Meta- listening?

[Oddball]

Brian Ferneyhough uses this term, H&N 27.02.11, to describe listeners who are not quite on top of the listening process, but there is something of a time lag between hearing his music, and some recognition registering in the mind.

Well I would not have thought this was peculiar to his music, but listeners might react in this way to difficult music going back to Brahms and Beethoven.

I'm not sure that this type of analysis is all that helpful. I guess listeners try a variety of techniques to get on top of the music. I have to listen hard - a psychic push, in Brian's words, but perhaps only when I know what I'm listening for?? Other times, it may be best just to let the music flow over the mind.

[french frank]

I wonder, with my 0% score (twice) in the emotional connection with music test, does this make it harder to connect with Ferneyhough and contemporary music in general, or easier? Will I be on top of the listening process or not? Haven't yet got round to listening to the H&N but will do.

[3rd Viennese School]

And I heard the show via my personal radio in Victoria Wetherspoons but I was drinking cider and I've now lost the radio.

3VS

[Bryn]

I wonder, with my 0% score (twice) in the emotional connection with music test, does this make it harder to connect with Ferneyhough and contemporary music in general, or easier? Will I be on top of the listening process or not? Haven't yet got round to listening to the H&N but will do.

Do tell more about this here "emotional connection with music test", frenchie.

[MrGongGong]

I think that there are many ways to listen
there have been some interesting studies into "listening strategies" particularly in the field of electroacoustic music (I think there was an article by Jonty Harrison about this in a Sonic Arts Bulletin a couple of years ago ....... i'll have a dig later if anyone is interested ?)
though I do think that the concept of "difficult" music needs a bit of exploding or explaining
Xenakis's music is "difficult" to play (unless you are Irvine Arditti !) yet not at all "difficult" to listen to and "understand" . One shouldn't, of course, conflate "understanding" or even "appreciating" with "liking" IMV

[Simon]

I do think that the concept of "difficult" music needs a bit of exploding or explaining...

How nice to agree with Mr GongGong for once. I've yet to hear a piece of music that is "difficult" (in any way other than playing, of course!)

We're using words in the wrong contexts, aren't we? Music can be neither difficult nor easy, surely (except of course in the execution, which is a different matter altogether.) It seems odd to me to say that it can. Music is not a mathematical problem, a competition or some sort of race. Going Chomskyan, a colourless green idea can't sleep furiously, nor, to move on further, can a mantelpiece decide yellowly.

You don't listen to Winterreise, for example, and then say "Whew - that was tough" or "Hmm, that was easy." (Well, I may be wrong here, but nobody I know does, anyway.) These aren't the sort of adjectives you'd employ to describe a listening experience. You might use, "beautiful", or fulfilling, or wonderful, or scrappy, or out-of-tune, or irritating etc. But not "difficult". You listen and enjoy, or not, depending on the performance.

Or if not, I'd be interested to know how.

[french frank]

Do tell more about this here "emotional connection with music test", frenchie.

That Radio 3 'musicality' test. People here seemed to report 99/100% scores in the various sections, whereas I struggled to get into double figures. Abject failure with 'emotional connection'. This evoked the judgement that I 'seldom, if ever use music to manage [my] mood'. They got that right anyway. I was rather encouraged by their suggestions of R3 programmes that I might like: Private Passions, Radio 3 Requests and In Tune .

Back to 'difficulty' and music. I think the difficulty lies between the individual listener and the individual piece of music, or composer. Does finding Vivaldi unlistenable differ, as an experience, from finding Ferneyhough (or contemporary music in general) 'difficult'? And does the exercise of listening carefully and repeatedly resolve the difficulty in both cases?

[amateur51]

There are some pieces that I enjoy enormously because I find them difficult, in the sense of their being challenging to follow and to absorb.

Shostakovich Cello concerto no 1 is a fine case in point.

Great music and in a fine performance, a real sweat. But it certainly isn't easy listening. You cannot let your concentration drop for a second.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

..... listening with great concentration to Beethoven's 7th last week, played by a college orchestra - they gave a decent performance with some passably ecstatic moments - i was struck by how well i recognised the music - it was playing inside me alongside the performance ... the familiarity made it easy to listen in one sense of that word ...

but when the strings went all sour pitched or the horns, it was harder to listen because it was a tad painful, but more so a betrayal of the beauty of the piece ... [and i wonder if the pain of listening to Ferneyhough for the first time resembles that sense of betrayal of beauty .... in addition to the novelty and sheer unpleasantness of of some parts of micro tonal music]

because i knew the music but was intently listening, the great joy for me was to hear, or rather feel/intuit a coherence in the whole work .... i shudder to think at how long that might take me with Bruckner 8

i must confess that in the free improv domain of the jazz world there are some musicians i do not listen to because experience leads me to anticipate a barrage of unpleasant noise, the meaning of which, if any, escapes me ... and yet others i will actively seek out and pay close attention to ... mainly because i can feel the sense or coherence ...

i find Mahler difficult on several levels and this deters the familiarity that would let me hear the music inside .... i find Britten understandable but mostly unappealing and i don't want to hear the music inside or anywhere else ...

it might be that 'difficult' is used as a polite euphemism for unpleasant experiences of painful sounds and betrayal of an anticipated beauty .... and an avoidance of the emperor's clothes conundrum ....

[MrGongGong]

. the emperor's clothes conundrum ....

oh dear
and it was all going so well