Sound and Word
My inability to understand classical music, and to appreciate it on an intellectual level rather than just an emotional one, depresses me sometimes. I'm not adventurous in my choices of what to listen to; I go for the easy stuff, Beethoven's piano sonatas and symphonies, the well-known Mozart, Chopin, and -- the only Russian classical music I enjoy -- Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (the recording in which Patrick Stewart is the narrator).
Sound is a mystery to me. Scales, pitch, phrasing, timbre, the subtle nuances in the interpretation of a piece of music, are beyond me. I don't have a mathematical mind; perhaps that's the problem. I have never been able to read sheet music and hear the melody on the page in my head. I can't fathom how a composer transcribes the music he hears in his imagination into notes. I understand how words make up poems and prose, how color makes up a painting, how stone makes up a sculpture. But not how sound transforms into music.
A year ago I stumbled on a book called The Lives of the Great Composers by Harold Schonberg. His approach is biographical -- an unfashionable one, he writes in the introduction. He discusses both the composers and their music, and he does it with verve and wit and insight. He's opinionated and has a biting sense of humor. His writing is vigorous and lucid; I get carried away by it. And I become impatient to listen to music I felt intimidated by, because now I have a guide to the sound, an idea of what to expect, what to look for.
I've become a better listener, but still one riddled with a lot of self-doubt. I take refuge often in Schonberg's book; reading about music anchors and calms me. Perhaps the pleasures of the ear aren't meant for me. But I still have the word.
Sound is a mystery to me. Scales, pitch, phrasing, timbre, the subtle nuances in the interpretation of a piece of music, are beyond me. I don't have a mathematical mind; perhaps that's the problem. I have never been able to read sheet music and hear the melody on the page in my head. I can't fathom how a composer transcribes the music he hears in his imagination into notes. I understand how words make up poems and prose, how color makes up a painting, how stone makes up a sculpture. But not how sound transforms into music.
A year ago I stumbled on a book called The Lives of the Great Composers by Harold Schonberg. His approach is biographical -- an unfashionable one, he writes in the introduction. He discusses both the composers and their music, and he does it with verve and wit and insight. He's opinionated and has a biting sense of humor. His writing is vigorous and lucid; I get carried away by it. And I become impatient to listen to music I felt intimidated by, because now I have a guide to the sound, an idea of what to expect, what to look for.
I've become a better listener, but still one riddled with a lot of self-doubt. I take refuge often in Schonberg's book; reading about music anchors and calms me. Perhaps the pleasures of the ear aren't meant for me. But I still have the word.
posted by Green Whale | 7:37 PM
2 Comments:
You know, we classical musicians, we need listeners who appreciate instinctively and emotionally rather than intellectually. You don't have to be able to read music or to know about form and theory to know what you like or even to explain why you like it. I've been working at this life for 13 years, and I can pick apart song and opera performances, but the niceties of orchestral interpretation still elude me sometimes. And whenever I hear a Brahms symphony and think "well, I don't like the way they did this part," it's most likely because they didn't do it the way I know it from the first recording I listened to ad vomitum. Listen and don't apologize. I think it's fantastic that you want to read more about the composers and their music.
I'm glad that there's hope for me still! I didn't think of listening to music as similar to reading, in that different music, like different books, appeals to you at different stages in your life. As you mature you're able to digest more and more "grown-up," difficult stuff.
Maven -- I was trained (at school and in my family) to think that emotions are superficial and fleeting, and that only reason is reliable as a source of artistic judgment. You suggest that pleasure is useful -- what a revelation. Thanks for your encouragement.
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