How do you explore an unfamiliar piece?

[lisa needs braces]

Do you listen to it repeatedly (often in the background) and hope it grows on you?

Or listen to it a few times with absolute focus ?

[mc ukrneal]

I focus on it, at least at the start. I find it hard not to if I want to give the piece a real chance. Once I know it, only then might I use it while I am doing something else, but I can't learn a new piece and do something else. `If I do that, I tend to forget what I heard and have to iisten to it again anyway.

[some guy]

I treasure that all too brief moment before the piece becomes familiar.

[Opus106]

I treasure that all too brief moment before the piece becomes familiar.

[dyn]

I treasure that all too brief moment before the piece becomes familiar.

[Parsifal]

I never put classical music in the background.  It always has my full attention. 

For an unfamiliar piece, it will depend on my initial reaction.  If I find it easy to grasp I will listen to the entire piece through, probably two or three times in the course of a few listening sessions.  If the piece is difficult, I will listen one movement at a time, repeating each movement until I feel comfortable going on to the next.  I agree with Someguy.  The discovery phase is to be savored.

[DaveF]

I treasure that all too brief moment before the piece becomes familiar.

Hear, hear!  Perhaps we need a separate thread - pieces you wish you could forget, for the pleasure of getting to know them again.  (For me, Bruckner 5 - I'd love to be surprised again by the way that rude noise on the clarinet at the beginning of the finale turns into a mighty fugue.)  But to return to the question - listen with the score, if you possibly can.

DF

[Sean]

abe, at least you have the brains to ask, fat lot more than most.

What you do is you get your playback devise, whatever it may be these days, and play the damn music, at least five times. No worries about attention level- hearing is the fundamental sense and it'll creep into you no matter what, if the aesthetic sensitivity is there...

This thread is a big question actually...

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I treasure that all too brief moment before the piece becomes familiar.

Ain't it the truth. This is one reason to collect a lot of music and listen selectively: to keep things fresh.

[Sean]

How can music mean much before you get to know it, before you've internalized it to access its aesthetic content?

[some guy]

Sean,

You may have just opened up a can of worms.

Interesting quote there from Mr. Bax you have as your signature, by the way.

Michael

[Sean]

Sure thing Michael.

Bax will have his day...

[Wanderer]

Do you listen to it repeatedly (often in the background)

That's my (usual) process. As there's music playing inside my head most of the time anyway, I don't find this kind of multitasking at all distracting either way. A great advantage of this method is that it works wonders in familiarizing oneself with long(er) works and idioms one doesn't particularly like. Sections that catch the attention are then used as beacons to get to know the work in a more intimate/systematized way.

[DavidW]

I listen to it.

I used to think that multiple listenings is the key to get a work.  Honestly on the first listen I can tell if the music is something that will continue to grow on me or if it is simply best at that fresh moment. Multiple listenings is better to appreciate the subtleties in something that I already like.

[pencils]

What you do is you get your playback devise, whatever it may be these days, and play the damn music, at least five times. No worries about attention level- hearing is the fundamental sense and it'll creep into you no matter what, if the aesthetic sensitivity is there...

Agreed. For me, several times through at least is required for music with any level of complexity, in order to grasp nuances, establish melodies, appreciate dissonance where it exists....

Once I have heard a piece through a couple of times, I tend to listen to several times to each separate movement in isolation so as to try and get a partial grasp on what exactly is going on, before returning to the whole piece. It works for me.

[Sean]

Sure thing; with today's box-set availability it's sometimes easy to miss works' individuality...

[starrynight]

At least with more famous classical works you can hear another performance so it doesn't have to lose all it's freshness.  There is a pleasure in knowing what will come next, but also in being surprised.  There has to be a kind of balance I expect for peak enjoyment.

[Mandryka]

I'm a  believer in two things. First, listening to lots of differnt performances till you find one that touches the spot. And second, playing the music in the background so it sinks in by some sort of ineffable osmosis. I had that experience recently exploring D'angelbert,which was not only unfamiliar, but very uncomfortable. Same for Frescobaldi's Fiore Musicale a while ago now. But little by little the exploration pays off, and you find a way of listening creatively. In D'angelbert  it was something to do with sorting out the ornamentation in my mind, getting clear what was melody, what was ornament. In Frescobaldi it was about imagining the dramatic unfolding of a mass.

Sometimes there's just no problem, and listening to the music is like meeting an old friend. That's what I felt with F Couperin's preludes, or Monteverdi's  Vespers of S. Giovani Batista, or Lassus's Lagrime di San Pietro, which I only discovered very recently. Maybe I was just lucky to find a performance which I jelled with straight away.