Inattentive listening (again)

[prémont]

This quote is a good brief of a conflict of visions that one time and again appears on this board, and more generically in hermeneutics. Composer's intentions as a terminus a quo (a starting point, a beginning) or as a terminus ad quem (an end, a goal).

I do nt see any real conflict insofar:

1) The composers intentions may not be 100% specific from the composers hand.
2) Every composition will always be an object of new interpretations, so we shall never reach a definitive end.

So both terminus a quo and terminus ad quem are truly relative concepts.

[prémont]

That's interesting. What are those rules? Have you always had them, or are they a product of your listening experience over the years?

Nothing special or surprising, just when listening to music I always make sure, that I have the option to listen without disturbing surroundings. So I sit in my listening room in a comfortable chair and listen attentively. I always use floor speakers.

Of course this wasn't always possible when I had small children at home, but that's a passed chapter.

[Wakefield]

I do nt see any real conflict insofar:

1) The composers intentions may not be 100% specific from the composers hand.
2) Every composition will always be an object of new interpretations, so we shall never reach a definitive end.

So both terminus a quo and terminus ad quem are truly relative concepts.

I am almost 50 years old then I know eclecticism is a choice. But I'm with Richter: "The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter." If the composer's intentions are not evident by his own hand/words; well, we usually have extrinsic elements to know it: Historical background; practices from his circle; his books; his output systematically considered; the music he admired; the instruments of his age, and so on. From my standpoint, the composer gives a precise set of commands, and the interpreter must obey them to bring to the world (some people will say "to create", and I'm not against it) something singular, new and beautiful, which didn't exist before the interpretation.   

[vandermolen]

I mentioned Finzi earlier on and I now remember an experience I had where music and landscape merged into one (hope this doesn't sound too pretentious). I was on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales - a most beautiful part of Northern England, where there is a contrast between the 'pastoral' valleys and the bleak and rugged hills. I was up early in the morning before anyone else. I was about 19 I think. I turned on the radio and heard this most beautiful vocal/orchestral music. It turned out to be the final movement of Finzi's 'Dies Natalis' and I was absolutely entranced by the juxtaposition of the music with the landscape outside. As soon as I got back to London I had to dash out and buy the LP (Wlfred Brown/Christopher Finzi version). That experience stayed with me ever since.

[Brian]

I have a somewhat problematic brain that can't really concentrate when it tries to do only one thing at a time, so I'm usually most attentive to music when I'm listening to it while also doing something else (reading, listening to a podcast, etc). Inattentive listening, which is usually listening to music while having a conversation with another person—social mores require you to give your conversation partner your undivided attention—doesn't work as well for me, I usually want to then go back and listen to the music more attentively afterwards to catch up on whatever I missed.

I almost never listen to music while doing nothing else, except when I'm trying to get to sleep, because that helps unfocus my mind.

Thank goodness!!! I thought it was just me! I read through the first few pages thinking "wow, everyone is gonna hate me," and then, "but amw probably won't." Honestly, it's our age that contributes to this, I think. We have Internet Brain, where we kind of always need to be doing two things to stay satisfied. Maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, sorry.

But I need music in the background to do work, almost as much as some other people don't. It's a major lifestyle difference with my (slightly older) girlfriend, because she can't even read an internet article if music is playing, it fractures her attention so badly. But she knows that when I start putting piano or chamber music on the stereo, it means I am in a really serious writing session. This has been a constant my whole life - doing homework in school with a radio or Discman, all the way up til now, happily blasting Rachmaninov or Brahms or Roussel or whomever while writing furiously.

Sometimes I even wonder if my work very slightly reflects the music. Friday afternoon to celebrate the end of the work week I listened to Janacek's Sinfonietta and the paragraphs started getting more confident and brash...

Now. Here is where people are going to rebel at me. I enjoy listening inattentively at live concerts!!! But not all concerts or works and not all the time. Let's take both sides. The first time I ever heard Schubert's D. 956 quintet was live in Wigmore Hall with the Pavel Haas Quartet + Ishizaka. It was borderline life changing. I don't think my brain emitted a single thought other than "holy shit".

But a couple of weeks ago, the Dallas Symphony did a premiere by a living composer followed by Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto, a work I have memorized after hearing 4874762 times. The premiere got my mind wandering in a musical way: oh, that texture is interesting, what would I do with that? How would I write a trio for clarinet, cello, and piano? What kind of structure would I have given this piece? Then with the Beethoven, my mind wandered more freely. Kind of the way that sleeping repairs the brain, this kind of decluttered my idle thoughts. And of course I was able to "tune in" for the really good bits.

This might leave me an outcast...

[Brian]

I once listened to the finale of Elgar's Caractacus on headphones, at the top of the Herefordshire Beacon (the place that inspired the music) at sunset. I was attending as much to the extraordinary changing light, the landscape, the feel of the wind, as I was to the music, so in that sense I was listening inattentively. In another (in the true sense, according to my own lights) I was listening profoundly.

Thank you for this! Part of the joy of music is that we can associate it with whatever we darn well want, and create an indelible memory of it in many contexts. It's nice to respect the composer and all, but it's really liberating to find a whole new layer of personal meaning by these extra-musical ties.

I guess people who listen to songs while conducting amorous business have this thought too, hah. But for you and I the landscape seems a better driver. I will not soon forget listening to Bach cello suites in a walled medieval city in Spain, or my favorite ever listen to Sibelius' Seventh symphony (that old frenemy of yours), which was in the car while driving through downtown Dallas after midnight. Something about the music's attempt to conjure up a winter landscape and the Arctic sun oddly fit perfectly with the inverse, a city asleep with the neon lights on, but no other signs of humanity left.

[ChopinBroccoli]

I came across this recently from Sviatoslav Richter:

Richter explained his approach to performance as follows: "The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter. He doesn't add anything that isn't already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn't dominate the music, but should dissolve into it."

Not sure how this relates to the topic of the tread, but it was called to mind in the wake of recent comments concerning HIP and the performer's role.  I suppose the rub is how do we determine the composer's intentions, especially if we are separated by centuries from him.

In my opinion, this is a fiction that some musicians tell themselves... "I am a neutral vessel for the composer" ... as a musician, I can only say it's complete bullsh*t

Every performance of a piece music you yourself didn't write is an interpretation... whether you're the HIPpest HIPster who ever HIPped or you're Stokowski

And I say this as someone who worships Sviatoslav Richter.  I'd rather hear him playing a piece I don't even like that much on a bad piano recorded on primitive equipment than hear any other pianist playing a piece I love in my own living room on a $500,000 piano.  I mean that.

But he was lying to himself ... His personality and his musical preferences are strongly imposed on everything he ever played... there is no "to the letter"; it's a delusion

[Ken B]

I don't know anymore. It's 01:57 AM here in Romania and I've had 4 beers and a bottle of wine. Please remind me, what did I claim? 

Claims made
Brad Pitt has a nice butt
Andre Rieu is an underrated genius
Hogan's Heroes was better than Gilligan's island

[Karl Henning]

I just read this post a bit inattentively in the first hand, so excuse the late reaction.

To me, there are some rules in listening to music, rules I obey myself. But this does not imply, that I think others should do similarly. Each to his/her own.

Bien sûr!

[Karl Henning]

In my opinion, this is a fiction that some musicians tell themselves... "I am a neutral vessel for the composer" ... as a musician, I can only say it's complete bullsh*t

Call it an aspiration, rather than a deluded state.

[ChopinBroccoli]

Call it an aspiration, rather than a deluded state.

Maybe so but it's mythical... as soon as your fingers touch the instrument it's your interpretation

[Karl Henning]

Maybe so but it's mythical... as soon as your fingers touch the instrument it's your interpretation

I agree, but there can be value in even a mythical aspiration.

[ChopinBroccoli]

I agree, but there can be value in even a mythical aspiration.

Absolutely!  Whatever your aspiration, as long as you aspire

[prémont]

Richter: "The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter."

Lovely worded but a little naive I think.

If the composer's intentions are not evident by his own hand/words; well, we usually have extrinsic elements to know it: Historical background; practices from his circle; his books; his output systematically considered; the music he admired; the instruments of his age, and so on.

Yes, we can reconstruct with reasonable probability some of the composers intentions, but many of the most important qualities of performance practice will remain unknown. Is the metrical prescribed rhythm intended or should it be interpreted in another way? How much rubato should be used and where e.g ? And so on. Every performer has to make his/her own decisions, but there is no guarantee that one arrives at the intentions of the composer. The performers choices may be convincing and that's a good thing, but the performer should not invariably imagine, that he carries the composers intentions to the letter.

[Florestan]

Yes, we can reconstruct with reasonable probability some of the composers intentions, but many of the most important qualities of performance practice will remain unknown. Is the metrical prescribed rhythm intended or should it be interpreted in another way? How much rubato should be used and where e.g ? And so on. Every performer has to make his/her own decisions, but there is no guarantee that one arrives at the intentions of the composer. The performers choices may be convincing and that's a good thing, but the performer should not invariably imagine, that he carries the composers intentions to the letter.

Agreed. Completely.

[Elgarian Redux]

I won't forget ... my favorite ever listen to Sibelius' Seventh symphony (that old frenemy of yours), which was in the car while driving through downtown Dallas after midnight. Something about the music's attempt to conjure up a winter landscape and the Arctic sun oddly fit perfectly with the inverse, a city asleep with the neon lights on, but no other signs of humanity left.

Ah Brian, I empathise so much with this, and understand exactly why you describe it here.
If you're thinking about the winter landscape etc, then I don't think you can, in the strict dogmatic sense, be 'listening attentively'. But I say you are listening super-attentively.

Sticking with you and Sibelius - if I am listening to the opening on the first symphony, with an image of a gull held in my imagination, soaring above an icy sea, then am I listening 'attentively'? Speaking from a purely musical perspective, one supposes probably not. But I say nonsense; I am in there, absorbing the notes, soaring with the gull, and shivering from the cold. I often have these extra-musical  divertissements going on, and they enhance the overall experience considerably for me.

One does not have to go very far from this to arrive at my original notion of reading an historical novel accompanied by music that would be appropriate to the historical period, or which at least resonates in some way with what one is reading. Maybe it's not so inattentive as I initially thought?

[Brian]

I often have these extra-musical  divertissements going on, and they enhance the overall experience considerably for me.

I had one schoolteacher who believed that making mental connections was a vital part of intelligence and of absorbing something new. Not only that you met it on its own terms, but that you began to wire it into your mind, so to speak, by seeing the ways that it connects into other experiences you've had, other images you have, other things you know.

Anyway. Another thought. A few years ago my family went to see Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration" and the conductor gave a little talk about how certain rhythms represent the heartbeat, where in the music the hero dies, what everything is supposed to represent. And then after the performance my mom was all annoyed! And she started ranting - "I didn't want them cluttering my mind with all their images! I had all my own images with the music! It didn't sound like dying to me. It sounded like all these other things, and then I would remember it was supposed to be about dying, and that ruined it. Leave the descriptions out of it."

[Elgarian Redux]

Anyway. Another thought. A few years ago my family went to see Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration" and the conductor gave a little talk about how certain rhythms represent the heartbeat, where in the music the hero dies, what everything is supposed to represent. And then after the performance my mom was all annoyed! And she started ranting - "I didn't want them cluttering my mind with all their images! I had all my own images with the music! It didn't sound like dying to me. It sounded like all these other things, and then I would remember it was supposed to be about dying, and that ruined it. Leave the descriptions out of it."

How these things multiply when we poke at them. Seems to me that what we are discovering is that the apparently simple act of listening is not a simple act. And furthermore, we all have our own variously different ways of complicating the simplicity.

[Mandryka]

I was in a discussion last week about Cage's 4,33. I didn't know that in the first performance there was a piano with someone sitting at it like a pianist.  I wondered what the point of that was.

One person there, a composer, said he thought the pianist was essential, because the point of 4,33 is that you listen to the ambient random sound as music.

And now I wonder what it is  to listen to sound as music.

[prémont]

I was in a discussion last week about Cage's 4,33. I didn't know that in the first performance there was a piano with someone sitting at it like a pianist.  I wondered what the point of that was.

One person there, a composer, said he thought the pianist was essential, because the point of 4,33 is that you listen to the ambient random sound as music.

And now I wonder what it is  to listen to sound as music.

As far as I recall the pianist who premiered the 4'33'' was David Tudor. That said I always thought 4'33'' might be performed on any instrument at hand.

All the time we are surrounded by different kinds of sound. Some will call it noise, but it is possible to experience some of it as music, even if it is not "composed". I think the nature offers the most musical sounds - sound of an ocean, sound of thunder, birdsong et.c. But it is difficult to imagine that the sound of a confused audience in any way can be perceived as music. Had the 4'33'' been premiered in the open nature, the point would have been more obvious to the audience.