What to Listen For in Music

Music can be really alive when there are listeners who are really alive.

Written in 1939, then re-edited in 1957, “What to Listen For in Music” by the American composer Aaron Copland has not taken any wrinkle. It’s a wonderful companion for a classical music lover. In a friendly, accessible, yet not over-simplistic way, the author step by step unfolds the fundamentals of the craft of music, so that we can become better listeners. Read this book while actually listening to music. At the end of each chapter, there is a playlist that best illustrates its key ideas.

Introduction & preface

• Knowledge enhances enjoyment.

• The craft of music can be explained in a step-by-step, unfolding way to the layperson.

• The importance of attentive, active listening.

• A composition brilliantly written and brilliantly performed should be also brilliantly heard.

• There are fundamentals about intelligent music listening, and mastering these fundamentals prepares you for listening better.

• A composer would like to know two things: (1) are you hearing everything that is going on? (2) Are you really being sensitive to it, getting a quite clarified emotional response?

Preliminaries

• This book can be a companion to developing a more intelligent listening, but cannot replace listening itself. You cannot become a better listener by simply reading this book.

• We tend to exaggerate how difficult it is to listen to music.

• One requirement for a potentially intelligent musical listener: recognize a melody when he hears it.

How We Listen

• We listen to music on three separate planes, correlating them.

• One is the sensuous plane, for the sheer pleasure of the sound, without thinking. Its appeal is strong, but it does not give the whole story.

• Two is the expressive plane. Music has a certain meaning behind the notes, but this meaning is difficult to express and can be different to different listeners or to the same listener at different times. One way to judge the beauty of a musical piece is that it can give out different meanings at different hearings, and evading to describe it completely.

• Three is the sheerly musical plane. It's where we pay attention to the four key elements of music: rhythm, melody, harmony, tone color - and form.

• We never listen only to one or the other of these planes. Rather, we correlate them.

The Creative Process in Music

• The composer's work is mysterious to most people yet resembles a natural function to the composer hmself.

• The composer does not passively wait for inspiration. The professional composer sits down every day and turns out some music. The result can vary and on some days can be better than on the others. However, this is the key difference between the professional and the dilettante. For a professional, the inspiration is a by-product of getting down to work every day.

• The creative process : idea/theme > examination of different ideas for their essential nature & possible transformations > decide on the medium > finding other ideas that can go well with the chosen one > find the best form to put all the ideas together > ensure there is a flow, la grande ligne to have a coherent whole.

• 4 types of composers: (1) the inspired type (2) the constructive type - best described with the above process, (3) the traditionalist type, (4) the pioneer type

The Four Elements of Music: Rhythm

• Rhythm is where the music started. Rhythm is primal and has a direct and immediate effect on us.

• Connecting ideas: Nature has its rhythm. Motion. Waves. Seasons. How trees communicate to each other (book: the secret life of trees)

• Connecting ideas: Poetry. Even prose written with an inner rhythm is more beautiful than the one that does not have it.

• Rhythmic notation, imperfect up until now, appeared around 1150 and had both liberating and restraining effect on music.

• The liberating effect meant that the music was no longer dependent on word, that it got rhythmic structure of its own that could be reproduced from generation to generation. Most importantly, rhythmic notation allowed for contrapuntal, many-voiced music.

• The restraining effect cams from the overreliance on simple rhythms, which could cause monotony.

• When we speak about rhythm, we should make a distinction between meter (the regular beats) and rhythm. Each rhythmic structure contains both, and the real rhythm comes out when we listen to the musical sense of the phrase.

• Getting away from the regular rhythms took experimentation: (1) from regular to unusual to irregularrhythms: Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky. Stravinsky was hard to play when he was new. (2) from singular to polyrhythms: the combination of two independent rhythms at the same time.

  • Connecting ideas: video of Ben Zander performing classical pieces like a seven years' old etc. It's very clear to see how the understanding of music & musical phrase evolves, starting from the basic, regular rhythm.

• Jazz is founded on the steady rhythm in the bass and free roaming rhythms above.

• Even the most complex rhythms are there to be enjoyed. Listen intently and get away with them.

The Four Elements of Music: Melody

• Melody is secondary only to rhythm.

• The idea of rhythm is connected in our imagination with physical motion, the idea of melody with mental emotion.

• When you hear a beautiful melody, you immediately recognise it as such.

• How to define the attributes of a good melody? It has satisfying proportion (the beauty of proportion, not of detail), it has a sense of completion and inevitability and a good skeletal frame. The most important quality is its ability to arouse an emotional response in the listener.

  • Connecting ideas: melody = story.

• Every melody fits within the limits of some skeletal system. There are four in total: Oriental, Ecclesiastic, Greek and Modern. In the modern system, the octave span is divided into 12 semitones - a chromatic scale. However, there are seven tones chosen from this chromatic scale - diatonic scale.

• In the diatonic scale, note 1 - tonic - is the most important. Follow the fifth tone - the dominant, then the fourth - subdominant, then the seventh - the leading tone.

• Composers experiment with the melodic structures, like Schoenberg who got away from diatonic scale and gave equal importance to all twelve semitones. Not all composers are equally giften melodists, and the importance of melody is different in different works. Examples: Debussy's melodies are elusive and fragmented, Stravinsky's - relatively unimportant.

  • Connecting ideas: Schoenberg and his self-imposed constraints - literary works and the beauty of constraints.

The Four Elements of Music: Harmony

• Harmony is the most recent and most sophisticated of the musical elements.

• Up until the ninth century all music consisted of a single melodic line, and remains as such among some oriental peoples of today.

• The earliest evolution of the harmony as a concept started with the organum (melody moves in parallel at an interval of fourth or fifth), continued with descant (melody moves in the opposite direction, keeping the interval of fourth and fifths) and faux bourdon (introduces thirds and sixths).

• Key concepts of diatonic & tonal chord building: the chord is built in intervals of thirds upwards. The key element is tonic. The harmony modulates when it moves from one tonality to another. We perceive strong relationships between the chords of the same or different tonalities when they share 1 or 2 notes. Every well-knit piece needs a strong harmonic structure.

• Although the majority of contemporary music is diatonic and tonal, the music has seen a fair amount of harmonic innovation. Different epochs saw their harmonic pioneers: Mussorgsky, Wagner, Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Schoenberg. When these composers were new, their harmonic innovations were a stumbling block for a lot of listeners.

• In fact, your perception of dissonance is not an absolute value but is relative to your epoch, your listening experience, and the place of dissonant chords in the whole.

The Four Elements of Music: Tone Colour

• Tone colour is analogous to colour in painting, and its possibilities are limitless.

• In relation to tone color, the intelligent listener can (a) sharpen his awareness of different instruments and their tone characteristics and (b) gain a better appreciation of the composer's expressive purpose in using any instrument or their combination.

• It is the expressive value of each instrument that drives its choice by the composer.

• Before Handel, the composers did not bother to indicate which instrument was desired for which part.

• The tone colour found its way into music through three major steps: (1) invention of musical instruments, (2) their perfection, (3) technical mastery of the instruments by the performers. Every instrument, however perfect, has its limitations, and the composer has to be mindful of the difficulty of execution. The piano is a good example of this development: only in the nineteenth century, did the musicians understand how to take the advantage of the pedal and make it a vibrating instrument.

• Four types of instruments, the first three in turn divided into four: (1) strings (violin, viola, cello, double bass), (2) woodwind (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon); (3) brass (horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba); (4) percussions. When it comes to percussions, the more sparingly the composer uses them, the stronger the effect.

• Mixing different instruments is usually confined to typical groups defined by usage: string quartet, symphonic orchestra, etc.

• Jazz music is strikingly different: as strings are absent, the melody depends on brass and woodwind.

Musical Texture

• There are three kinds of musical texture: monophonic (single melody), homophonic (melody + chords), polyphonic (multiple melodies by multiple voices).

• Until you are able to hear polyphonic music voice by voice, you will not listen properly.

• How many voices can we hear simultaneously? Answers differ, yet the general consent is that two- or three-voiced music does not require a heavy mental strain.

Musical Structure

• The structural background binds the entire lengthy piece, but it's harder to distinguish than melodies, rhythms and harmonies.

• When we explain musical forms, we tend to oversimplify. Yet, it's rare that a masterwork fits neatly into a specific form.

• The primary consideration for a musical form is to create a sense of a long line which gives the sense of an inevitable direction.

• We can consider form (1) for the entire piece and (2) for a shorter part of the large piece.

• Repetition is an all important principle that can creates the feeling of formal balance. It can be (1) exact repetition, (2) sectional, or symmetrical, (3) variation, (4) fugal treatment, (5) repetition through development.

Fundamental Forms

Sectional Form

• There are four kinds of sectional forms: (1) two-part A-B(almost not used nowadays), (2) three-part A-B-A (continuously used up until nowadays), (3) rondo A-B-A-C-A-D-A, (4) a free sectional form A-B-B, A-B-C-A.

Variation form

• The variation principle is a very old one and has been used by composers of different epochs.

• There are four key variation forms: basso ostinato (a short phrase is repeated in the bass part over and over again), Passacaglia (an intro of the bass melody that is repeated over and over again), Chaccone (similar to Passacaglia, but without the introductory part played alone), and, most importantly, theme and variations (harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, contrapuntal or a combination thereof)

FUGAL FORM

• The fugal forms, anchored in polyphony, require intense, repeated listening.

• The four principal forms are the fugue (no matter how many voices, one always leads), the concerto grosso (a small body of instruments, concertino, contrasts with a large body of instruments, tutti), the choral prelude(simplistically, the method is to keep the principal melody intact while making the accompanying harmonies more interesting) and motets&madrigal (vocal compositions, whereby motets are based on sacred words, and madrigals - on secular). For polyphony, they use various devices: imitation, canon, inversion, augmentation, diminution, cancrizans.

Sonata Form

• The sonata form is fundamental for music because the basic form of almost every extended piece of music is related to the sonata.

• Besides being of incredible vitality, the sonata form is also the most immediately accessible of all.

• The word "sonata" can mean the entire piece of music, or the structure of the first part. In Bach's time, the word "sonata" simply referred to something to be played, as opposed to something to be sung ("cantata").

• The most obvious distinction between the movements is tempo (fast-slow-(moderately fast)-fast).

• Over time, the sonata evolved from the part lacking coherence to something more connected through thematic unity.

• The symphony is not an independent form, different from the sonata. The symphony got its origins in the opera's overture and got to its glory days when the music moved from theatres to concert halls. Despite a period of abandonment, the symphony remains up until our days as established as ever.

free forms

• There is no such thing as an absolutely free musical form. Some basic formal plan must always be present.

• Prelude is a generic name for any piece of not too specific formal structure.

• The free forms may have little to no repetition, and no theme to speak of. Hence they may be more difficult to understand by music lovers.

• The symphonic poem is a kind of program music - music connected with a story or poetic idea. No matter how programmatic or descriptive music can bet it must always stand on its own feet, exist in terms of music alone, so that if you don't know the story or the idea or the title, your pleasure of listening to the music is no less.

Opera and Music Drama

• Music did not begin as concert music, but was always present in the theatre.

• Opera may have a tarnished reputation (Wagnerian "taint", typical "high society" public, old repertoire). The renewal happened in 1920s.

• Opera is bound by conventions. The story is often terribly exaggerated. And the recitative parts can be extremely boring.

• Opera is "all-inclusive" and contains within itself almost every musical medium: the orchestra, the solo voice, the vocal ensemble, the chorus. Writing an opera means artful combination of all these disparate forms.

• Opera history in key names: Claudio Monteverdi > Scarlatti, Handel > Gluck reform: removing excessive focus on the singer > Mozart: perfection, Magic Flute > Wagner reform: made opera a union of all arts, brought in symphony orchestra > Verdi, Mussorgsky, Bizet > Debussy (antithesis of Wagner) > Milhaud

Contemporary Music

• Many music lovers "just don't understand" contemporary music.

• However, contemporary music is not just one kind of musical experience. Some of the composers are easy to understand (Shostakovich, Poulenc, Eric Satie), some quite approachable (Prokofiev, Britten), some fairly difficult (late Stravinsky, Bartok, Milhaud), others extremely tough (Schoenberg, Berg)

• Don't let a seeming absence of melodic content be a source of confusion. Repeated hearing may make clear the appeal of this music. When you hear a piece of music that you don't understand, make contact with it again at the first opportunity. If, after repeated hearings, a work says nothing to you, it's not a reason to conclude that modern composition is in sorry condition. Simply, this piece is not for you.

• Contemporary music is not a couch. It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you - it may even exhaust you. But isn't that the kind of stimulation you go to the theatre for or read a book for? Why make an exception for music?

Film Music

• Almost all the film scores are written after the film is completed. A good score can even "save" a film: create a more convincing atmosphere, underline psychological refinements, build a sense of continuity, round it off with a sense of finality.

• Teh first run-through is a solemn moment and leads to many important decisions: how much music is needed and where it should be ("spotting" the picture). The score will usually consists of separate sequences, lasting from several seconds to a few minutes.

• It's wise to use the power of music sparingly and save it for absolutely essential points. Playing with silence: taking the music out can be more effective than using it.

From Composer to Interpreter to Listener

• Almost every musical situation implies three factors: a composer, an interpreter, and a listener.

• Everything in music is directed at the listener.

• The interpreter is a kind of middleman: the listener does not hear a composer, but the interpreter. The interpreter's problem is how literally he is expected to keep to the printed page. The interpretation is largely a matter of emphasis.

• As a listener, you must become more aware of interpreter's part in the performance you're hearing.

• The combined effort of the composer and the interpreter have meaning only in so far as they go out to an intelligent body of listeners.

• Before one can understand music, one must really love it. And lending oneself completely to music means broadening of one's taste. It means unprejudiced listening in the best sense of the term.

• Music can be really alive when there are listeners who are really alive.