BBC R3 test: How Musical Are You?

[Bert Coules]

What I am very interested in is how classical music sounds to someone who has never heard or even never heard about it.

A fascinating area, but how do you find out? Tricky, too, in our culture at least, to find anyone who's never even heard of classical music, at least not if they're over about - what - three?

I worked for many years as a music-and-records librarian in various London public libraries and occasionally I'd run into someone who wanted to "try something new", meaning (usually) something classical. I found then that it was hard enough to know what to recommend to them, let alone to talk them about the experience of hearing it when they brought the records back.

The only story I can offer which throws any light at all on how one particular non-classical-music person saw the genre is this: a borrower asked for a good piece of music to listen to as an introduction. "I want to to try some classical," he said. And then, after a bit of thought added, "Maybe something like the theme tune to MASH on the telly - that's classical, isn't it".

So what is it about that particular piece which made it "classical" for him? The orchestration? No hard-hitting beat? I've simply no idea, but I've wondered about it a lot ever since.

An afterthought: haven't there been experiments in playing different types of music to animals to judge the effects? Hens lay more eggs to Mozart and cows give less milk to the Rolling Stones? That sort of thing? Hardly the same as human responses of course, but has anything similar ever been tried with volunteer (human) guinea pigs? Albinoni = lower blood pressure, maybe?

[french frank]

(I don’t think home environment is such a big thing as quite a lot of musicians come from non-musical family

It might do, apparently, if you've been brought up as a child being told you can't sing in tune . It kind of inhibits you from joining in when other people are singing ...

[vinteuil]

ff
It is often assumed that the appeal of classical music is universal. Is it?

I certainly wouldn't assume that all classical music would have a universal appeal - it seems to me that, for example, Ockeghem, late Beethoven quartets, Bruckner, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, - require listening to in a fairly sophisticated way - you have to have 'learned' your way into their particular 'languages', and it would be surprising to find someone coming to them cold immediately 'appreciating' them.

[doversoul1]

Bert
but how do you find out?

No, I wasn’t offering to do it. It is obviously a job for a university research group. There may already be some books about the subject. What really made me think about this was seeing the jackets of JEG’s Bach Cantata CDs. They all (I think) have photographs of non-European persons. It does seem to be saying something and I wasn’t too keen on the idea.

I had a peculiar experience awhile ago: I turned Radio3 and for a couple of seconds, heard an awful grating noise but when my brain focused, it was Elgar’s Cello Concerto. It left me feeling very odd indeed.

As for your non-classical person, it may have been the orchestration which is something recognisably different from pop or rock. And also we don’t know what he actually meant by ‘classical music’.

[Lateralthinking1]

"Producing a workable questionnaire is not something you or I can do while finishing off breakfast. Companies pay huge fees to have them made."

Yes, and they are fully accepted and hence value for money? Interesting to see "classical music" referred to as a "genre" in a previous post. That notion, or thereabouts, was criticised earlier in the thread.

No, I'm not at all happy. It is the attitude of sheer destructiveness I abhor. No balance and downright rudeness.

And the lack of reading and common sense. I made it perfectly clear that it was to prompt discussion rather than sticking the boot in. Quite obviously, it was done in short hand - the post was long enough as it was.

The very attitude is so removed from my understanding of music, I would mark it as zero. Not nasty but self-defence from such. I'm out of it to leave it to disdain so if that was the mission, success. I wouldn't be supporting the site at all if I felt this was commonplace.

[Bert Coules]

I had a peculiar experience awhile ago: I turned Radio3 and for a couple of seconds, heard an awful grating noise but when my brain focused, it was Elgar’s Cello Concerto. It left me feeling very odd indeed.

That's fascinating: the aural equivalent of the eyes and brain not immediately recognising something until what seems like a random arrangement of shapes and colours suddenly clicks into place.

...downright rudeness.

If that's aimed at me, I assure you that no rudeness was intended. I'm sorry if you took any comment of mine that way.

[Mark Sealey]

Hear hear!

Fantastic list, Lat…

That rings very true to me. May I be permitted to offer this provisional refinement?

Musicality consists in the degree to which we (as listeners or players) are aware of what a composer intends (to convey). Which emotions; allusions; humour; variation in/departure from a form; techniques to suggest confidence/tentativeness etc; even failing inspiration! We should be able to detect these. And to some extent identify how and why they are present… the technical component: modulation, changes in tempi, use of instruments etc.

There is maximal communication. We are on the same wavelength. Not the same as our eventual response (like, dislike, happiness, sadness) which a piece may also produce - we're all different.

And as composers, musicality consists in the ability to construct music expressing our intended thoughts and feelings.

On a majority of occasions the composer intends a multiplicity of these. Musicality is to be as aware as possible of what they are and the fact that they are intentional and have been arrived at through means other than chance (aleatoric music is deliberately chance-ful) or the plundering of a loop library.

If Mozart writes a sombre movement in a trio amidst two upbeat ones and we miss the contrast, we're less musical than if we note it, for example.

…musicality is what we all/most possess to varying degrees which makes us successful in our close involvement with music, whether as players or listeners.

How about comparisons with literacy?

[Bert Coules]

Has anyone here, I wonder, ever met someone who had no feeling whatsoever for music of any type? In the same way that some people never read novels, for example, or don't understand the point of dramas, or think of food as nothing more than fuel?

[Lateralthinking1]

Thanks Mark. I can be a bit outspoken and somewhat sensitive sometimes. I mean well and think that yours is an improvement. I will though leave this debate as I've commented at length. As I write, all of the electric lights in my home have suddenly gone out, although the other electrics are ok. I might though be gone awhile from the forum generally to investigate! With very best regards, Lat.

[3rd Viennese School]

It’s the messsage 132 questionaire I did. Radio 3 won’t let me do their one!

Section 1
a 3
b 8
c 8
d 3

Question m a b c d
Question n a d b c
Question o a b d c
Question y a d b c

Scetion 2
a 14
b 1
c 2
d 4

question v d a c b
question w b c d a
question x a c d b
question y d b c a
question z b a c d


Section 3
a 7
b 5
c 5
d 7

question p c a b d
question q c d b a


That took longer to write out than it did to answer them in the first place!
Did I pass?
3VS

[french frank]

Has anyone here, I wonder, ever met someone who had no feeling whatsoever for music of any type? In the same way that some people never read novels, for example, or don't understand the point of dramas, or think of food as nothing more than fuel?

Isn't this what they describe as 'amusia'? I could understand it if someone was so besotted with some other interest that they simply never had time for it, but that might be something different.

[Bert Coules]

Isn't this what they describe as 'amusia'?

I'd never heard of that, so looked it up. It seems to be more specific than simply "not getting music", more to do with the inability to recognise different pitches and so on.

I was thinking more of a musical equivalent of the person I met the other day who simply doesn't understand the reason for fiction: I open a novel, she said, And I read "Paul stepped through the door". And I think "No he didn't. Paul doesn't exist, the door doesn't exist, you're making it all up. What's the point of that?"

On musicality, this is an interesting quote from the Wikipedia article on Amusia:

Neurologically intact individuals appear to be born musical. Even before they are able to talk, infants show remarkable musical abilities that are similar to those of adults in that they are sensitive to musical scales and a regular tempo. Also, infants are able to differentiate between consonant and dissonant intervals. These perceptual skills indicate that music-specific predispositions exist.

[subcontrabass]

How about comparisons with literacy?

Literacy is usually considered to consist of a number of skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening; possibly plus comprehension/analysis.

For music the comparable skills would be knowledge of music notation (reading), composition (writing), performance (speaking), aural skills (listening), and analysis (i.e. intellectual (rather than emotional) comprehension). Do these comprise "musicality" or is that something different?

[Pianorak]

Has anyone here, I wonder, ever met someone who had no feeling whatsoever for music of any type?

Yes, I am quite convinced that there are such people. My quite unscientific study has come up with the theory that people whose ears have a small and not well-defined concha tend to have no feeling for music of any kind. Look at the ears of most musicians and you'll find they have a large concha relative to the overall size of the ear. Robert Jourdain in his book "Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy" deals with some aspects of this.

[Mark Sealey]

Lat.,

Please don't do that: collaboration, don't you know! Let's hope it's one, isolatable, circuit whose breaker can easily be reset?

…I will though leave this debate as I've commented at length.…