Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!emory!mephisto!gatech!artsnet!mgresham
From: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Do you have to be a Musician to enjoy Music ?
Message-ID: <875@artsnet.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 90 08:06:12 GMT
References: <585@dan.scs.com>
Reply-To: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Organization: ARTSNET  Atlanta, GA  USA
Lines: 133

In article <585@dan.scs.com> dan@dan.scs.com (Dan Adler) writes:
>
>	As a follow up to the discussions on semantics of music, I would suggest a
>different angle for consideration. My claim is that to appreciate most forms
>of music you actually have to be a musician, or at least have a very trained
>musical ear and mind.

Sorry, not a new angle.  Not only that but I strongly disagree
with the presumption.  But lets go on...

>	The case is very clear in some forms and less clear in others. For example,
>my guess is that it is almost impossible for an untrained ear to enjoy Jazz.

Wow.  Tell that to the fans with "untrained" ears who enjoy it.

>You listen, but mostly you can't figure out who's playing what. You probably
>can't follow the form since you don't know the standard, you don't understand
>why the soloist is doing what he's doing the relation to the form and harmony,
>and usually you are bored within five minutes, after the initial enjoyment of
>the rhythmic feeling. To enjoy what's going on, you need to *understand* what it
>is the musicians are doing. What references they are making, why a certain phrase
>is interesting and another is just a common lick. When is the soloist being
>funny (which may sometimes be obvious). Lets face it. You have to be part of the
>clique.

Sounds more like you're spending so much time trying to decipher
the music that you can't enjoy it like the people around you.

>	The same I think is true of 20th century classical music. If you don't have any
>idea of how *difficult* or interesting something is in the technical sense, you
>will probably not enjoy it.

I recall the instance from some years ago when an aunt of mine, who
is not musically trained, attended an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and
Chorus concert in which I was performing.  Three works on the program:
Something by Mozart (I think), a Beethoven symphony, and Karel
Husa's "Apotheosis of the Earth" (yes, a 20th century classical
work).  I thought she's hate the Husa, the final piece, because I
didn't think she'd understand it or appreciate its unconventional
style and techniques.  I was wrong.  She said afterwards, "I
really liked that last piece.  The rest was kind of boring."

>  To be more precise I would say that you cannot enjoy
>it *intellectually*.

I'm glad you chose to be more precise (not that the previous
comments didn't betray your approach to listening).
  So what makes it imperative that the enjoyment of music be a
primarily intellectual matter?
  Music isn't about knowledge, it's experience.  (I don't even say
"about experience" anymore.)

>You may enjoy the pleasant sensation in your ears, but is that
>really the same.

How terrible, that someone would enjoy a pleasant sensation in
their ears! :-)  (Or even be willing to expose themselves to an
unfamiliar experience! :-))

>If someone like that came up to you after a performance and said he
>enjoyed it does it mean as much you *you* as if a musician said the same thing ?

Yes, it would.  And I happen to be a composer
(of 20th-century music, since I'm alive; I hope to write
21st-century music too, if my luck holds out).  And if you think
that all 20th-century music is intellectually difficult, I suggest
that you haven't explored the repertoire very far, nor have you
examined in depth such pre-20th-century works such as Bach's "St.
Matthew Passion" which can give you enough discovery of
intellectual jollies for the rest of your life, if intellectual
jollies is your sole bag.

>	I would make the analogy of watching a play in chinese. You can enjoy it 
>sensually but not intellectually (if you don't understand chinese, that is).
>There's little chance of following the plot, getting the jokes, or really
>understanding the characters. 
>	Similarly, knowing the language of music is in my opinion a pre-requisite for
>intellectual enjoyment of music.

Sorry, false analogy.  In the Chinese play, there is a genuine
language of WORDS which carries the text of the drama.
Understanding the contents (message) carried through use of that
LANGUAGE is not the same as listening to and enjoying music, which
is NOT a language.
  (You also forgot to mention that the play in Chinese also involves
action, which is a part of the drama.  Or is your example that of a play
being READ in Chinese behind a screen?)
  I also think you can get intellectual enjoyment from hearing
music with whose method of construction you are unknowledgable or
unfamiliar.  (Discovery.)  What happens is the listener with an open
mind accepts the "fact" of the sounds heard, and builds an
intellectual model based on that experience; the listener with a
closed mind will continue to base expectations upon the notion of
a small number of existing, acceptable intellectual models within
which the musical experience ought to "fit."  Hence, you can get a
situation where the latter listener is continually frustrated by
"not understanding" the music -- that is, not having a convenient
model at hand into which the experience can be placed and easily
(and intellectually) dismissed as "understood" (which,
unfortunately, often means the listener has stopped listening
actually listening because he thinks he's already "got it.")
  The intellectual model one builds while listening, BTW, need not
be the same as the one (or several) in the composer's mind while
composing, nor need the methods of modeling be the same.  The
truth is, they are RARELY if EVER the same!  (More evidence that
music is NOT a language).
  Incidentally, consider this: you sit outdoors and experience a
sunset.  Is the sunset a language?  You watch and enjoy (and even
intellectually understand) a game of baseball.  Is the game of
baseball a language?  You enjoy riding a bicycle.  Is that a
language?  I would argue that the experience of listening to
music is far more like those things than reading a book or
listening to the dialogue of a play.  Each of them also has their
own aspects of intellectual stimulation, too.
  If your enjoyment of music comes entirely from the intellectual
"understanding" of the music, then it is, in my estimation, the
enjoyment of the models of the music, and not the music itself.
And I'm afraid you will spend a lot of time in frustration trying
to "get the message" while other people around you are experiencing
and enjoying the music.
  Waiting to "get the message" in music when they decipher its
"Rosetta Stone"??  You are waiting for Godot, and Godot will
never come.

Cheers,

--Mark

========================================
Mark Gresham  ARTSNET  Norcross, GA, USA
E-mail:       ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham
or:          artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu
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