How do you discover new music?

[Spotted Horses]

I suppose the issue may be whether a person has learned to "read music" by playing simple music, even at an elementary school level (twinkle, twinkle, little star, etc). I've played guitar, sung in school choirs, tried my hand at writing songs, etc, which has given me the rudiments of the notation of pitch and rhythm. Of course that leaves me nowhere near being able to read an orchestral score. Besides the complexity of many orchestral parts, there is the fact that wind instruments are not notated at pitch. A "C" notated for a B-flat trumpet sounds as B-flat, or sounds as "A" on a clarinet. If you can't transpose in your head you would think Mozart was writing bizarre polytonal music in the 18th century.

I've found it interesting to follow along on a score at the level of "oooh, the clarinets are playing something I didn't notice, I should listen for that." I also have found it useful for string quartets. In a live performance you would be able to see who is playing what. In an audio recording following in the score allows me to appreciate how the instruments are interacting.

[Florestan]

*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).

And now it's your turn to add something. You first said that just by looking at the graphical shapes in a score one can get an idea of what the music is about. Now you have added "what I can imagine sonority-wise, plus what I can quickly see harmony-wise". Well, exactly: laymen like me and Danny cannot imagine anything sonority-wise and can see nothing harmony-wise. All we can see is the shapes, but as it turns out, the same shape can be a sunrise or a storm; it's the sonic and harmonic context which makes the difference --- and it's precisely what me and Danny cannot grasp from looking at the score.

But anyway, this isn't even an important issue to me. Imho, music is made for being listened to, not for being read. After I hear a piece of music, the score can offer me nothing that was not in the music, and before I hear a piece of music, the score can offer me nothing, period. This might sound like a rather anti-intellectualist approach but it's the only one that works for me. 

[Florestan]

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....) 

Yes --- and "once you can" is really the crux of the matter. To use your analogy, what has been suggested here is that someone who doesn't speak French could, just by looking at the graphical aspect of a page by Balzac, get some ideas about what is being narrated. This is very far from being the case.

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!

I share your awe. Actually, I think music is the most difficult of arts to practice, because any averagely educated person could write poetry / prose and paint paintings, albeit bad ones, but to write even bad music is not something that any averagely educated person could do.

[Florestan]

My old rule of thumb as to what music is antithetical to me was, "If it was written after 1791 it is suspect; and after 1976, it's a no-no".

You probably wanted to write 'before 1791'.

[Luke]

And now it's your turn to add something. You first said that just by looking at the graphical shapes in a score one can get an idea of what the music is about. Now you have added "what I can imagine sonority-wise, plus what I can quickly see harmony-wise". Well, exactly: laymen like me and Danny cannot imagine anything sonority-wise and can see nothing harmony-wise. All we can see is the shapes, but as it turns out, the same shape can be a sunrise or a storm; it's the sonic and harmonic context which makes the difference --- and it's precisely what me and Danny cannot grasp from looking at the score.

I didn't 'add' that  - it was in response to your own 'addition', and it was put in as a footnote because it's what I would do, not what I'd expect others to do. You implied that I'd said that that I was talking about being able to read a score I'd never heard performed. I said that, no, I hadn't said anything about reading without having also heard. In this thread, in this context, I've clearly been talking about reading scores when you already know what they sound like, or perhaps you have them playing as you listen (my preferred method). I don't sit and read scores like I would sit and read a book, except for specific reasons. So when I see those pages of the Alpensinfonie I already know that there's a minor sonority, or a major one, or whatever, it's the backdrop to my mental hearing. Now, the fact is, I could also simply see that if I didn't know the piece, but that's a different issue...

And although you say that you can only see the shapes - which, btw, is all I've really been saying - as you can also read you not only see the shapes but you know what instrument is playing them. So you know that what is playing in the top staves of an orchestral score is not going to be the same as what is playing in the bottom staves. It's the difference between reading the words piccolo/flute and celli/basses. And even those who cannot read music presumably know enough to realise that p means quiet and f means loud, so you know how loud those instruments are playing those shapes, and you can see them growing or retreating, accumulating or dissipating etc. etc. Suddenly you're getting an idea of orchestral mass

Really what I'm saying is not rocket science, but I think I'm expressing myself badly because everyone seems to think I'm suggesting impossible things. The responses I'm getting are effectively of this sort

'I can't read music.... of course, I can see the shapes it makes.'

but those shapes are all I'm talking about, really. That seeing them presented graphically can give a great idea of a piece's physical presence, as it were, it's weight and proportion in time represented in space. I'm well aware of the purity of the 'I just listen, I don't care about anything else' school. I'm very happy for them. I join them in loving the sounds more than anything. Certain pieces I do not ever want to see the score for, in fact. But all I'm suggesting is that looking at a visual representation of a piece can be very helpful... and as I won't accept that if I don't like a piece on first listen it can never give me anything and it will be a waste of my time to try (if I'd accepted that my life would be considerably poorer) I am also grateful to scores for opening the way a little, with certain pieces. 

[Luke]

My goodness my last post is badly written. No wonder I get mis-read.

[Florestan]

And although you say that you can only see the shapes - which, btw, is all I've really been saying - as you can also read you not only see the shapes but you know what instrument is playing them. So you know that what is playing in the top staves of an orchestral score is not going to be the same as what is playing in the bottom staves. It's the difference between reading the words piccolo/flute and celli/basses. And even those who cannot read music presumably know enough to realise that p means quiet and f means loud, so you know how loud those instruments are playing

Yes, I've admitted that much in my post #34.

Now, the fact is, I could also simply see that if I didn't know the piece, but that's a different issue...

No, actually it's not. Do you imply that, without knowing the music beforehand, by looking at the score you could tell with relative certainty what the music is about?

[Florestan]

No. I wrote precisely what I meant to write. Have another read.

Ah, yes, my bad. You wrote:

My old rule of thumb as to what music is antithetical to me was, "If it was written after 1791 it is suspect; and after 1976, it's a no-no".

which means that back then you didn't listen to a lot of music written after Mozart's death and to no music whatsoever written after Shostakovich's death. Have I got it right this time?

[Luke]

But anyway, this isn't even an important issue to me. Imho, music is made for being listened to, not for being read.

Agreed.

After I hear a piece of music, the score can offer me nothing that was not in the music, and before I hear a piece of music, the score can offer me nothing, period. This might sound like a rather anti-intellectualist approach but it's the only one that works for me. 

For me, though, this is not true. The thing is, as a fallible human, I don't trust my listening. If I am hearing a piece for the first time and I don't like it, perhaps (e.g.) I wasn't paying attention properly. After all we all know the experience of hearing new things each time we listen to even a familiar piece. So it's very likely that perhaps I was missing something the first time I heard, for whatever reason. If I dismiss the piece on that basis, I'm losing out. But looking at the score - just flipping through it, no more than that - can make you aware of those thing that, for whatever reason, you didn't notice first time round. That's why looking through a score before can be helpful - like familiarising yourself with a map of somewhere before you visit. It's why looking through a score afterwards can be helpful, too.

For me, anyway.

[Luke]

No, actually it's not. Do you imply that, without knowing the music beforehand, by looking at the score you could tell with relative certainty what the music is about?

Yes, I could have a good guess. Tell me the title beforehand (which I'd presumably know if I was listening to it for the first time, too) then I could have an even better one. There's only so many things Alpine Symphonies can be about....also, because music is about progress through time, a surprising amount of program music is about things that happen over time, and storms, sunrises, waves, streams flowing, forests rustling in the wind, they're given a disproportionate amount of attention, plus the musical 'symbols' for them are pretty well established.

[foxandpeng]

Yes --- and "once you can" is really the crux of the matter. To use your analogy, what has been suggested here is that someone who doesn't speak French could, just by looking at the graphical aspect of a page by Balzac, get some ideas about what is being narrated. This is very far from being the case.

I share your awe. Actually, I think music is the most difficult of arts to practice, because any averagely educated person could write poetry / prose and paint paintings, albeit bad ones, but to write even bad music is not something that any averagely educated person could do.

Again, these last couple of posts by Florestan capture my thoughts entirely. I also share the awe 🙂

As with the mathematical illustration where that which is on the page conveys reality that can be experienced in the real world,  I'm unlikely ever to get it, I'm reminded of the equally skilled nature of chemistry. I have friends who work in biochemistry who know what it is to blend elements in a lab which when they perceive reactions on the page, change structures of crystals and compounds from one state to another. They can see what the additions will do, and conceptualise what that might look like through an electronic microscope. Real beauty built by incredible skill that I envy. Can I do it? Nah. If they show it to me in the real world with my eyes, I can appreciate the results. Stunning. Lattices, geometry and snowflake type glory.

Same with music, for me. I can hear the ridiculous skill sometimes, but couldn't tell you from the written formulae and compositional theory if I had a big pile of PowerPoint slides and a free hour, if I tried.

I'm really glad to be a lover of the skills of others, and the joy they bring to me in the finished product, but understand it in the raw beauty of the doing? Not much chance 😁.  Happy to stand in awe of you chaps and chapesses who can.

[DavidW]

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 that the composers and musicians here completely underestimate the learning curve.  I remember in Music Appreciation when the TA thought she could teach us how to read scores in five minutes!

It is hard to recall the years they spent connecting scores with music through practice playing an instrument, or taking a music theory class across an entire year. 

As a teacher I can say the greatest skill is empathy in trying to remember what it was like or would be like when confronted with foreign ideas, concepts, language etc. for the first time.  In Physics this is especially important because I'm teaching things understood well now but took the greatest minds of western civilization thousands of years to piece together.

Learned skills are not intuitive, instantly learned nor trivial.

[foxandpeng]

I think that the composers and musicians here completely underestimate the learning curve.  I remember in Music Appreciation when the TA thought she could teach us how to read scores in five minutes!

It is hard to recall the years they spent connecting scores with music through practice playing an instrument, or taking a music theory class across an entire year. 

As a teacher I can say the greatest skill is empathy in trying to remember what it was like or would be like when confronted with foreign ideas, concepts, language etc. for the first time.  In Physics this is especially important because I'm teaching things understood well now but took the greatest minds of western civilization thousands of years to piece together.

Learned skills are not intuitive, instantly learned nor trivial.

This in spades.

[Luke]

I think the non-composers and non-musicians here are completely overestimating the complexity of what they think the composers/musicians are talking about. I'm talking about shapes, people. Shapes made out of dots. We can all do shapes, right? 

I'm not talking about anything more complex than that and fully understand how complex it is to learn to read music in a functional way. I'm talking about general impressions only. But hey, whatever, only trying to offer ideas.

[foxandpeng]

I really find those 'How to draw' books to be a bit like this. I know what they are trying to get me to do, but they don't get it. They can't see that what they can do looks like this, but what I can do after reading it looks like this.

I applaud their intention though.

[Luke]

But I'm not suggesting that anyone become a composer, which is the analogy you're making (suggesting that you become da Vinci). I'm suggesting that looking at what a composer has done, on a superficial level, can help penetrate its complexities. For instance, your admirable work on Maxwell Davies' 6th could be supplemented by looking at the score, NOT for the complex details but to point up e.g. symmetries (i.e. bits that look the same in the score) where you might not have been aware of them. It only takes eyes to do that, not technical skill. 

[foxandpeng]

But I'm not suggesting that anyone become a composer, which is the analogy you're making (suggesting that you become da Vinci). I'm suggesting that looking at what a composer has done, on a superficial level, can help penetrate its complexities. For instance, your admirable work on Maxwell Davies' 6th could be supplemented by looking at the score, NOT for the complex details but to point up e.g. symmetries (i.e. bits that look the same in the score) where you might not have been aware of them. It only takes eyes to do that, not technical skill. 

I hear you, my friend. I will continue to try, because growth is important, fun and stretching. I do want to increase and become more, but I suspect my grasp and success may only be slightly greater than that of my pet labrador😄

Keep encouraging us!

[Florestan]

Yes, I could have a good guess.

All right, here are three pages of a score. What is the music about?

[Brahmsian]

All right, here are three pages of a score. What is the music about?

Obviously part of it includes a group of about 8 people going down an escalator.   

[Luke]

Well the idiom is martial or regal, the key is major, and Eb major too, which is generally quite a brassy, bold key, but with enough minor chords and movement to a minor key (G) and also a melodic shape in the melody to suggest a touch of sturm und drag about it....so this particular section suggests those kinds of things. It's not a 'nature impression' though, like the Strauss, its more descriptive of a kind of social/human activity. Now tell me the title, which I'd know if this was a full score,  and maybe I can give some corrections or refinements to that.