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Music/Pedagogy

On Thinking by Ear

Posted by Isaac Greene on

“Words and numbers have unchallenged cultural hegemony. It is our job to promote the importance of sounds!”

Thus spake Vern Falby, one of the teachers I encountered in grad school that had a profound influence on my musical thinking. All of his theory classes were called “Thinking By Ear” followed by whatever the topic of the class actually was. They were very untraditional classes. The text was created by him and mostly consisted of work scores annotated with various “discovery procedures” that he invented to “suss out” (a favorite phrase of his) the inner workings of the piece. After doing many practice scores we would make Shenkerian reduction scores without using the notation. We would listen and sing the middle-ground lines to understand the melodic structure under the surface notes.

(Dr. Falby has spend the last few years creating an online version of this process if you are curious how this goes: http://www.thinkingbyear.com)

His approach was his own, and required a significant buy-in of time. Results varied for students. For me though, it worked, and it changed how I thought about many things. It was the first time I was truly challenged to do my analysis by ear and parse a form without consulting a score (we once spend several weeks of class listening to the first moment of Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto because someone asked a question about double-exposition form and he had never done one in class before. I have still never looked at a score but I know the form like the back of my hand). He had no interest in observations from the score that we could not actually hear when listening to the piece.

I bring this up because I have encountered an attitude among my students that the score is necessary for a deep understanding of classical music. I think this reveals two things: the kinds of training they have received and the quality of listening they are doing.

There is a historic connection between the growth of literacy and diminishing of memory. It was expected that by age 8 to 10 a young boy in the early medieval era would be “psaltered,” that is, would have memorized the 150 Psalms. It was not unusual for a poet to be able to reproduce (verbatim) an epic of several thousand lines after a single hearing. Even if these individuals were able to read, most things could not be read either because they were not written down or access to written works was so difficult. The only option to store information was in the memory, so it stayed in tip top shape.

Musical memory is no exception. I have played with folk and jazz musicians who can absorb a song in one hearing (including 32 bar changes, which is quite a feat). Most classical musicians I know cannot do this. It takes me many times around before a melody really sticks in my head, much less harmony and all the other information needed.

I am a heavily notation-reliant musician, but in genres where it makes sense I have moved toward working by ear as much as possible. The side effects are surprising. For one, if I learn a song by ear I don’t forget it. There are standards I figured out years ago and can still easily sit down with a guitar to play through. There are other standards I have looked up in the Real Book to play, and I couldn’t even begin to play them without looking again. A favorite phrase of one of my guitar teachers, Christopher Berg, is “recall is more powerful than review.” This is an essential learning principle. You have to make your brain do the work of remembering something or it won’t (anyone remember any phone numbers anymore?). Recall is a muscle in extreme atrophy because of the access to information we are never without.

It seems that we should be doing as much listening as score watching in our classes. I think we are perhaps reluctant because working on paper feels legitimizing in the academic setting. When STEM majors are doing advanced calculations and practicing surgery on robotic patients we can’t just sit in class and listen to music, can we? We can, and we should. Analytical listening is exactly the skill we should be building . We might assume our students are doing it, but I wasn’t and I doubt today’s students are either.

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Notation vs. Recording

Posted by Isaac Greene on

A recent quiz I gave my music technology students had the following essay question:

Which technology do you think has had a greater impact on the development of music, notation or recording?

I expected a variety of answers but was surprised at the veracity with which the majority of students (10 out of 12) argued for notation. These are all young musicians undergoing a classical music education so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it did get me thinking about the different ways we relate to music through these two technologies.

Obviously notation as a tool of preservation of the past is of inestimable worth. Much of the music that is so important to me would be lost had it not been written down. At least we assume this. Without notation would the western tradition have continued as an oral tradition rather than a written one? Would violin teachers pass Bach partitas down to their students like Indian masters pass ragas down? Would they have subtly changed over the years the way folk songs do? Would there be Bach Partitas at all or would music have sounded utterly different in his day? I don’t know, but I am fascinated by this question. If there are any speculative musicologists out there writing about this I haven’t found them.

As a means of compositional thought notation has also been influential. Mozart had the inner ear to write complete pieces in his head before writing them down perfect and complete, but Beethoven worked out his musical ideas on paper as he revised draft upon draft. The key here though is they were both composing in their heads, Mozart at his desk and Beethoven walking around the countryside. The notation was to communicate intent to the musicians. (I’m fond of this definition of notation from Ferrucio Busoni, “Notation…is primarily an ingenious expedient for catching an inspiration, with the purpose of exploiting it later.” Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music.) Beethoven, of course, was left only with his inner ear by his later life. Something I still recall now and then and can hardly believe is true.

“Notation…is primarily an ingenious expedient for catching an inspiration, with the purpose of exploiting it later.”

Ferrucio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music

Not until Stravinsky did a composer openly brag about composing at the piano (that I know of, correct me if I’m wrong) since he was dealing with a more complex set of sonorities. Historically though, composers hear the music then they write it down. Bach considered anyone who composed at the keyboard an amateur. That is, professionals do their thinking by ear.

This is why it seems obvious to me recording is a much superior technology and has changed us as musicians so much more than notation. Notation is potential sound, recording is actual sound.

For most of human history, all the music a person heard in their entire life was made by themselves, someone within ear shot, or imagined in their heads. For barely more than a century has this has been different. Through recordings we have access to an entire world of music, not just our locality. Recording gave non-notated music portability and preservation for the first time.

As Richard Taruskin points out in the masterful introduction to his six-volume Oxford History of Western Music, what we call “music history” is really the history of notated music plus some scarce archeological evidence of previous musical activities. At least until the 20th century. Now all these other musical activities can be recorded and preserved. Think for a moment about the diversity of music you have heard in your life. Now think about the music you have heard live. One of my favorite composers is Arvo Pärt. I cannot recall ever hearing one of his works in a live concert. There are dozens of composers whose works I know and admire that is true for. Recording has allowed us to become musical globalists in a way that notation could never have done.

I will follow this up with another post about how being notation-centric affects our musical thinking.

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Beauty as Humor

Posted by Isaac Greene on

After some years away, I find myself back in the stream of an old argument: the objectivity of beauty. There is a group that wants to assert that beauty is an objective property of some cultural artifacts. To deny it as such is to deny aspects of the created order. Just as we believe in an objective external reality that we share in, beauty is a property that we find as part of that reality. Denying it as such can only be a sign of the post-modern times.

On the other is the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” crowd. The variety of human experiences is too vast to insist on one expression earning the designation Beautiful. So many factors are at play it must be an inner, subjective experience.

I have my issues with both of these really, but in my actual real-life experience beauty certainly is illusive. Even within myself I can’t agree on what I find beautiful. There are pieces of music I used to adore that I can barely stand anymore, and there are pieces I found bland that now utterly entrance me. The music did not change. It must have been me. And I am one person, imagine the variations of experience across the cultures of the world and through time.

The problem gets worse when those in the first group accuse those in the second group of denying the reality of beauty. When this happens I think what we need is a new metaphor, and I think I have found it. Beauty is like a joke.

“Humor is in the ear of the beholder,” seems almost obvious. We speak of a sense of humor to describe the different tastes individuals have in what they find funny. You and I both find something funny, even if we disagree on the particulars of what that is. One person’s knee-slap is another’s groan.

When someone says, “That’s not funny,” we may very well be aghast or even offended that what gets our goat lets theirs roam free. But, none of us think the other is denying the existence of humor, or telling us we don’t experience the joke as funny. We well understand that what they are saying is “I do not find that funny.” We expect these variations. Even a single person will find some things funny at the right time, but be utterly embarrassed at the wrong.

Humor (like music) is also highly acculturated. Many kinds of humor do not travel across cultures well, with inside jokes, cultural references, linguistic devices (puns really can’t be translated, a great grief), and more.

This is just how humor is. I will not be accused of denying the objective reality of the Funny or of becoming a post-modern grifter because of this.

When it comes to beauty though, tempers might run a bit hotter.

Truth, goodness, beauty. An odd trio, and perhaps (all due respect to Plato and the gang) unevenly yoked. Beauty is the only one that describes an inner experience in response to something. (Debates about objective truth and goodness being far outside the scope of this little project).

Perhaps it’s no accident that the movement that privileged inner experience (the Romantics) and solidified our modern notion of the aesthetic also challenged the nature of truth and goodness on experiential grounds. If beauty is subjective, then why not truth and goodness?

For now, I’ll take “why did the chicken cross the road” and I’m happy to leave you “three peanuts were walking across the Strasse.”