Familiarity: Friend or Foe?

[Satzaroo]

Last week, I went to a concert featuring Honolulu's Galliard String Quartet. The first selection, Prokofiev's first string quartet, I was not familiar with; in fact, I had heard it only once before. The Galliard ensemble performed the work convincingly, effortlessly transitioning from vivacious exclamations to subdued, melancholic reflections.

I enjoyed the Prokofiev, but I was expecting the next piece, Beethoven's string quartet, Opus 131, to be even more impressive. I had listened to the Beethoven many times and was particularly fond of the Yale Quartet's version back in the 60's. But watching it being performed would surely be a special treat.

How wrong I was. The Galliard group played tentatively at a slow, plodding tempo as if they were not fully in control—as opposed to their mastery of the Prokofiev string quartet. Even the more lively sections were too deliberative. Perhaps the ensemble needed more practices, or perhaps they thought that the seven movements were to be played in various stages of lugubrioso. Now, if I were hearing this Beethoven quartet for the first time, would I have been disappointed? Maybe not. In fact, I might have been delighted. In any case, I stayed throughout the performance and clapped perfunctorily at the end.

I can remember a long time when I wasn't as tolerant during a concert. A pianist who had often accompanied Isaac Stern was to perform a Schubert sonata that I was very fond of—thanks to the inspired recordings of Alfred Brendel and Vladimir Horowitz. What I heard that night at East Carolina University however, was a hodgepodge so twisted out of context that I scarcely recognized it. What a travesty! Outraged at this charlatan, I walked out of the concert hall before the end of the first movement.

I guess I have matured since then. I try to be more open-minded. However, I still dislike, for example, any rendition of the Verdi Requiem that is not as fast paced as Toscanini's live recording in 1959.

At least for me, being familiar with and conditioned by the way a particular piece of music is interpreted sometimes can boomerang when I hear a different version.

[Octo_Russ]

I find that familiarity is on the whole a friend.

When you're listening to an unfamiliar piece, you have a tendency to listen more carefully, you see the overall architecture of the piece, you're searching for something, you don't have many performances to compare the music to, so a disc or a performance easily becomes your top recommendation, the music can really hit you.

But once you know a piece well, you can have a tendency to stop searching [familiarity breeds contempt right?], also your expectation of the piece grows, any new disc or performance has to compete with many previous hearings, it gets much harder to hear an interpretation that can top your extensive list, you can be extremely critical of an average performance, you can see the flaws because you know the piece well.

Every time i listen to music [whether i know the piece well or not], i try to find something new to see / hear, i try to hear the thing from a new angle, the last concert i went to was a small venue, i got a seat near the timpani, so for the whole performance i saw the work through the eyes of the Timpanist, this made me appreciate this instrument and see the work anew.

Now i purposely look for something new, and even if it's a poor performance, i still end up appreciating the work more because i understand something i didn't see / hear the last time i heard the work.

[Satzaroo]

I find that familiarity is on the whole a friend.

When you're listening to an unfamiliar piece, you have a tendency to listen more carefully, you see the overall architecture of the piece, you're searching for something, you don't have many performances to compare the music to, so a disc or a performance easily becomes your top recommendation, the music can really hit you.

But once you know a piece well, you can have a tendency to stop searching [familiarity breeds contempt right?], also your expectation of the piece grows, any new disc or performance has to compete with many previous hearings, it gets much harder to hear an interpretation that can top your extensive list, you can be extremely critical of an average performance, you can see the flaws because you know the piece well.

Every time i listen to music [whether i know the piece well or not], i try to find something new to see / hear, i try to hear the thing from a new angle, the last concert i went to was a small venue, i got a seat near the timpani, so for the whole performance i saw the work through the eyes of the Timpanist, this made me appreciate this instrument and see the work anew.

Now i purposely look for something new, and even if it's a poor performance, i still end up appreciating the work more because i understand something i didn't see / hear the last time i heard the work.

Good point! I endured  the Beethoven Opus 131 much better by watching the cellist's dogged expressions as she rumbled through the piece.

[Sid]

Familiarity is a friend to me, on the whole. I try to take every performance on it's own terms, instead of comparing it to others I have heard. I agree with the poster above that every performer has a different 'angle' on the piece, and can give one fresh insights, if one listens hard enough.

Most of the times, before going to a concert, I try to familiarise myself with at least the major work/s on the programme by listening to a recording. This may be from my own collection, or often from the City of Sydney library system, which is excellent (provided the items are not borrowed when I'm looking for them!).

There are some concerts that I go to that I am not familiar with any of the works, and this particularly applies to new classical music concerts (eg. Australian premieres). In these cases, I at least try to familiarise myself with the composer/s in question. It's good to get one's head around a composer's style or way of doing things, it just makes their music a bit more digestible to me on first listen.

On the whole, I enjoy the concerts I go to where I know the main works far more than the ones that I don't know anything on the programme. Often, I don't know the works to be played at a certain concert months in advance, and acquire the works on cd in the meantime before the performance. So going to concerts has been very educative for me. For example, this year I've started attending some of Kathyrin Selby's "Trioz" group, and am far more familiar with some of the piano trio repertoire than I was only less than a year ago. I've heard some of the piano trios of Schubert, Arensky, Granados, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Bloch, Goossens - works that I perhaps wouldn't have been that much interested in, without the prospect of hearing/seeing them done live...

[jochanaan]

Schlomo, Beethoven's Opus 131 is an extraordinarily difficult composition even for the greatest of quartets.  Years ago I was greatly privileged to hear the Takacs Quartet play it in concert.  Even they were not perfect in it--but it was still a transcendent experience.  Still, I can imagine that any quartet could have an off night playing it.

[starrynight]

But once you know a piece well, you can have a tendency to stop searching [familiarity breeds contempt right?], also your expectation of the piece grows, any new disc or performance has to compete with many previous hearings, it gets much harder to hear an interpretation that can top your extensive list, you can be extremely critical of an average performance, you can see the flaws because you know the piece well.

All of this is definitely a danger.  And I always like listening to music that is new to me whether it be classical or some genre in popular music.  Many of us I'm sure come back to familiar performances as a kind of guarranteed comfort, a homecoming to something we love.  I suppose we should pass over those aspects that underwhelm in a peformance of a familiar piece and try to find points that feel new and more convincing.