Meta- listening?

[Quarky]

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

[french frank]

Getting back to meta-listening:

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.

This may have a Ferneyhovian aspect to it (getting 'on top of' the music). The prefix meta- is described as indicating 'a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter'. It seems it is also used (primary use?) as relating to speech/what people say, what they mean, what they imply. In terms of music, I suppose, it's something beyond what you get at an immediate hearing. Perhaps its importance depends on how much you (the individual listener) get at first listening, whether you feel there is more to it, whether you want to uncover more.

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

I can understand the view that the enjoyment of music is obtained instantly, that it may last as long as the experience or can be prolonged beyond the experience but that the enjoyment is in essence the same each time it is experienced. But if (for whatever reason) you want press on beyond that, I can also see that things can become 'difficult'. They become intellectually difficult in terms of trying to understand and sensorially difficult in trying to grasp what you may not have grasped at first hearing. No?

[Serial_Apologist]

Don't we all listen to music with certain preconceptions, even if these may not yet have reached the stage of becoming ingrained habits of judgement? Music expresses itself through an equivalent of language. I think even free improvisers - musicians and those like me who follow (sic) free improvisation - come to performances with these preconceptions, whether they be conscious or unconscious. The sense of "blocking" that occurs when something disagreeable to one pops up in a piece of unfamiliar music, comes at the point at which a particular prejudice governing what one finds acceptable or not is made conscious, and at the same time interferes with the immediacy of the experience - much in the same way that a disagreeable comment, or dissonance between spoken word and body language, interferes by interposing inner comment before the act of attention.

Metalanguage - language about language - I can understand. Meta-listening seems like a contradiction in terms, no? There is listening - which, in states sometimes described as "higher states of consciousness" - is said to break down all sense of division between experience, subject and object; there can be listening to someone talking about the subject of listening; would this amount to what constitutes meta-listening?

Perhaps Mr Ferneyhough would like to come on here and elucidate - some of us, after all, are keen to listen!

S-A

[Bryn]

Metalanguage - language about language - I can understand. Meta-listening seems like a contradiction in terms, no? There is listening - which, in states sometimes described as "higher states of consciousness" - is said to break down all sense of division between experience, subject and object; there can be listening to someone talking about the subject of listening; would this amount to what constitutes meta-listening?

Perhaps Mr Ferneyhough would like to come on here and elucidate - some of us, after all, are keen to listen!

S-A

I suppose meta-listening might be a corollary of what that there Edwin Prevost refers to when writing: “To make a meta-music is to hypothesize, to test every sound.” I understand he has from time to time engaged in a little improvisation himself, not to mention philosophising about it.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...well i would have taken 'meta-listening' to imply some level of superordinate attention to the object level listening activity; is it correct that Mr F is using the term to refer to some inadequacy or under development in the primary or object level of listening?

.... i am unsure whether it is possible to listen to oneself listening, rather than say think about how one is listening .... it does take considerable ingenuity in experimental procedures to let us see how we see and i do not expect that hearing is different from vision in that respect ...

it does prompt the question as to his intent .... is he creating a seminar in the elements and structures of sound worlds and systems, or a work of art .... either is fine, but in the former the didact can make demands of his audience, but in the latter it is a gift .... importantly the work is effectively cast off to exist independently, and will encounter a multiplicity of attentions, understandings and appreciations ...and who then is to say which is adequate to the work?

[Bryn]

An alternative 'definition' I came across was, "It’s meta-listening; consuming and enjoying lists of music instead of music itself."