Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!allyn From: allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Re: Do you have to be a Musician to enjoy Music ? Message-ID: <4860@milton.u.washington.edu> Date: 9 Jul 90 09:19:47 GMT References: <522@quad.sialis.mn.org> <4307@milton.u.washington.edu> <889@artsnet.UUCP> Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 194 I started out doing blow-by-blow replies to Paul Smith and Mark Gresham, but besides getting way too long, it started looking like a bunch of us are talking at cross-purposes. For one thing, I've been accused of agreeing whole-heartedly with Dan Adler, when I didn't even answer his question - I was replying to David Sandberg's proposal that knowledge actively interferes with being emotionally involved with the music. So to try to reduce (at least my) confusion, and to keep things shorter (well, it is shorter, take my word for it!), I'm going to start from scratch, try to define what we're talking about, state my position, then hide :-) It all started as the question, 'do you have to know a lot of stuff to appreciate music at all', spread to 'does knowing stuff keep you from enjoying music', and then degenerated into people answering both at once, or neither, or something else entirely. These are really different issues. Restating things more specifically: 1) How much do you need to know to enjoy music? a) nothing at all b) whatever you pick up by living is enough to enjoy _any_ kind of music, on first hearing c) whatever you pick up by living in a society is enough to enjoy that society's music, but maybe not some other society's d) you have to know at least enough to be able to compose or perform at some level (be a musician) to begin to enjoy it 2a) Does knowledge distract from enjoyment of music? 2b) Does knowledge add to the enjoyment of music? (I assume that these questions apply to a single individual - I don't believe that it's possible to say that A enjoys something more than B does, assuming that both A and B claim to like the thing.) Some related problems: 3) How do you define 'enjoy'? What's the difference (if any) between enjoy and appreciate? Does it matter? 4) What is knowledge? 5) What does the 'totality' of music consist of? Realizing that the singular of 'data' is not 'anecdote', here are my answers to the above. 1) I define 'nothing' strictly, so if I accept a) as a possibility, I would have to accept that rocks can enjoy music. Even an infant doesn't know 'nothing', because it can hear and is learning for at least a couple of weeks before being born. Scratch a). On my own experience, I throw out b) - I almost never like a style of music when I hear it for the first time. Oriental music in particular still seems completely incomprehensible. But I know that with experience, if I listen to enough of a new style (Celtic, Indian classical, jazz) I can come to terms with it, and usually learn to like it. Which gets me to my preference, c). The amount of exposure you get by hearing a normal amount of music in society is certainly enough to let you enjoy that music, otherwise professional musicians would be out of business. By listening to lots of music, it's almost impossible for a normal person not to learn something about it: make generalizations, build up expectations, start hearing some subtleties. On a different level (different species, actually) wolves and sled dogs get great pleasure from group sings (and they prefer to sing in chords.) I don't think this is purely innate behaviour, since I know several half-wolves who never learned to sing (no one tried to teach them), and at least two dogs (Husky and Malemute) that had to be taught how to sing during middle age (about 6 years old). Took one dog two weeks to catch on; the other took two months and was never as enthusiastic about it. The slow learner, by the way, was the smarter dog at everything else. Breaking to my subsidiary questions: What is enjoyment, and appreciation? From the American Heritage Dictionary, paper edition: Enjoy: to experience joy Joy: 1. a feeling of delight; happiness; gladness. 2. a source of pleasure. Appreciate: 1. to estimate the quality or value of. 2. to value highly. 3. to be fully aware of; realize. 4. to be thankful for Fully: 1. totally. 2. adequately; sufficiently. So according to the dictionary it's quite possible to enjoy something without appreciating it, and vercy vicey. It's tempting to say at this point that 'enjoyment' is the emotional component, and appreciation the intellectual component of the 'totality', but wait - what is the source of the pleasure in the enjoyment? Even if enjoyment is an emotion, it doesn't follow that only emotions can cause it. What is knowledge? Paul Smith seems to think that knowledge is a pile of facts and nomenclature all rattling around getting in the way when it's not wanted, and you can't really use it for anything - all you can do is think about it. Ever present, ever distracting. I don't see knowledge that way at all - I use what I know as a tool to operate directly on what I hear or see. By enlarging my knowledge, I enlarge my tool chest, so I can find a screwdriver when appropriate, instead of using a hammer for everything. When first learning something, it might rattle a bit until enough connections get made for it to be properly integrated with everything else. The integration itself is a positive, physical joy; I can _feel_ it come together. Once integrated, its use is virtually effortless. And before it's integrated, it really isn't in the way; it's easier to ignore random inappropriate facts than it is to ignore traffic noise or audience annoyances. Knowledge isn't strictly book-learning, either. The things you discover/learn for yourself are just as valuable, if not more so. But learning from a book (or better yet a teacher) is more efficient, and gives you a common vocabulary so that you can talk about your experiences with others; do-it-yourself is great, but slower and harder. Understanding speeds things up, so you can think more thoughts (use more tools) in the same amount of time. If I understand the concept of 'major key', it's much faster to just think, 'ok, major key, and there's a twist' than it is to be thinking, 'gee, this sounds like a lot of stuff I've heard before, but is it really? There's something that just went by that doesn't seem to fit the pattern...' What is the 'totality' of music? The emotional effect and sweeping lines and all that are certainly a huge part of it. But the underlying structure, and the sounds of the instruments and the interactions between the parts are certainly part of it too. Remember the discussion a while ago on r.m.classical about anticipation and the frustration thereof? If you're completely unaware of what to anticipate, how can you be frustrated (surprised, delighted) at an evasive cadence? After all, even emotion is often a learned response. I somehow never learned that major keys are 'happy' and minor keys are 'sad' - I think of major as plain vanilla, and minor as rich and interesting. Happy and sad are more a matter of tempo and how much the melody skips around. Back to question 2: a) Knowing things has _not_ distracted me and spoiled any enjoyment. I can still hear all the same emotions I used to hear, though mostly in different pieces now. But now I hear much more at the same time. Not everything simultaneously - I choose what I want to concentrate on. To the best of my memory, I now feel more emotion, more intensely, not less, *along with* the more detailed things. And much to our planet's distress, it's always much easier to turn off the intellect than to turn off the emotions, if it ever seems warranted. b) There's no doubt that in my case I started enjoying music more when I started learning more about it. Before Education I was a fairly average listener; I went to concerts every now and then, and listened to the radio a lot in the background. In spite of poor listening habits, I didn't have much trouble getting 'lost' in the music. But it usually wasn't all that intense, and I was easily distracted by coughing and such. Then I started learning recorder, and some theory, and other closely and not-so-closely related things, each of which is fun on it's own, and most of which makes me actively enjoy listening to music more, emotionally as well as intellectually. Playing has increased my enjoyment of listening, because I can better appreciate what the performers are doing, and why. I'm no longer chained to just hearing the melodies. I often don't much like a piece when I start learning it, but the familiarity I get by working on it, sometimes fighting with it, almost always leads to my falling in love with it. (It helps that my teacher has good taste :-) Generally I don't think about 'theory' while listening (unless I'm trying to learn something specific). But the pieces that I have analyzed, I appreciate and enjoy much more. I now get an active thrill out of a certain sudden key change in a Telemann duet that I started out just thinking had kind of a nice weird note. I find it strange that anyone could think that chills down the spine is somehow emotionally less satisfying than a mild pleasant impression. By knowing many different kinds of things, I can choose how I want to listen. When I know more, I'll have even more ways to hear the things I love. If you only know one thing, and vaguely at that, you don't have a choice - you always have to listen to everything the same way. Always hearing a piece of music the same way makes it stale quickly. Mark: you say that you've gone back to listening less intellectually; can you honesly say that all that you know doesn't contribute in any way, even in the background? And in any case, how can you have lost anything by having the knowledge, since you have a choice of how to listen? I guess I'll always find an attitude of "I really like such-and-so, but I certainly don't want to know anything about it!" to be incomprehensible. ----- Allyn Weaks allyn@milton.u.washington.edu sweaks@phast.phys.washington.edu {backbone}!uw-beaver!milton!allyn sweaks@uwaphast (bitnet) If there is any such thing as sin, then it is a sin not to be able to play a musical instrument; ... if there is any such thing as crime, then it is a crime to be uneducated. -- Halldor Laxness, The Atom Station