two different ways to listen to music

in my experience, there are two basic ways to listen to a piece of music. you can listen to what is being played, or you can listen to how the music is being played. when you listen to what is being played, your attention is focused on the composition itself. you might be following a score, or listening to the meaning of the words in a song, or listening to the melodic line woven by a jazz player in an improvisation. when you listen to how the music is being played, you focus on where the beat is and where the tonal center is, and you pay close attention to how the notes begin and end, that is, you listen to the beginning and end of notes for the particular way they sound.

listening to how music is being played can bring enjoyment from music that is lacking in musical content. for example, the richard strauss tone poems have little musical content. they can be listened to a couple of times, and then you know them. no conductor can bring meaning when none is to be found in the score. but those tone poems are hard as hell to play. if you listen to how the music is executed by the musicians, a new level of meaning is given to your listening.

the most fundamental aspects of how music is being played has two aspects. the way the players manipulate the beat to maintain rhythmic tension, and the degree to which the intonation is held. intonation is the ability of a player to play the notes at the correct pitch. it's not that cut and dry, because placing pitches is also a matter of interpertation. but it's still all about placing pitches where they belong.

these are decisions players make when they begin a note.

imagine a dart board, and its concentric circles. some players are all over the board and other players place there darts exactly where they want them. some players can do one bulls eye after another.

think of the articulation of a note as a dart pitch for a bulls eye, which means you land right where you want to on the pitch and the beat when you play a perfect note. some players can place this musical dart in the same hole every time. those players can move around the board as they please. but no one does it perfect every time.

with a group of players, everyone is pitching at the same time, aiming for the same holes. that gets considerably more complex.

if a group achieves this level of perfection, the veil of time and space falls away and the music stands clear - you can respond to the musical message without hesitation or forethought.

when this perfection is attained in a pop, rock or jazz performance, the musical emotion is allowed to flow between the performer and the listener. in a classical work, you can see and feel into the composer's mind, and you feel with the performer - it is a communial experience.

last night, i dipped my toes into shostakovitch symphony 15 with rostropovitch and the london symphony orchestra. i point you to the second movement specifically. there is a sequence of passages that are statement and response. the statement is a brass chorale. the response is a yearning tune that passes from the cello to a violin at an octave.

it is played so flawlessly on this recording that the beauty of the musical idea overwhelms the listener.

it was a good night, so i was able to hear what and how at the same time in this beautiful movement. that doesn't happen every night :-)

highly recommended.

here's another example from piano music. i have been listening/watching daniel barenboim play the last three beethoven piano sonatas. it is very beautiful and i am enjoying it very much, and learning new things about the music to boot.

but for sheer listening pleasure, i prefer pollini. this has its roots in a simple difference in technique.

these sonatas require part playing. part playing is when a pianist has to play more than one voice in the same hand at the same time. barenbom's part playing is very fine. pollini's is utterly perfect.

this perfection brings all the voices to life as independent melodic lines swimming through a shifting sea of harmony. it elevates the sonatas by bringing out the song like qualities in the voicing.

also highly recommended.

so?