Quote:
However, this is only one way that a person may arrive at such a substantial appreciation of music, and where I continue to disagree with you is in the claim that formal knowledge and understanding are necessary to appreciate complex music. Again, I’m not saying knowledge doesn’t enhance a person’s listening experience or that it can’t be a way into developing appreciation. I'm also not saying that it may not take some time and attentive listening to get into certain kinds of music. What I’m saying is that formal knowledge is not the only way into deepening one’s understanding of music.
I would certainly agree with Petrarch here about not necessarily having to understand the full workings of classical music to be able to like and appreciate it on some level, though that a further understanding of form and method would probably no doubt enhance the listening of it is some way as it would for almost anything, art, books, sculpture, fishing...
Quote:
This conversation also made me think of the time in my life when I was possibly the most profoundly appreciative (in more senses than one) of music. When I was 18 I went through a period of several months when I was unable to walk, periodically unable to see, and generally confined to bed without the ability to read, but one of the things I was able to do was to listen to music (and to remember the poetry I had memorized—always memorize your favorite poems. They come in handy in near death situations and long lines at the supermarket! ).
Blooming heck! That must have more than a little scary – though I certainly agree about memorising poems for those near death experiences and supermarkets, though often they can amount to the same thing.
Quote:
Meanwhile, maybe the whole group can unite in a sing along of "Hey Jude."
As long as this is not going to collide with my plans to write a melodramatic stage adaptation of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, where I’m going to intersperse several refrains from “Hey Jude” and build-up to a full crescendo of the whole song as Jude walks off stage head held down in misery. I thought of the idea while watching Ibsen last week, for some reason - the whole thing just came to me in a flash! This could be the beginning of a beautiful new career...:cool:
Quote:
The fact of the matter is that you have to have some prior knowledge or you're not truly appreciating the music for what it is. This could be as basic as knowing the instruments of the orchestra; knowing what sonata form is; knowing what a theme-and-variations structure means. I'm sorry if having to undergo even this minimal amount of education scares people away from listening to classical music, but that's what's necessary. You know this, too, but for some reason you can't admit that true appreciation comes at a price.
But I don’t know (at least I don’t think I do) what a theme and variation structure is, does that mean that I don’t feel a profound sense of calm and beauty when I listen to Bach?
Sure, as I said earlier investing time in learning about anything is going to perhaps further you appreciation of it, but it isn’t any different from music to anything else, in fact music one of the beauties of music is that it can speak to you directly with absolutely no formal training at all – really it is a little absurd position to take placing "formal training" with "listening" together in such a way – as long as you are lucky enough not to have been born deaf then music is open for you, for all. Even with literature you have to be able to read first, music is instantaneous.
Quote:
It's the difference between standing in a pool and actually swimming. With just a minimum of training, kids learn to swim. If they don't make that effort, they can't swim.
Don’t think that I am defending my ignorance of the formal aspects of music, I am not, but neither does it mean that I am going to drown if I attempt to listen to Bach or Mozart. As ever I will always seek to learn more of what interests me, but there is only so much that you can do and if my personal educational has taught me anything at all, it is how little I actually do know, and how much there really is out there to try to comprehend.
Quote:
That's all I'm saying about music appreciation: you have to learn to listen, otherwise it's just pretty sounds.
"Just pretty sounds" is rather an understatement here don't you think?
