listening with green ears
A while back, Soho the Dog wrote a post about a study that showed that people aren’t happy when they’re asked how happy they are during concerts, and that thus maybe pre-concert lectures are a bad idea. I won’t try to outdo Mr. Denk’s response, as it is far more eloquent than whatever I came up with on my own and makes the essential point about logical leaps that was bugging me.
Soho’s post was sort of brilliant, though, in the way that it revealed just a little bit about what he must be thinking about, in his case as a composer and as an active critic, in terms of how to structure the concert experience. I imagine that the question of how to use pre-performance talks is one that’s been on his mind. And that insight into a composer’s thought process is what I like best about this whole blogging thing. At the very least, it’s why I’m writing this thing here…
There is another aspect of my response to the study that I’m almost scared to bring up - am I really a “happier” listener because I’m an “educated” and “experienced” listener? Soho says this:
But it also suggests that the traditional, temple-of-art music-appreciation presentation (which I’ve always rather liked) is self-defeating as well, since it promotes monitoring of the experience. You’re encouraged to listen for landmarks, to notice things, to sense the connection between the local and the global. And it turns out that all that encouragement just gets in the way of the joy of listening.
The first point I find mildly counterintuitive to my own experience, but the second I find really counterintuitive. A fair portion of my listening takes place on the analytical side, and I don’t feel like it reduces either the experience or the memory of that experience. In fact, if I’m deluding myself at all, I would bet that it’s in retrospectively enjoying a performance more—my tendency is to store away the good parts of a concert, and let the mediocre moments fade from memory.
I actually find that the moment I let the analytical side (I read this as the technical side, the one that notices form and motivic relationships, and, as above, the local connection to the global) of my ear get loose, it produces nothing but displeasure. “Why did the composer do that instead of that?” it says, or “why not keep going with that idea for a bit longer?” - or worst -”that didn’t fit!” But when I try to just listen, to experience the music on an emotional level, I think I’m much happier with the experience, and I also think I get more out of a piece than I would have on an intellectual level. I don’t think I ever entirely escape that analytical aspect, and the best works get at both the intellectual and the emotional, but I actually think that if I could get rid of my analytical ear altogether, I’d appreciate music - and wider varieties of it - more. And the intellectual stuff would still get across subconsciously. I’m not advocating “passive listening” (anathema!), but I’m also not convinced that imparting a technical knowledge of a piece is the best way to encourage active listening. I know that in my own pre-performance talks, if I have someone play a bit of the piece the audience is about to hear, it’s not to tell them what to listen for, but most often, to give them a sense of how something evolved during the composition of the piece.
And there’s one more thing - oh how I wish I could listen to a piece of mine in concert and experience it like everyone else! To be surprised by its twists and turns, to understand how it comes across to someone who doesn’t know it intimately. This is part of why I have such a hard time being happy about premieres - I’m generally half-bored by my own piece by the time it gets to the concert!
I wonder how non-music people react when they hear about all the elaborate and determined efforts to coax audiences into liking classical music. Pre-concert talks, light cues during performances, participatory activities…they all ignore the glaring fact that most people just don’t like the music heard in concert halls.
Of course the canon of Western concert music is chockful of enduring masterpieces with the power to move us and inspire awe. And some people would be grateful to be introduced to it. But the same thing is true for cycladian art, and for the medieval poetry of the Spanish Jews. It’s hard for us to come to terms with the fact that Bach is receding to a similarly specialized place in art. Yet classical music is becoming less and less a broadly popular art form, if it ever was one.
Spinach is a nutritious food and, to some people, a pleasing dish. Imagine if the promoters of spinach offered pre-dining lectures so that people could learn more about its virtues and better understand how to appreciate them. Suppose they offered participation in contests for the creation of new spinach recipes. What if spinach were presented more dramatically, in flambes and such. Would more people become regular spinach consumers?
What would probably happen is what happens with classical music: the people who already like it would take part in the fun activities created to promote it, but the fan base wouldn’t grow appreciably. After all, attendees of pre-concert lectures are more likely to be knowledgeable about music than the general audience at the concert that follows — exactly the opposite of what was originally imagined.
For people who take concerts seriously, a pre-concert talk can be a great way to illuminate the listening experience. But it rarely wins over new fans. Presenters of pre-concert events would do better to be clear-eyed about this, and not imagine that the event will be something it isn’t.
Comment by Bob Goldfarb — July 16, 2007 @ 1:26 am
Here are my 2 cents–from a not-so-enlightened, non-musician, sometimes concert-goer: I’m not sure the pre-concert talk will draw a listener in to attend a concert that she/he would not otherwise have gone to, but if it’s done well, it can ease a listener into non-familiar music. I think good program notes do the same thing– cueing an unfamiliar ear to listen for certain things in a piece that might not have things like a melody to latch on to. A pre-concert talk could include music samples, which program notes do not have.
The question of how to draw in an audience is another issue. I think price is an obstacle for people who don’t want to shell out big money (or even medium money) to go hear something they might not like. I also think careful pairings of pieces in a short concert, so that no one can leave at the intermission, might be a way to do it. You draw in the audience for the more “listenable” stuff, and they are exposed to the more complex music in the process. And some might actually enjoy it! :)
Comment by Sarah E — July 27, 2007 @ 11:13 pm