How do you discover new music?

[Karl Henning]

It also sometimes takes me several listens to understand a piece of music. Something that helped me in the past was listening to music in the background (such as while washing dishes). Then when I was ready to listen while paying full attention there would be familiar melodies.

This is good. The idea of it would have been repulsed by the young-undergrad-in-a-hurry I once was, but with time I've found that I find this useful, myself: one's ear and brain do pick things up and do a bit of processing.

[DavidW]

Fast forward to a few years later, I dive deep into modern music which is quite unrelenting and unnerving. I have anxiety issues already so the music only worsens that.

Yeah I would say just stop that.  In a few months or years when you've overcome your mental health issues, you might be able to approach the music from a different perspective.

My attitude is a bit different.  I listen to music for pleasure, not to become cultured.  I'm not trying to appreciate great art, I'm just listening to the music that I enjoy.  I think classical music, like classical literature is something that you need to be receptive to "get."  If you can't meet it half way, then you'll turn something amazing into a chore.  If you listen to a composition or read a novel word for word without either making a dent on you, all you did was waste time. 

Rant over.

[Spotted Horses]

It also sometimes takes me several listens to understand a piece of music. Something that helped me in the past was listening to music in the background (such as while washing dishes). Then when I was ready to listen while paying full attention there would be familiar melodies.

I've sometimes tried that, but it doesn't work for me. I get to distracted by the music and what I am supposed to be doing doesn't get done.

What I have found is that it is helpful to give a preliminary listen as though in a concert hall. My younger self would refuse to move on until what was heard was appreciated. I'd listen to the first movement of a piece several times before going on the the second movement, or even stop and go back to the beginning of a movement if I felt I had gotten lost. Now I find value in listening all the way through even if I fell lost because something has diffused into my brain to better inform a subsequent listening.

[foxandpeng]

I've sometimes tried that, but it doesn't work for me. I get to distracted by the music and what I am supposed to be doing doesn't get done.

What I have found is that it is helpful to give a preliminary listen as though in a concert hall. My younger self would refuse to move on until what was heard was appreciated. I'd listen to the first movement of a piece several times before going on the the second movement, or even stop and go back to the beginning of a movement if I felt I had gotten lost. Now I find value in listening all the way through even if I fell lost because something has diffused into my brain to better inform a subsequent listening.

This is reflective of my approach. At tines, I find value in hearing a work in its entirety, but equally, focusing on each movement until I can find the first and second themes, understand a little of the exposition and development, then appreciate the recapitulation of those themes, yields better results. I can't always do that unless I break it down small. I don't easily retain a memory of a piece, nor can I identify sections well, without repetition. Why would I expect any different? Classical music can be deliberately and gloriously complex - which is part of its appeal.

I often wish that I could read music or follow structure and understand what makes it clever/effective/thematically interesting, but I don't. I just know how it sounds to me and whether I find it pleasing. I can analyse poetry for its constituent parts, and enjoy it on the page far more because of that skill, but I won't ever acquire that capacity with music. Having said all of that  it is OK to appreciate music as an intuitive amateur. I can live with my level of capacity even knowing that others can follow a score and be wowed even more by what they see, than what I can pick up with untrained ears.

We each enjoy in our own fashion, I guess.

[Florestan]

I've never taken any masochistic pleasure in re-listening to something that I didn't fully understand the first time. Usually, if I'm revisiting a work or a composer, it's because there is something about that work or composer that deeply arouses my curiosity, and usually that sense of curiosity is enough to power through whatever I'm listening to. However, this does have its limits; for example, if the work in question is extremely long, and I didn't like it at all the first time, it's going to be a long time before I listen again.

My thoughts and approach exactly. If a work doesn't grab my attention, either fully or partially, at the first listening, it's highly unlikely that it will do so at the second, which usually doesn't even take place. And if the work is extremely long, chances are I will stop listening to it long before its actual end, if I ever start listening to it, that is.

For me, 'new music' means either new (to me) works by composers whose music I already like, or new (to me) works written in styles that I already like. It's very rarely that I listen  to new (to me) works by composers whose music I already dislike, or written in styles I already dislike. Firstly, for every work I dislike there are 10 that I like and my time would be better spent with the latter than with the former. Secondly, life is too short and time in too short supply to waste it on something I dislike in the vain hope that maybe one day I will like it. After all, I'm not under any obligation to like, or even to try liking, everything. I already know what I like and stick to it, and I already know what I dislike and avoid it.

Now I'm at a stage where I'm past discovery of the canon.  When I listen to new music, they are not necessarily masterpieces.  They won't stand up to much scrutiny, they will just become tiresome.  I find that the key is to listen once or a few times, but don't put it under a microscope or you'll quickly lose the magic.

This, too.

never revisiting a new piece might deprive you of a potential favorite. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is a great example, a favorite of millions. Imagine hearing it once—and never again.

Well, that's actually how lots of new music was heard back then. Once - and never again. The only genre in which repeated listening was possible was opera. Be it as it may, if I never again heard Beethoven's 9th it'd be no big deal. Actually, it's quite probable that I will never again hear it voluntarily. 

[pjme]

  Lots of interesting and enlightening comments.
When alone and doing household chores (ironing takes time... ) I enjoy listening to longer works - opera or oratorio.
My curiosity in discovering music is often stimulated by reading (auto)biographies, LP/CD booklets/ odd comments (good,bad,furious,excessive...)and blogs on the internet or articles in newspapers and magazines. Letters and diaries of contemporary artists help to do research.
YouTube comments can be extremely ..."helpful" (Schoenbergs pianoconcerto!)
Experiencing music live helps me enormously in "accepting" (or "rejecting") music.

[Luke]

I often wish that I could read music or follow structure and understand what makes it clever/effective/thematically interesting, but I don't. I just know how it sounds to me and whether I find it pleasing. I can analyse poetry for its constituent parts, and enjoy it on the page far more because of that skill, but I won't ever acquire that capacity with music. Having said all of that  it is OK to appreciate music as an intuitive amateur. I can live with my level of capacity even knowing that others can follow a score and be wowed even more by what they see, than what I can pick up with untrained ears.

But, you know, some aspects of reading a score are gloriously easy, and I really dislike the mystique around them, because it prevents people from accessing something which is, simply put, a lot of fun. I'm not denying that a score contains a lot of information which is only easily accessible to someone who reads music fluently, but that's mostly about details: pitch, harmony, rhythm, all that stuff. Vital, of course, but if you can see densities, textures and patterns in dots arranged on a page - never mind the pitch detail, just the general shapes - then the score is already showing you a great deal. One of the beauties of a score is that it freezes time and turns something that flows from a beginning to an end 'in time' into a visual representation viewable in a single moment. The simple look of the thing, the recurrent shapes and textures enables us to stop, look and compare, and to get a good conception for how things are structured and balanced out. If a work is baffling you, then a quick flip through a score, so that you can see where its high points are, its moments of return, its moments of weight and light, what the prime 'shapes' of the piece are etc. etc. can be an enormously helpful illumination.

Scores are essentially pictures of sound, and so in some fun cases - when the sound is partly an attempt to parallel a visual image, as in programmatic music, or when it is attempting to portray a particular emotional state which would feel to us like a 'texture' in the mind - seeing the score can also intensify the power of that image. That is to say, baldly: scores can even look like the subject of the music, whether in simple pictorial terms - look at the scores for e.g. the drowsy, hypnotic forest, the blizzard etc in Tapiola, the woods, rivers, waterfalls, pastures, crags and storms of Alpensinfonie, the waves, calms and tempests of La Mer, the seagulls and gravelly sea-surge of the Sea Interludes, the Rhine, Valhalla, flickering fire, and many other things in Rhinegold  etc. etc - or in psychological ones - look at Erwartung, or look at any expressionist score, but also look at any score where an intense situation is successfully being portrayed e.g. I'm thinking right now of the opening chorus of the St John Passion, whose score looks exactly like the music feels, or, in the same genre but an entirely different style, Penderecki's St Luke.... These examples could easily be multiplied a thousand times over.

Finally, seeing the score the composer wrote gets you that bit closer to the composer's mind and their intentions. The way something is notated can tell us a lot - and very often you don't need to read music to understand that, intuitively. 

I'm rambling now, sorry. But I do encourage people to look at scores, whether they think of themselves as music readers or not. They are just a lot of fun! IMSLP, for those who don't know, is the first port of call for so much stuff....

[pjme]

But I do encourage people to look at scores, whether they think of themselves as music readers or not. They are just a lot of fun! IMSLP, for those who don't know, is the first port of call for so much stuff....

Indeed! I love looking at scores.
Especially in the 19th and 20th century composers would go to great lenghts in giving detailed information on instruments/instrumentation, poetical, literary, religious, visual...inspiration.
Just reading tempo or dynamic indications can be claryfying & fun:

Nicht schleppen, tempestuoso, con anima, allegramente, andantino, pomposo,  nobilmente, gentile, senza rigore, frenetico, religioso, wild herausfahrend, un peu en dehors, doloroso... sempre staccato, martellato....con tutta forza - niente!

Plattenglocken, Röhrenglocken, Heckelphones, Wagner Tuben, tenor horns, ophicleide, gongs and tamtams, slap sticks/frustra/whip, wind & thunder machine, hammer, rattle, temple blocks, bird calls, piccolo, harp, vibra slap and harmonium 



 

[Luke]

Brian Ferneyhough's scores (though ultra-complex and emphatically not recommended to anyone who is not an advanced reader of music - my previous post does not apply to him!) has some of the best tempo/expression marks. Verging on the poetic. These ones are from his murderously, torture-like Time and Motion Study for cello and electronics (original title: Electric Chair Music)

schizophrenic: L.H. hysterical R.H. as though sleepwalking
sharp-edged (like over-exposed negative)
very (homicidally) aggressive
sharp and dry (the feel of powdered glass between the fingertips)
like machine-gun fire
analytic yet flexible (like a sleepwalker's dance)
suddenly glassy, febrile, like a spiders' web in wind
 

[brewski]

Be it as it may, if I never again heard Beethoven's 9th it'd be no big deal. Actually, it's quite probable that I will never again hear it voluntarily. 

Awwww. [sad look]

So I guess no Sunday brunch at Gurn's eh? 

-Bruce

[Florestan]

Awwww. [sad look]

So I guess no Sunday brunch at Gurn's eh? 

-Bruce

I wouldn't attend any Sunday brunch where they play Beethoven's Ninth, not just Gurn's.

[DaveF]

But I do encourage people to look at scores, whether they think of themselves as music readers or not. They are just a lot of fun! IMSLP, for those who don't know, is the first port of call for so much stuff....

My thoughts exactly.  There's not one skill called "reading music" which you either can or can't do, but a huge range of competence ranging from the Oliver Knussen end, who could read a new score by Carter and hear it as if being performed, to the ability to follow a single line that goes up and down, which I guess almost anyone can do.  I would liken the latter to listening to an unfamiliar language - I can follow a Janáček opera fairly well with only an English translation, even though I know almost no Czech.  (A more exact metaphor would be following a Czech translation of a Britten opera, but that's not something I do so often.)

Another excellent source of scores, especially of contemporary works still in copyright, is Scores on Demand - https://issuu.com/scoresondemand.  All legal, apparently.  If you click on the Stacks tab, you get the scores arranged by composer. It's been my way into the few works by Carter (him again) that I've managed to get my head around.

[foxandpeng]

Whereas I respect greatly the comments about score reading and seeking to avoid over complicating or over mystifying issues, I'm not sure all commenters who can read music realise how far some lovers of classical music are from this ability.

I think I carry some intellectual competence, but reading a score gives me nothing. I see patterns of notes, busyness, sparseness, clusters of annotations on a musical stave... I can imagine note lengths. It still means nothing at all to me. I can neither hear nor imagine how this might sound, nor do I derive any benefit or value from following along a YouTube work accompanied by a visual demonstration of how those notes look.

I know that for some, that feels odd or alien, and I am really glad for the added dimension it brings to those whose enjoyment is enhanced in that way... it is, however, my experience, and perhaps the experience of others that there is no material benefit whatsoever.

[Luke]

I love those youtube videos but (because of screen size/format) they're best for chamber/solo music, and the benefits they give are not therefore of the sort I was describing earlier. They show you close-up, as it were, and, yes, they should probably be avoided by those who don't really read music. What I'm talking about is the less-focused kind of view of an orchestral score. I've attached a couple of sequences from the score of Strauss's Alpensinfonie. I know, it's a pretty crass example! The first is the sunrise - see all the rising? see the mists evaporating away? see the sudden change of the texture as the sun shines forth? The second is the beginning of the storm - see the flash of lightning? the roll of thunder? the wind starting to whirl? the rain starting to fall? Seeing these is just a matter

This is just pictorial....but, hey, it's fun! 

You say

I see patterns of notes, busyness, sparseness, clusters of annotations on a musical stave.

and that's really all you need. You don't need to be able imagine how it sounds, because you know how it sounds. But the score can carry other benefits, such as being able to grasp form more easily. Score in hand, one can examine the thing at one glance. In the case of the Strauss one can, for example, look at the 'night' sequences that bookend the piece, and the summit that comes at its midpoint, and feel them in the hand, feel their weight, their balance, their proportion, compare, contrast etc. etc. Even with this one work, just a vague look at the score - not trying to hear how it sounds, just sensing its 'weight' and feeling its trajectory - can tell us a lot. It doesn't change how we hear the piece, exactly, I'm not saying that at all. But it can reinforce it.

[Florestan]

Whereas I respect greatly the comments about score reading and seeking to avoid over complicating or over mystifying issues, I'm not sure all commenters who can read music realise how far some lovers of classical music are from this ability.

I think I carry some intellectual competence, but reading a score gives me nothing. I see patterns of notes, busyness, sparseness, clusters of annotations on a musical stave... I can imagine note lengths. It still means nothing at all to me. I can neither hear nor imagine how this might sound, nor do I derive any benefit or value from following along a YouTube work accompanied by a visual demonstration of how those notes look.

I know that for some, that feels odd or alien, and I am really glad for the added dimension it brings to those whose enjoyment is enhanced in that way... it is, however, my experience, and perhaps the experience of others that there is no material benefit whatsoever.

Amen to all of the above, especially the highlights!

Heck, the other day I "read" the score of the last movement, Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo, of Dvorak's Violin Concerto, which is probably my favorite last movement of any violin concerto. Following Luke's advice, I tried to "read" into the score the general shape and feeling of the music --- to no avail whatsoever. There's nothing, absolutely nothing in the purely visual aspect of the score that can give even the slightest idea about what the music really sounds like, about its rustic, open-air, joyous merriment and playfulness. I could not even pair the main theme as it played in my head with the violin solo stave. If I had not known the music beforehand, all I could have learned by "reading" the score is that this instrument plays the notes on that stave and that at bar X they must play f, mf, or p, accelerando or decelerando, sforzando or whatever dynamic and speed indication is found there. But as to what the music really sounds, whether it's happy or sad, melancholy or jocular, and scores (pun) of other feelings and emotions a real performance would arouse, I could not have had any idea at all.

[Florestan]

I've attached a couple of sequences from the score of Strauss's Alpensinfonie. I know, it's a pretty crass example! The first is the sunrise - see all the rising? see the mists evaporating away? see the sudden change of the texture as the sun shines forth? The second is the beginning of the storm - see the flash of lightning? the roll of thunder? the wind starting to whirl? the rain starting to fall?

Well, Luke, I don't know about Danny but I don't see any of the above, much less hear them. All I see is notes in a score.

But I did notice something very interesting. The three top staves in the first page look very similar to the four bottom staves in the last page. My question is: how could you tell that the former is a sunrise and the latter is a storm, if you have never heard the music before?

[Roasted Swan]

Whereas I respect greatly the comments about score reading and seeking to avoid over complicating or over mystifying issues, I'm not sure all commenters who can read music realise how far some lovers of classical music are from this ability.

I think I carry some intellectual competence, but reading a score gives me nothing. I see patterns of notes, busyness, sparseness, clusters of annotations on a musical stave... I can imagine note lengths. It still means nothing at all to me. I can neither hear nor imagine how this might sound, nor do I derive any benefit or value from following along a YouTube work accompanied by a visual demonstration of how those notes look.

I know that for some, that feels odd or alien, and I am really glad for the added dimension it brings to those whose enjoyment is enhanced in that way... it is, however, my experience, and perhaps the experience of others that there is no material benefit whatsoever.

I think reading music is very similar to fluently speaking a second language.  Once you can, it is a completely natural/unthinking process and you appreciate the nuances and details of that language in a way that someone who can just about hold a simple conversation in anything except their mother tongue (that's me!) cannot.

So unless you have that music reading fluency (and I say that with no sense of superiority at all although I cannot remember not being able to read music) I think the struggle to align what you hear and what you see will simply get in the way of the listening experience.  After all music is about the sound first and foremost (theatrical pieces excepted....)  Away from listening I think there is a degree of interest anyone can get from the simple visualisation of a score and then how it sounds.  Some composers look dense on the page but do not sound it.  Others look incredibly sparse or dull but somehow the sound is then ravishing.  As someone who cannot compose (but wish I could) I am always amazed how a composer can take an art from one medium - sound - and then translate it into a graphical form that correlates to what their inner ear has heard.  People who can write straight into score without 'checking' on a keyboard I am in awe of!

[Luke]

Well, Luke, I don't know about Danny but I don't see any of the above, much less hear them. All I see is notes in a score.

But I did notice something very interesting. The three top staves in the first page look very similar to the four bottom staves in the last page. My question is: how could you tell that the former is a sunrise and the latter is a storm, if you have never heard the music before?

You added the 'if you've never heard the music before.' That's not what I said. It would be possible to do so,* but it isn't what I said, and, for the sake of stating it too blatantly: I'm not talking about the ability to pick up a score and hear it, which not many people have. I'm saying, simply that it's fun to look at the score and see the shapes of what you're hearing.


*What I would get from the combination of what I can see shape-wise, what I can imagine sonority-wise, plus what I can quickly see harmony-wise is this: the first set of scales are rushing towards something, a big climax, and when it comes it is a great big major key climax (lots of heavy brass, everyone playing) that is harmonically miles away from the scales leading to it. Something big, transfiguring and very bright is happening here. The second set of scales is emerging from a quickly thickening texture, triggered by a small, angular, shrieking high up in the winds; the texture is quiet but very dense, sustaining all the notes of a minor key, like a charged atmosphere. It is growing in weight and gradually taking over the texture, which starts to be invaded by those scales, underpinned by ominous rolls and surmounted by brief, sharp, stabs of sound (clearly thunder and raindrops, to go by the history of how such textures have so often be used).

[foxandpeng]

Well, Luke, I don't know about Danny but I don't see any of the above, much less hear them. All I see is notes in a score.

But I did notice something very interesting. The three top staves in the first page look very similar to the four bottom staves in the last page. My question is: how could you tell that the former is a sunrise and the latter is a storm, if you have never heard the music before?

I have to concur. Sunrise? Mist? Storm? Not in any sense whatsoever. No rain or thunder, I'm afraid. I think Luke's well-intentioned enthusiasm only goes to demonstrate what I've suggested about the chasm that can exist between those who are musically trained or aware, and those who aren't. Shapes and patterns on a score are merely that. They convey nothing at all to me.

I have a good friend who is passionate about pure maths and uses it to calculate ice density and porosity in polar regions. He loves the symmetry and beauty of those calculations on a page, and he derives genuine joy from his work. Honestly? Means nothing to me. Couldn't be less engaged if you paid me. I can see there is a captivating element to the science, and dare I even say, the art of what he does, but it is meaningless to me despite his best efforts to tell me otherwise. It is more to him than lines of numbers and formulae. What he reads,  conveys beauty. I love his zeal and can enjoy his enthusiasm by proxy, but it leaves me cold.

Music, however, I can feel.

[foxandpeng]

I think reading music is very similar to fluently speaking a second language.  Once you can, it is a completely natural/unthinking process and you appreciate the nuances and details of that language in a way that someone who can just about hold a simple conversation in anything except their mother tongue (that's me!) cannot.

So unless you have that music reading fluency (and I say that with no sense of superiority at all although I cannot remember not being able to read music) I think the struggle to align what you hear and what you see will simply get in the way of the listening experience.

This resonates strongly with me.