Going to school for performing "classical" music is rough, because it turns out most people don't really like classical music, at least not enough to pay me to play it for them. As a result, I spend a lot of my time wondering and trying to find out why people don't more closely share my taste--especially in an effort to understand my future audiences, but especially to see if their taste could be re-classified as some sort of medical disorder.
In all seriousness though, I discovered something this year that is at once completely startling, but also one of those things I kinda knew all along: people in general don't listen to, and are incapable of comprehending, form in music at anything but the smallest scale. In general, people listen to music moment-by-moment or minute-by-minute without making meaningful cognitive connections between larger segments.
More specifically, it means people don't hear key relationships in tonal music, and don't listen for tonal closure at intervals longer than about a minute. I remember going to a concert at Marlboro a couple of years ago where they played the Trout Quintet, by Schubert. The last movement is actually really unusual for a piece of that era, but relevant to this discussion, it divides into two parts, which are identical except that the first part starts in the home key and ends a fourth above, and the next part starts a fifth above and ends back in the original. Schubert also wrote repeats for both sections, making a total of four big sections of music about 3-4 minutes each. The audience applauded wildly after the first section, thinking the piece was over, and not realizing it had ended in the wrong key, and then tried to applaud again after the repeat, though this time Mitsuko Uchida was ready and waved a warning finger in the audience's direction after the cadence. Thankfully they didn't take the second repeat. Anyway the point is this: people don't get, or at least don't care, the whole key-relationship thing in music.
This phenomenon is replicated in controlled experimental settings, along with other unexpected ones. Perhaps the most heartbreaking study I read chopped up the first movement of Mozart's g minor symphony k 550 into eight parts and arranged them randomly, and subjects, musically trained or not, showed no significant preferences for any order over any other.
These experiments are a real kick-in-the-face because they purport to show that all the tireless effort that goes into constructing musical masterpieces goes more or less over our heads. For scholars of Western music theory and music history, form in music is taken to be its most distinguishing, characteristic factor, what separates the merely good from the great. Is it all just an illusion that we've accepted based on composers' own descriptions? Do we really know what we're talking about and how we're listening to music at all?
My take: musical form in its various aspects is definitely important to me, but I think these studies generally underplay the effects of repeated exposure....like, a lot of repeated exposure (as some studies do make their subjects listen to something 2-5 times).
At the same time, though, I've known for a long time that what separates great music from the mediocre isn't large-scale, but something much more essential. From when I was young, in my family we would regularly turn on the "classical" radio station whenever we'd go anywhere in the car, and we could almost always tell whether what we were hearing was worth listening to within 5 seconds. Even individual composers, most notably Bach, Mozart, Brahms, leave an indelible mark on their music on the smallest timescales. How do they do it? What makes their music so great, so quickly? That's the greatest mystery of all....
I'd say concern that "all the tireless effort that goes into constructing masterpieces goes more or less over our heads" applies in ALL art forms, not just classical (or "classical") music. That's how I always felt in college when I took english or art history classes, anyway. On the other hand, plenty of people still love novels and poetry and paintings (and sonatas). I think you're right that we may not have to understand and appreciate greatness at some deep level to recognize (and admire) it, at least given some basic level of familiarity.
ReplyDeletePS I just listened to the last movement of the Schubert again, and boy does the end of the first half sound wrong as an ending. (I hope not TOTALLY because of the power of suggestion from reading your post.)
ah but i think you've missed the thrust of the point (or, more probably, i didn't make it well enough).
ReplyDeletewhat you're saying is (correct me if i'm wrong) more or less the equivalent of: people can love, admire, and appreciate some piece of music (say, goldberg variations) without even having any conscious knowledge about the various aspects of form that make it great, (eg, the ascending canons on every interval, the chaconne form, etc. etc.), but those very aspects make it great by unconsciously influencing people's perceptions.
but what these studies suggest by manipulating pieces and then evaluating preferences is that we have no idea what aspects of music influence people's perceptions, and that fact holds true generally across the population, even for people who are familiar with and appreciate "classical" music.
surely if you scrambled the chapters of a great novel, or the lines of a great poem, that would make people like it less?
Well, I think you've got a point with your thing at the end -- people don't love the goldberg variations (at least not primarily) for its deliberate and complex structure, they like the individual parts of it. And anyway I'd maintain that not knowing exactly what makes a piece of art great is fundamental to the concept of art itself, even highly formalized kinds like music. Otherwise making it wouldn't be a creative endeavor -- we'd just figure out the most awesome possible melody (or whatever) and generate it.
ReplyDeleteALSO, if there's one thing med school has taught me, it's that one study does not a phenomenon make. (also: spinal cord pathways).
very interesting ... i do think, though, that you've put your finger on one of the things that's different about live vs recorded performances (at least the listener's experience of live vs recorded performances): in the former, it is much easier to hear the large scale structure of a piece, if only because the experience of "just listening" is so foreign to people when listening to recordings. The Mozart study, though, is mind-blowing and not a little sad
ReplyDeletei've been thinking more about this, and about why it is that people don't like "classical" music ... Here's my question: Sam, you had a bunch of your friends who came to (and enjoyed) your recital who were not devotees ... So after your recital, did any of them say to themselves: "Hey, that Chopin thing was fabulous; I gotta hear more of that Chopin stuff"? I don't think so -- but why not? That's what I don't understand - why people, when they hear something that really blows them away, why they don't want to hear more of the music that's like that ... It's very mysterious and odd to me.
ReplyDeleteinteresting! as far as i can tell, when most people today listen to "classical" music they hear absolutely nothing, because they're not really listening. they think of it only as pleasant background music that their brain skims over. (for example i'll never forget the time i was having dental work done as some ominous/crashing/generally terrifying symphony was playing, bc the dentist office constantly leaves the classical station on, believing it's "relaxing.")
ReplyDeleteit's sort of comparable to how almost no one knows how to read a poem anymore--you can stick the most basic thing in front of someone and they get absolutely nothing from it, they don't even know where to start. like classical music, it's a mode of expression (?) we're no longer used to interpreting. i'd be interested in knowing what the results of that same survey would have been back in the 18th/19th/early 20th centuries...
The studies don't consider unconscious response, and unconscious response is probably even more crucial to hearing music (or the other art forms) than conscious and measurable replies.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the importance of local effects in music and art, you might look into Anton Ehrenzweig's book on "The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing." Top notch.
I've been to at least one performance of the Trout Quintet where the audience (a Mostly Mozart audience insistent on their spontaneity!) applauded prematurely On Purpose. It was great fun, didn't ruin the piece or the performance, and as a non-recurring Happening was just fine.
There are a lot of great and fine things people do not willingly pay much for (classical music, English grammar, maintenance of old cathedrals, restoring film), which they often believe should be supported -- somehow else. I am glad your wondering about this leads to thinking about the perception of music rather than throwing in the towel or despising the listener. (Oh, and -- the best place to hear a lot of Chopin in really little pieces? --a ballet class.)
This reminds me of something I thought of while watching the play, "Amadeus" a few decades ago. Salieri overhears a beautiful fragment of a Mozart piece and goes into a pretentious speech about a magnificent edifice--remove a single note and the edifice comes tumbling down etc etc.---and all I could think was--IT's A TINY FRAGMENT WE ARE LISTENING TO--AND IT IS EXTRAORDINARILY BEAUTIFUL.
ReplyDeleteClearly the moment illustrated the opposite of what was being said and I am almost certain that was not the playwright's intention. (I think the pretentiousness was the playwright's.)
Having read a bit about structural hearing I feared that the difficulty of being aware of key relationships was my personal failing so it is somewhat comforting to know that I am not alone.
But two further observations--I have found that trying to be structurally aware has greatly enhanced certain listening experiences. Haydn, in particular, seems to fade into the background for me and not sound like much unless i pay close attention to the structure. This may be because he was particularly clever and because the sheer volume of his output makes it difficult gain the necessary familiarity with individual pieces. (I personally need a lot of repetitions and except for a few symphonies nothing has a nickname. How do you choose?) Anyway, when I really try to follow the structure the details come alive even though I don't succeed in holding it all together.
And the second point--I think the Schubert movement is particularly designed to make the ending of the first part seem like a full ending. The very fact that the sections are identical except for key makes this likely. Starting on the I and ending on the IV is not that usual is it? I would think the first ending would normally be on the V, In any case, more importantly, a typical classical movement would have additional internal evidence to demonstrate that the first ending is not the final ending. With identical sections there is no internal evidence. There is only the key change. I hate to say it but it may be a bit of a cheap structural trick or at least an example of a simplistic larger structure that is designed to accommodate something else of interest. When listening, I quickly realized that Schubert was throwing a lot of harmonic curves that left me pleasantly disoriented. (Isn't that one of his best attributes?) I tried to analyze the harmonic progressions and was out of my depth in one minute. Starting in A-- there are soon phrases ending in C that I can't explain and then by the time I hit multiple flats I realize that he is way too out there for me to figure this out without a huge expenditure of time--which may actually be worth it. But if we put together the strange disorienting harmonic wanderings with the identical sections I think the two combine to provide an partial explanation for the audience's enhanced confusion and applause at the wrong time.
But then--the Mozart example is truly troubling.
Thanks to Sam for the interesting posting and to David for alerting us to it.
This reminds me of something I thought of while watching the play, "Amadeus" a few decades ago. Salieri overhears a beautiful fragment of a Mozart piece and goes into a pretentious speech about a magnificent edifice--remove a single note and the edifice comes tumbling down etc etc.---and all I could think was--IT's A TINY FRAGMENT WE ARE LISTENING TO--AND IT IS EXTRAORDINARILY BEAUTIFUL.
ReplyDeleteClearly the moment illustrated the opposite of what was being said and I am almost certain that was not the playwright's intention. (I think the pretentiousness was the playwright's.)
Having read a bit about structural hearing I feared that the difficulty of being aware of key relationships was my personal failing so it is somewhat comforting to know that I am not alone.
But two further observations--I have found that trying to be structurally aware has greatly enhanced certain listening experiences. Haydn, in particular, seems to fade into the background for me and not sound like much unless i pay close attention to the structure. This may be because he was particularly clever and because the sheer volume of his output makes it difficult gain the necessary familiarity with individual pieces. (I personally need a lot of repetitions and except for a few symphonies nothing has a nickname. How do you choose?) Anyway, when I really try to follow the structure the details come alive even though I don't succeed in holding it all together.
Sorry about the repetition--I got a message that my comment was too long and couldn't be posted. I cut it and now I see that both versions were posted.
ReplyDelete