Deep Listening
The following is a handout provided to the students on the first day of class to my “Introduction to Music” course at Boise State University. These points derived from my studies in the philosophy of music for my Masters thesis in Communication, and gave them an approach and framework for “understanding classical.”
…Music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
From The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot
“To be human is to live not in a world of things, but in a world of the meanings of things…We make the world in which we live by giving whatever meaning it has for us. And whatever we make, makes us.” (L.O. Thayer, “On Communication: Essays in Understanding,” 1987, pp. vii, x).
- Music is an image of our inner life, of the non-verbal flow of thought and feeling that comprises our consciousness. Others’ way of describing music are: “the sonorous image of life” (Suzanne Langer). “Music sounds the way moods feel” (Carrol Pratt). “Music begins where words leave off, describing our emotions/intuitions with notes instead of words” (Leonard Bernstein).
- Most music is entertainment, meant to be quickly and easily liked. Classical music is more than the pleasure of pretty sounds, or everyone would like it, like chocolate. Notes, like words, are vehicles for meaning (Suzanne Langer). As with words, attention is needed to follow the thought—in this case, musical thought (Lorin Maazel).
- Like communication, both listening and responding are a creative and interactive process.
- Music is movement, a sonic gesture—actually a composite of many smaller gestures, or phrases, with often a really big and powerful gesture towards the end. The listener interacts with the gesture, eventually getting to the point that the listener knows every move the music is going to make, as with any song one knows and likes.
- Deep listening happens when you interact with the flow of the music with your own energy, with your own inner gestures, as if singing along with the piece silently, and so you enter into a kind of dance with the music. But, like dancing with your partner embraced, first you have to learn the steps, or the moves your partner, the music, is going to make.
- Listeners learn the gestures or the moves of music the same way performers learn to make them—through repetition. You could even call it “practice”—listening practice.
- Most things are just things. Other things have interiority, like music and like people; there’s an outside and an inside. Like with people, classical music pieces take time to get to know. Their names are important and, like people, the names of pieces are easy once you know them.
- Two basic stages of getting acquainted with people and with pieces are the same: getting to know the outside, and getting to know the inside. Stage 1 is shaking hands; and getting acquainted with the outside—age, gender, dress; learning about their history and what the person does. In music one learns the overall size and shape of a piece—how long it is, how many movements, or chapters, it has, what time period or style, etc. Stage 2 over time seeks to know “who are you below the surface?”
- The stages of listening are like moving into a new house or apartment: 1) check it out from the outside 2) then you go inside and see what’s where, and then 3) move in! Then you interact with the space and make it yours; you make it beautiful with your furniture, plants, posters, photographs, etc.
- Music is a group experience that brings us in touch with ourselves and with each other, building on our commonality and community with a depth that is beyond words.