Beautifully put. These finest musical experiences do transcend time like that, because what's being communicated is universal, and although the details of our situation may have changed, the central core has not. Susanne Langer put forward an idea that works of art (including music) present us with what she calls 'symbols of feeling'; and by contemplating the symbols (in this case provided by a musical performance), we experience something like the emotions experienced by the composer.

Well, we can argue about the detail, but that does seem to fit pretty well what goes on when, for example, we think about your experience with the St John Passion: the music transmits the fundamentals to us, and we feel the emotion in our present context.

When that happens - you just know the truth of it, don't you? You know, beyond all rational argument, that what you're feeling is coming from a true and deeply human place, beyond the 'merely musical', even though the music is the essential vehicle that enables it to happen at all. And when it happens, discussions about 'how to listen' suddenly seem very unimportant .....

Andante! You know I love every hair on your nut-brown head.

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How's it going? I've been busy but also Promming a fair bit in London. 76 concerts, loads of fringe events, all heavily subsidised by the British taxpayer. Off to hear Mahler 6 (Chicago Symphony) on 6th Sept. Went to three Bach concerts on Sunday...

THE WORLD'S GREATEST CLASSICAL MUSIC FESTIVAL




Apologies to nefigah for hijacking his thread

I don,t know how you does it 99, its all go ain't it ? and subsidised too
still suffer in silence as I do eh

Im not and expert on the matter, but i think i can give some good advices on what to start listening. Some great works that are easy to listen.
Bach - Brandenburg concertos (6 of them), the two violin concertos and the double violin concerto.
Mozart- the 5 violin concertos, i love them specially the third one. Symphony 36
Vivaldi - The four seasons.
Beethoven. - Piano sonata number 8 and 14, and the 5th symphony.

these works are all awesome and most of them are easy to hear. Im 25 too, and im after a long time having a fresh new interest on classical music. I used to hear classical when i was like 18, i even started playing violin but i stopped after a year and a half and i kinda lost interest on classical, although i sometimes listened to some of it. My point is that i used to hear to these when i was younger and loved them, and i still love them a lot.
so, this are a very good starting point i think, and i assure you that even if dont start with these, sooner or later you will hear them, =P.

I'm not sure you're right and I'm not sure Bach would agree with you. All music's difficult to talk about, hence the irony of a music internet forum, but I think the St John Passion was meant to be talked about. It's pure Christian propaganda and Bach was a skilled propagandist. He would have wanted it talked about so the propaganda was spread.

The propaganda's multi-layered so it's hard to put your thumb on precisely how he achieves the desired effect. I'm a very bad Christian but it moved me and, looking round the audience, was hitting bullseyes all around me. Respectable, middle-aged Englishmen in tweeds had tears streaming down their faces and this in a big, secular concert hall in central London.

The Passion’s about suffering so an obvious place to look is in human 'sympathy.' If a stranger falls over in the street in front of me with a crash, I go 'ouch!' Apart from a few psychopaths it's programmed into all humans to react to another's pain in that way, particularly when it happens in front of our noses.

Bach takes that instinctive, universal response to suffering and builds the Passion round it. Lubricated by the music and the drama it's hard not to feel intense sympathy for Christ - betrayed, dragged before a kangaroo court, beaten, humiliated, crucified. Then, on top of that, for Jesus to say as his dying words: 'It is accomplished!’ meaning the whole thing was a necessary process, a prophesy fulfilled, is devastating - even to old Pagans.

His dying words are, in effect, ‘I’m just doing my job’ and makes victims of everyone: Judas, Peter, Pilate, the Jewish mob. They just acted out a preordained script. Christ needed them to do his job.

It’s wildly clever stuff and amazing that it retains it's power 280 years after composition. But to appreciate it you must know a bit of background. For a start it's in German so you need a good translation. Second it helps to have a Christian background, to be familiar with the story of the Passion. Third, it helps to know your emotions are being manipulated by a propaganda expert.

Ah, you misunderstand me. I didn't say 'discussions about music are unimportant' in general (clearly they are not, because we're having one now, and it seems to matter). When I said: 'discussions about how to listen' seem unimportant', I was referring specifically to those moments when we are actively engaged with the music. I was trying to express the feeling we have, at those moments of total immersion in the music, of being oblivious to anything secondary. What I mean is that if I'm sitting there, fully engaged as you described when listening to the St. John Passion, experiencing the poignancy, the immediacy, the emotion - then at such times the question 'Am I listening to this in the correct way?' simply doesn't arise. It's self evident that I am.

I'd even go further: I'd say that if I'm listening to music and find myself wondering whether I'm listening correctly, then I can be sure that I'm not. My attention is no longer on the music, but on the question.

What we do - what we discuss - after the music stops is another matter entirely (which is what you're talking about in your post, above). In fact, here we are, discussing that very thing!

I agree. My bad.*










* To use an expression I'm sure Andante disapproves of.

Elgarian and 99

My 20c worth. When I listen to music and I stress the word listen as opposed to hearing I can do it in two ways,
1. I can just get completely immersed in the music and am oblivious to all else, mostly I see no pictures, I only hear sound, some times a certain piece may revoke memories either sad or happy, but I rarely picture a scene of a battle or a cold mountain etc,

2. I can also listen as a musician and then I am concentrating on the construction of the work being played, or following a particular instrument or section of the orchestra I do see in my mind the musicians playing I note that the orch is drowning the soloist or the conductor is speeding up etc.
I suppose what I am saying is that we all listen in our own way.
You will remember the survey carried out a long time ago [very unscientific] of what people imagined when listening to Griegs “Morning Mood” 90 odd percent said a forest in the early morning as day breaks, now both of you will know just how far off the mark that was.

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First and foremost, music should be FUN. I think the common denominator for all musicophiles, regardless of then kinds of musi we enjoy, is that music should be a FUN experience.

Of course, with classical music, there are technical aspects that add an extra dimention for study and appreciation: orchestration, a conductor's interpretation of a work, etc., but if you always concentrate on only the technical aspects, the experience of listening to music becomes too academic, and this is not a good. thing. At the end of th day, when I pop something into my player, it's because I want to have a good time, not because I want to analyse.

There is no right way to listen to a piece, nor is there a wrong way. If you are listening to something, and you are enjoying it, that's all tha matters.

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"Music is not philosophy." --Akira Ifukube

I think one of the encouraging things to emerge from this discussion is that we all seem to be agreed on that. There are probably as many ways of listening as there are listeners - and perhaps also, we should multiply that number by the number of pieces of music we listen to. I simply don't listen to Wagner in the same way as I listen to, let's say, Vaughan Williams.

About the pictures business - sometimes I get pictures, sometimes I don't. (If I'm listening to an opera following the libretto, then I get pictures all the time.) But often it's just some kind of feeling that I'd struggle to be able to name.

@Tapkaara
It depends what you mean by 'fun', but it sounds too restrictively frothy, for me. I'd prefer words like 'enriching', or 'life-enhancing'. There definitely are many pieces of music that are fun to listen to, but if someone were to listen to a work such as The Ring, or Vaughan Williams's 6th symphony, or Elgar's cello concerto, and describe the experience as 'fun', I don't think I'd know how to empathise with the kind of experience they'd had. Seeing the Boult boxed set of Vaughan Williams symphonies dropping through my letter box yesterday morning was definitely a 'fun' experience, but listening to the CDs will be a different and more contemplative experience. Deeply satisfying and certainly enjoyable, but not really 'fun'.

Well, it's quite likely that they both know whereof you speak (and for the record, so do I), but it's equally certain that a few readers here do not.

So... I'll throw a "batting-practice-pitch" back at the readership and ask (rhetorically)- what was the location of ol' Peer (Gynt) at the stage in the story when "Morning Mood" provided the incidental background?

I agree. Much music, both pop and classical, isn't 'fun' at all, but millions listen to it. Country, bluegrass, Cajun, blues, etc is packed with 'slit your wrists' stuff, with endless lyrics about your girlfriend running off, getting thrown in jail, crashing your pickup into a tree, etc. It's easy to be too precious about these things but art as 'fun' is, to me, a nightmare. Boy bands and Classic FM are about 'fun'. It's pretty thin gruel.

I know next to nothing about Grieg and Peer Gynt and so, picking up Chi_town/Philly's comments, I had to look it up - but I suppose I want to ask whether it matters if people listen to it and think 'forest' rather than 'desert'? Obviously, it matters in the context of the whole work, but as an isolated piece of music, out of context, people hear it as an abstract work (albeit with a suggestive title) which can trigger a whole range of mental images and relationships (no less than an abstract painting does).

You can listen to Parry's second symphony purely as a symphony, picking up the Brahms and Mendelssohn influences, and enjoying the moment in the third movement when, like a flower bursting into blossom, suddenly he becomes Hubert Parry and speaks (beautifully) in his own voice. Or, you can listen to it with Parry's suggested programme in mind, as being descriptive of an undergraduate passing through university. Or you can muddle up the two. The music is the same, but the things we allow it to do to us aren't constant. I don't think that means the alternative ways are in conflict, though. The same house can have lots of windows offering different views, and all of them are 'true'.

Perhaps fun was too simplistic a term, but I still stand by it. When I listen to music, it's to have a good time. I don't listen to it to be bored, I don't listen to it to feel just slightly OK, I listen because it's recreation, it's exciting, it's, um, fun.

Now, music can be an "enriching" experience, it can be "life changing" and all of that, but those are all good experiences, right? If an experience is a good one, I'd say it was an enjoyable experience.

I didn't say all music is fun, however. Barber's Adagio for Strings is not a fun piece, but why do we listen anyway? Is it because we want to be made miserable? I suppose for some people that can be the case, but there is a certain satisfaction we get listening to a sad work such as this. Whether or not it is truly a "fun" experience is up for grabs.

Again, perhaps "fun" is too simple a word, but I can tell you I look forward to listening to music and I enjoy listening to music. Doing something I enjoy sounds like fun to me.

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"Music is not philosophy." --Akira Ifukube

I think one problem is that these words 'fun', and 'good time' don't really tell us anything. If I say 'I listen to music because it's fun', I'm really only saying that I like listening to music because I like it.

Another problem is that those words put listening to music alongside playing with balloons, chewing gum, or riding on a rollercoaster. Those are grand things I'm sure, and they're all things that I might choose to do as 'fun' (actually none of them are, but they could have been), but those activities are a million light years away from listening to music. I can take or leave playing with balloons, however much fun the balloons might be; but by comparison, listening to music feels more like a necessity than a choice. It feels like something I was made for. When I listen to great music my horizons expand; the world seems richer and more meaningful; I experience thoughts and feelings that I wouldn't experience unaided. To say, instead, that 'I like this music', or that 'I'm having a good time', just seems hopelessly inadequate either as a description of what's happening, or as a reason for why I do it.