Haydn soirée
Feb. 10th, 2015 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThis was a little concert at Stanford advertised as if it were a genuine period meet-Haydn reception in London, with a period-style handbill and a program with titles taken from the original publications. Persons of varying speaking abilities but without costumes read introductions to the music in the personae of Haydn's impresario, J.P. Salomon, and various patrons.
The music was all chamber music, some of it vocal, from Haydn's London period. Some folksong settings, of the kind Beethoven would later take over, were quite effective, and the slow movement of the Piano Trio No. 25 was unusual and interesting.
The big work on the program was an arrangement by Salomon for piano trio - with some extras - of the "Surprise" Symphony. As usual with piano-and-strings works of the time, the piano carried the burden of the work, with the strings giving mostly added counterpoint. But as Anthony Martin's violin was louder than George Barth's early fortepiano, this got turned upside down.
One extra was the addition of a flute traverso to the finale. The other was having the big "surprise" chord from the slow movement reinforced by having someone whack a big bass drum in the back of the room.
Held in a tiny rehearsal hall in the music department. I got there early suspecting that seating would all be taken well before the concert began, and it was.
This is the kickoff to a Haydn festival that's taking up most of the rest of the week; unfortunately, I have to skip all the lectures and can make only one of the main-sequence concerts.
The music was all chamber music, some of it vocal, from Haydn's London period. Some folksong settings, of the kind Beethoven would later take over, were quite effective, and the slow movement of the Piano Trio No. 25 was unusual and interesting.
The big work on the program was an arrangement by Salomon for piano trio - with some extras - of the "Surprise" Symphony. As usual with piano-and-strings works of the time, the piano carried the burden of the work, with the strings giving mostly added counterpoint. But as Anthony Martin's violin was louder than George Barth's early fortepiano, this got turned upside down.
One extra was the addition of a flute traverso to the finale. The other was having the big "surprise" chord from the slow movement reinforced by having someone whack a big bass drum in the back of the room.
Held in a tiny rehearsal hall in the music department. I got there early suspecting that seating would all be taken well before the concert began, and it was.
This is the kickoff to a Haydn festival that's taking up most of the rest of the week; unfortunately, I have to skip all the lectures and can make only one of the main-sequence concerts.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-16 03:19 am (UTC)I have met a few people who believe that only musicologists, theorists and other academics truly understand music at the deepest level.
But this makes no sense to me... It is absurd.
Based on knowledge and experience, the experience or understanding we individually get from a piece of music simply DIFFERS.... A musicologist or scholar can understand a lot about a work, but can at the same time be an emotional invalid.
Right?
And isn't the emotional experience also a part of listening to music?
no subject
Date: 2015-02-16 03:29 am (UTC)That said, however, to develop an intellectual understanding of what it is that you're already appreciating emotionally does lead to a deeper and fuller understanding, yes.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-16 04:33 pm (UTC)--------
Conceptual understanding brings its own rewards, certainly, and enhances the enjoyment of things by pointing to things we might have missed if we couldn't name them. But here is the problem:
Having names for things is NOT perception, which in listening to music is the ability to hear -- having "a good set of ears". Knowledge and understanding changes ones perspective on music but it cannot radically alter the actual listening experience.
This basic ability to hear and respond emotionally is a kind and quality of "understanding" that no amount of technical knowledge can induce or replace. Perception of music and the mechanism(s) involved in how it captures us emotionally is not known yet and can never be known. The only way to get the most music is to listen attentively, patiently, intelligently, lovingly, diligently -- however long it takes an individual to get the piece into one's consciousness.
If I've listened to a piece that I love many dozens of times, you can bet I've experienced the music to its full potential. No musicologist, scholar or critic is going to have a more rewarding experience with the same piece, just because he or she knows more about music.
I simply don't buy that.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-16 05:17 pm (UTC)All the doctrines you describe are excellent ways to get to know a piece. I recommend them myself. But they are not the only ways.
Intellectual understanding is far, far more than "having names for things." But even having names for things is a useful tool for understanding. If you know that a particular quality of sound is called a Neapolitan sixth, then you will be equipped to compare it and bring it to mind on other occasions when you hear something you also know is a Neapolitan sixth, in the same way that hearing a piece by Beethoven enables you to compare it with another piece by Beethoven in a way that would be difficult if not impossible to do if composers were all nameless.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-17 06:47 pm (UTC)--------
Just because a musicologist or scholar gives over a lot of time to the study of music does not guarantee real insight and can indeed make matters worse in the sense that detail can start flooding into the brain so that one can't -- as it were -- hear the wood for the trees. Another potential downside of music education is that it confuses understanding with love.
The leap from 'understand' to 'appreciate' is long and blind.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-17 08:49 pm (UTC)