. Cover songs in popular music are not an analogy, because the arrangements are different, whereas in classical it's the exact same notes...

Okay, devil's advocate time: Classical artists who play other people's music--that is, the overwhelming majority of classical performers--may play exactly the same notes, but never the same way.  Any number of factors go into making a performance (recorded or live) different: the exact tempo; whether the beat is steady or flexible; dynamic range; accents strong or muted; vocal or instrumental tone; the room itself... Even Stravinsky's multiple recordings of some of his own music show some major differences between them.  And the greater the performers, the more their work differs.

[petrarch]

LOL that would be reeeallllyy bizarre. 
I know! Limit Saul's posting to his own "Saul's Composition" thread, and limit Satzaroo's posts to that same thread.

I can see it now:
Saul: Here's my Prelude no.3 in G#m

Satzaroo: One time, I had a crazy experience with this annoying person and...

Saul: Here's my Intermezzo for piano in A

Satzaroo: It was a hot, sunny day. A homeless man was behind me, begging for money...

No, that would be a two-part po-mo large-scale work for voices .

[Sid]

I can also see where Saul is coming from, but (yes) perhaps he is labouring the point a bit. I think part of being flexible is trying to enjoy virtually any performance one comes across, as I think that it is an achievement in itself to be recorded in classical - only the best get to that stage. Even if I don't particularly like a performance, I try to get my head around it in some way. I think repeated listening is also good, because you might not realise that you actually like it if you only listen to it once or twice.

As for your experience with the Chopin, I think that much of the time it is the first performance we hear that becomes our "benchmark" for judging others. I also had many recordings in the '90's which I got rid of, and there is still a sense of nostalgia with some of those works, although I have them in different recordings now. Often, the first recording you get to know in more depth becomes your favourite. But it doesn't make it any better than the others, really.

I agree with you that composers probably don't spend their time listening to recordings and criticising them. That's why we have critics! The composers are too busy creating to do that, so I get your point...

[Mirror Image]

LOL that would be reeeallllyy bizarre. 
I know! Limit Saul's posting to his own "Saul's Composition" thread, and limit Satzaroo's posts to that same thread.

I can see it now:
Saul: Here's my Prelude no.3 in G#m

Satzaroo: One time, I had a crazy experience with this annoying person and...

Saul: Here's my Intermezzo for piano in A

Satzaroo: It was a hot, sunny day. A homeless man was behind me, begging for money...

Lol...this is pretty much what I had in mind as well.

[Cato]

My emphasis above.

You cannot "know" anything that you have claimed!  What we do know is that my list of infinitives will encompass more people with their experience of music than not.

We cannot know what Beethoven would have done, if born in 1970 rather than 1770.  He might never have gone deaf in modern times, and if so, might have indeed listened to all kinds of music, and might have indeed collected various versions of Mozart's 40th Symphony.

And he might have remained immune: it simply cannot be proven.  We do know that he had his obsessions: e.g. he counted out an exact number of coffee beans every day for his grinder. 

That would be a small bit of evidence for the other side.   0:)

And do you really believe there were people who did NOT play the same piece at the piano many times for their enjoyment, or that there were some who did NOT collect sheet music the way people collect CD's?

Prithee, explain precisely how you KNOW what Beethoven would be doing in 2010 A.D.?

Waiting patiently!

[Saul]

Lol...this is pretty much what I had in mind as well.

Darn, that painting looks scary.

[(poco) Sforzando]

While I by no means share Saul's high opinion of his own music, I don't think what he's saying here is entirely off base. When I first took an interest in classical music around 1960 at the age of 12, there were plenty of recordings, but nothing like the hundreds of versions of single pieces you can encounter now. I had an old RCA Victor record catalog from the 1940s where 2-3 versions of a piece were the norm. And as I remember the Schwann catalogs of those days, it was exceptional to see 30+ versions of a single work listed, and complete Wagner operas like the installments of Solti's Ring were major events.

We take recordings so much for granted today that it may not be obvious how much they revolutionized the history of music. Some musicians like Elgar and Stravinsky immediately sensed the benefit of recordings as a way of preserving music, while others (I believe Debussy among them) were suspicious that recordings imposed an artificial layer of interference that inhibited free performance.

The way I see music history of the 19th-20th centuries, there were several primary movements that shaped the way classical music has developed today. Compare Bach's time, where all of his sacred cantatas were intended for use in the Lutheran service, or Mozart's and Haydn's era, where they were invariably expected to provide listeners with new music. Haydn wrote twelve new symphonies for London; when Mozart did not have a symphony to bring to Linz, he wrote a new one in a few days. Music was obviously always live, and was always new.

In addition to recording, the other major movements in my reading of music history include: a) the gradual establishment of a fixed canon of music that was considered worthy of preservation, b) the rise of modernist styles that alienated listeners to one degree or other, c) the rise of a dedicated body of listeners with the leisure time to hear music for its own sake (rather than say, as part of a religious service), and d) the decline in amateur music-making, where if you wanted to hear (say) a Brahms symphony in your own home, you might turn to a 2-piano arrangement or listen to people who could play one.

Bear with me, please, as I think this is all relevant. Our own time is obviously very different from Bach's or Haydn's, and recordings are key to this. At the same time a fixed canon of music is taking shape roughly by the end of the 19th century, the newer music of Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, Carter et al. continues to alienate listeners, who then instead of making music amateurishly for themselves, turn to established older classics that they can hear in expert performances reproduced in high-quality sound in their own homes. As more and more recorded versions of the same works become available, listeners take a greater interest in comparative interpretation, and thus it is not uncommon for "completists" to want to specialize in single genres, periods, composers, even single works, of which they want to master the entire recorded legacy.

Of course these are all generalizations and exceptions are easy to find. (There are still people who play music for their own pleasure, and a substantial body of listeners enthusiastic about new music.) But I think I have the main outlines right. The question is: is where we are today a good thing? I have my doubts. We have nothing today like the eager anticipation a new work of Haydn or Brahms raised in their times. Instead, listeners pay attention to variations in phrasing, tempo, balance, attack and the like within multiple performances of individual works. Some listeners rarely if ever even experience live music; they listen at home or on the radio or in their cars. It all feels smaller somehow, and we no longer feel the same electricity that must have been experienced when Otello or the Ring or the Brahms 4th were completely new and their privileged first hearers at live performances knew they were in the presence of new masterpieces. I don't begrudge those who want to devote themselves to comparative listening, but it seems to me a lot has been lost in the process, and I don't see it coming back soon.

[Saul]

Bear with me, please, as I think this is all relevant. Our own time is obviously very different from Bach's or Haydn's, and recordings are key to this. At the same time a fixed canon of music is taking shape roughly by the end of the 19th century, the newer music of Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, Carter et al. continues to alienate listeners, who then instead of making music amateurishly for themselves, turn to established older classics that they can hear in expert performances reproduced in high-quality sound in their own homes. As more and more recorded versions of the same works become available, listeners take a greater interest in comparative interpretation, and thus it is not uncommon for "completists" to want to specialize in single genres, periods, composers, even single works, of which they want to master the entire recorded legacy.

Of course these are all generalizations and exceptions are easy to find. (There are still people who play music for their own pleasure, and a substantial body of listeners enthusiastic about new music.) But I think I have the main outlines right. The question is: is where we are today a good thing? I have my doubts. We have nothing today like the eager anticipation a new work of Haydn or Brahms raised in their times. Instead, listeners pay attention to variations in phrasing, tempo, balance, attack and the like within multiple performances of individual works. Some listeners rarely if ever even experience live music; they listen at home or on the radio or in their cars. It all feels smaller somehow, and we no longer feel the same electricity that must have been experienced when Otello or the Ring or the Brahms 4th were completely new and their privileged first hearers at live performances knew they were in the presence of new masterpieces. I don't begrudge those who want to devote themselves to comparative listening, but it seems to me a lot has been lost in the process, and I don't see it coming back soon.

Masterfully written and intelligently presented, thank you.

[Philoctetes]

Waiting patiently!

Dude... Jurassic Park. DUH! 

[Mirror Image]

Darn, that painting looks scary.

This is a piece of Expressionist art I found on Google just by doing a search. I think it's a cool painting. I like Expressionism and Impressionism, but lately I have fancied some Realists and Cubism works as well. There's so much beautiful art out there.

[Saul]

This is a piece of Expressionist art I found on Google just by doing a search. I think it's a cool painting. I like Expressionism and Impressionism, but lately I have fancied some Realists and Cubism works as well. There's so much beautiful art out there.

I think you'll like this:

http://www.google.com/images?q=ted+nasmith&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1T4ADBF_enUS316US316&biw=1266&bih=623&tbs=isch:1,isz:l&prmd=ivo&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=oH22TPlPgf_wBv_-vLYB&ved=0CAcQpwU

[Cato]

Dude... Jurassic Park. DUH! 

  I know!  Or maybe he is just passive-aggressive!   

[Scarpia]

Of course these are all generalizations and exceptions are easy to find. (There are still people who play music for their own pleasure, and a substantial body of listeners enthusiastic about new music.) But I think I have the main outlines right. The question is: is where we are today a good thing? I have my doubts. We have nothing today like the eager anticipation a new work of Haydn or Brahms raised in their times. Instead, listeners pay attention to variations in phrasing, tempo, balance, attack and the like within multiple performances of individual works. Some listeners rarely if ever even experience live music; they listen at home or on the radio or in their cars. It all feels smaller somehow, and we no longer feel the same electricity that must have been experienced when Otello or the Ring or the Brahms 4th were completely new and their privileged first hearers at live performances knew they were in the presence of new masterpieces. I don't begrudge those who want to devote themselves to comparative listening, but it seems to me a lot has been lost in the process, and I don't see it coming back soon.

I am bewildered when I read on this board of people undertaking to "compare" all recordings of a piece.  They seem to have persuaded themselves that they are doing some sort of research, rather than listening to the stereo.  I have multiple recordings of most pieces I like because I don't want to be "imprinted" on one recording.  When I listen to it, I want it to be something novel like going to a concert, not a repeat of the version that rests in my memory.  I feel this helps me focus on the music rather than a specific performance of the music. 

As far as those lucky ones who heard the premier of Brahms 4th, well I am in no hurry to go back to those days.  Aside from those precious few who were privileged to hear a good orchestra, I'm sure most people never had even the opportunity to know what a Brahms symphony sounds like.   The really perseverant ones perhaps knew it from hearing aunt Edna pounding it out on a spinet piano from a piano reduction made by some hack. 

I'm in no rush to return to those days.  Since I have an advanced graduate degree and work 60 hours a week, I naturally don't have enough money to think about attending a classical music concert in my city.  If this were 1890, the best a person of my class could hope for would be to hear Mozart's 40'th symphony transcribed for penny-whistle.

[karlhenning]

. . . I have multiple recordings of most pieces I like because I don't want to be "imprinted" on one recording.  When I listen to it, I want it to be something novel, not a repeat of the version that rests in my memory.  I feel this helps me focus on the music rather than a specific performance of the music.

Good.  Also you seem to me to present one reasonable counter-remark to something the OP said, to the effect of "why should I listen to many recordings of a piece I already know well?"

Doesn't to hurt to challenge what one supposes oneself already to know very well.

[DavidW]

I am bewildered when I read on this board of people undertaking to "compare" all recordings of a piece.  They seem to have persuaded themselves that they are doing some sort of research, rather than listening to the stereo. 

I think that Paulb actually calls his listening "research"

[karlhenning]

I think that Paulb actually calls his listening "research"

(* chortle *)