BBC Sounds

[Serial_Apologist]

I think I agree with that too. Yesterday it was time to listen to some music. I selected the Bella string quartets because I hadn't listened to them for a long time. This is not The Greatest Music Ever Written. It was two string quartets by JL Bella, followed by his Notturno composed c 1930. It was what I did yesterday evening. And it was rewarding in ways I don't need to analyse further.

I can almost hear one of our absent friends now coming on to add that there is nothing necessarly wrong or unrewarding about post-analysis of what one has been listening to, given that the analytic process is itself guided by "unconscious" mental processes. In fact it can be further enriching of one's experience and knowledge of the piece in question. Sufficient learning in the disciplines can actually allow this to happen during the actual listening without the mentation process over self-elaborating its laborious way into the conceptual world at the expense of remaining open to what is coming in through the ears, I have found. As with most other things, "practice makes perfect"!

[french frank]

I can almost hear one of our absent friends now coming on to add that there is nothing necessarly wrong or unrewarding about post-analysis of what one has been listening to, given that the analytic process is itself guided by "unconscious" mental processes.

Again, I am in entire agreement. But one may have neither the listening experience nor the knowledge to analyse to one's own satisfaction. Analysis is what I do when I feel properly equipped, but when it comes to music I'm a simple unsophisticated soul: I know what I enjoy listening to.

[Serial_Apologist]

Again, I am in entire agreement. But one may have neither the listening experience nor the knowledge to analyse to one's own satisfaction. Analysis is what I do when I feel properly equipped, but when it comes to music I'm a simple unsophisticated soul: I know what I enjoy listening to.

Well I am too, really, if the honest truth be told. Mine is all second-hand knowledge, just as is my "political theory", and I experienced pronounced "imposter syndrome" symptoms when at a recording session a publisher for whom I had been writing jazz reviews and reports introduced me to a composer of note [sic] saying without prior warning that I was going to interview him for the magazine! Fortunately my thought of this task being way above my (non-existent) pay grade proved unnecessarly self-effacing; the interview went ahead and whether or not through a lot of bull sh*tting on my part we had a rewarding day and have become lifelong friends. Composition entails not inconsiderable arithmetical skills even at the simplest levels: the only thing I have composed on paper was a psalm setting while I was at school; if you asked me to write a score of even "Just One of those Things" I would find myself entangled in details about dotted quavers, superimposed triplets, where and where not to put rests, and so on. Yet with the rudimentary acquaintance I have with musical terminology to feel able to talk reasonably articulately (I think) about sonata or rondeau form, augmentation, diminution, cadential resolution, and able to distinguish between intervals, chords, and canons in inversion - all being intelligible elements in music we appreciate for their presence - a little of what one knows can go a long way when it comes to talking about music!