We
all listen to music according to our separate capacities.
But, for the sake of analysis, the whole listening process
may become clearer if we break it up into its component parts,
so to speak. In a certain sense we all listen to music on
three separate planes. For lack of a better terminology, one
might name these: (1) the sensuous plane, (2) the expressive
plane, (3) the sheerly musical plane. The only advantage to
be gained from mechanically splitting up the listening process
into these hypothetical planes is the clearer view to be had
of the way in which we listen.
The
simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer
pleasure of the musical sound itself. That is the
sensuous plane. It is the plane on which we hear music without
thinking, without considering it in any way. One turns on
the radio while doing something else and absent-mindedly bathes
in the sound. A kind of brainless but attractive state of
mind is engendered by the mere sound appeal of the music.
You may be sitting in a room reading this
book. Imagine
one note struck on the piano. Immediately that
one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room─proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and
mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.
Yes, the sound appeal of music is a potent
and primitive force, but you must not allow it to usurp a
disproportionate share of your interest. The sensuous plane
is an important one in music, a very important one, but it
does not constitute the whole story.
There is no need to digress further on the
sensuous plane. Its
appeal to every normal human being is self-evident.
There is, however, such a thing as becoming more sensitive
to the different kinds of sound stuff as used by various composers.
For all composers do not use that sound stuff in the same
way. Don't get the idea that the value of music is commensurate
with its sensuous appeal or that the loveliest sounding music
is made by the greatest composer. If that were so, Ravel would
be a greater creator than Beethoven. The point is that the
sound element varies with each composer, that his usage of
sound forms an integral part of his style and must be taken
into account when listening. The reader can see, therefore,
that a more conscious approach is valuable even on this primary
plane of music listening.
The second plane on which music exists is
what I have called the expressive one. Here, immediately,
we tread on controversial ground.Composers
have a way of shying away from any discussion of music's expressive
side. Did not Stravinsky himself proclaim that
his music was an "object," a "thing," with a life of its own,
and with no other meaning than its own purely musical existence?
This intransigent attitude of Stravinsky's may be due to the
fact that so many people have tried to read different meanings
into so many pieces. Heaven knows it is difficult enough to
say precisely what it is that a piece of music means, to say
it definitely, to say it finally to that everyone is satisfied
with your explanation, but that should not lead one to the
other extreme of denying to music the right to be "expressive."
Simple-minded souls will never be satisfied
with the answer to the second of these questions. They always
want music to have a meaning, and the more concrete it is
the better they like it. The more the music reminds them of
a train, a storm, a funeral, or any other familiar conception
the more expressive it appears to be to them. This popular
idea of music's meaning─stimulated and abetted by the usual
run of musical commentator─should be discouraged wherever
and whenever it is met. One timid lady once confessed to me
that she suspected something seriously lacking in her appreciation
of music because of her inability to connect it with anything
definite. That is getting the whole thing backward, of course.
Still, the question remains: How close should
the intelligent music lover wish to come to pinning a definite
meaning to any particular work? No closer than a general concept,
I should say. Music expresses, at different moments, serenity
or exuberance, regret or triumph, fury or delight. It expresses
each of these moods, and many others, in a numberless variety
of subtle shadings and differences. It may even express a
state of meaning for which there exists no adequate word in
any language. In that case, musicians often like to say that
it has only a purely musical meaning. They sometimes go farther
and say that all music has only a purely musical meaning.
What they really mean is that no appropriate word can be found
to express the music's meaning and that, even if it could,
they do not feel the need of finding it.
Listen, if you can, to the forty-eight fugue
themes of Bach's Well Tempered Clavichord. Listen to each
of them, one after another. You
will soon realize that each theme mirrors a different world
of feeling. You will also soon realize that the
more beautiful a theme seems to you the harder it is to find
any word that will describe it to your complete satisfaction.
Yes, you will certainly know whether it is a gay theme or
a sad one. You will be able, in other words, in your own mind,
to draw a frame of emotional feeling around your theme. Now
study the sad one a little closer. Try to pin down the exact
quality of its sadness. Is it pessimistically sad; is it fatefully
sad or smilingly sad?
Let us suppose that you are fortunate and
can de scribe to your own satisfaction in so many words the
exact meaning of your chosen theme. There is still no guarantee
that anyone else will be satisfied. Nor need they be. The
important thing is that each one feel for himself the specific
expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece
of music. And if it is a great work of art, don't expect it
to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return
to it.
Themes or pieces need not express only one
emotion, of course. Take such a theme as the first main one
of the Ninth Symphony, for example. It is clearly made up
of different elements. It does not say only one thing. Yet
anyone hearing it immediately gets a feeling of strength,
a feeling of power. It isn't a power that comes simply because
the theme is played loudly. It is a power inherent in the
theme itself. The extraordinary strength and vigor of the
theme results in the listener's receiving an impression that
a forceful statement has been made. But one should never try
to boil it down to "the fateful hammer of life," etc. That
is where the trouble begins. The musician, in his exasperation,
says it means nothing but the notes themselves, whereas the
nonprofessional is only too anxious to hang on to any explanation
that gives him the illusion of getting closer to the music's
meaning.
Now, perhaps, the reader will know better
what I mean when I say that music does have an expressive
meaning but that we cannot say in so many words what that
meaning is.
The third plane on which music exists is the
sheerly musical plane. Besides the pleasurable sound of music
and the expressive feeling that it gives off, music does exist
in terms of the notes themselves and of their manipulation.
Most listeners are not sufficiently conscious of this third
plane.
Professional musicians, on the other hand,
are, if anything, too conscious of the mere notes themselves.
They often fall into the error of becoming so engrossed with
their arpeggios and staccatos that they forget the deeper
aspects of the music they are performing. But from the layman's
standpoint, it is not so much a matter of getting over bad
habits on the sheerly musical plane as of increasing one's
awareness of what is going on, in so far as the notes are
concerned.
When the man in the street listens to the
"notes themselves" with any degree of concentration, he is
most likely to make some mention of the melody. Either he
hears a pretty melody or he does not, and he generally lets
it go at that. Rhythm is likely to gain his attention next,
particularly if it seems exciting. But harmony and tone color
are generally taken for granted, it they are thought of consciously
at all. As for music's having a definite form of some kind,
that idea seems never to have occurred to him.
It is very important for all of us to become
more alive to music on its sheerly musical plane.After all, an actual musical material is being used. The intelligent
listener must be prepared to increase his awareness of the
musical material and what happens to it. He must hear the
melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors in a
more conscious fashion. But above all he must, in order to
follow the line of the composer's thought, know something
of the principles of musical form. Listening to all of these
elements is listening on the sheerly musical plane.
Let me repeat that I have split up mechanically
the three separate planes on which we listen merely for the
sake of greater clarity. Actually, we never listen on one
or the other of these planes. What we do is to correlate them─listening in all three ways at the same time. It takes no
mental effort, for we do it instinctively.
Perhaps an analogy with what happens to us
when we visit the theater will make this instinctive correlation
clearer. In the theater, you are aware of the actors and actresses,
costumes and sets, sounds and movement. All these give one
the sense that the theater is a pleasant place to be in. They
constitute the sensuous plane in our theatrical reactions.
The expressive plane in the theater would
be derived from the feeling that you get from what is happening
on the stage. You are moved to pity, excitement, or gayety.
It is this general feeling, generated aside from the particular
words being spoken, a certain emotional something which exists
on the stage, that is analogous to the expressive quality
in music.
The plot and plot development is equivalent
to our sheerly musical plane. The playwright creates and develops
a character in just the same way that a composer creates and
develops a theme. According to the degree of your awareness
of the way in which the artist in either field handles his
material will you become a more intelligent listener.
It is easy enough to see that the theatergoer
never is conscious of any of these elements separately. He
is aware of them all at the same time. The same is true of
music listening. We simultaneously and without thinking listen
on all three planes.
In a sense, the ideal listener is both inside
and outside the music at the same moment, judging it and enjoying
it, wishing it would go one way and watching it go another─almost like the composer at the moment he composes it; because
in order to write his music, the composer must also be inside
and outside his music, carried away by it and yet coldly critical
of it. A subjective and objective attitude is implied on both
creating and listening to music.
What the reader should strive for, then, is
a more active kind of listening. Whether you listen to Mozart
or Duke Ellington, you can deepen your understanding of music
only by being a more conscious and aware listener─not someone
who is just listening, but someone who is listening for something.