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The Innocent Ear was a radio programme, broadcast on the Third Programme (which became BBC Radio 3) in which listeners were invited to “preserve [their] ‘innocence'” by not trying to guess the composer, and by approaching the music with fresh judgment, freed from prejudice”.  The music played would be identified afterwards, thus freeing the listener’s mind of preconceptions and encouraging a closer, more concentrated or deeper way of listening. (One of the main aims of the programme was to introduce lesser-known music/composers to listeners through this impartial approach.)

I quite often do this kind of listening late at night, to BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks and Unclassified programmes, where pieces often segue into one another, without any interjection from the presenter. I find it encourages deeper listening, though this may also be related to the time of day and setting (I’m usually in bed by this time with the lights turned low or even off). I have also found myself listening to, and enjoying music by composers I thought I loathed!

Our listening is shaped by our personal taste, experience and maturity, and by external influences such as broadcasts, reviews, recommendations, shared playlists, music heard on tv or film soundtracks, current trends (composers and performers come in and out of fashion very regularly), and much more. More often than not, the concerts we choose to go to are based on both personal taste and the extrinsic influences mentioned above.

But what if we were to apply the innocent ear approach to concerts? There would be no programme (even words like ‘sonata’ or ‘quartet’ suggest a specific genre and structure, at once setting up preconceptions about what will be performed); no words of introduction, either in writing or verbally; just the music. How might the listening experience change?

The programme note remains a mainstay of the traditional presentation of classical music; alongside that we now have the “presenter” (especially evident at the BBC Proms) who can, but not always (and the best ones don’t), become a filter between audience and music, explaining why we should “appreciate” certain pieces, impose meaning where meaning may not exist, and attempt to connect the music to the context of our times, rather than the time in which it was originally created. This kind of presenting can become really distracting, irritating or problematic when the presenter sees it as their role to place their own personal stamp on the concert, rather than allowing us to listen without prejudice. What is worse, is the gushing adulation of certain artists or composers, and a deluge of post-performance superlatives, leaving the listener little space to reflect on their own response to the music.

And in the midst of all this, the score, and the sounds which the text produces when brought to life by the musicians, often seems secondary to what this or that piece of music is “about”.

Do we need to be told how to listen? And do we also need to be told what the “meaning” of the music might be (this especially applies to contemporary music, in my experience)?

Without a programme note or verbal introduction, the music has to impress purely on its sonic content, to be effective and affective, and any meaning ascribed to or drawn from it will be personal to the individual listener. In this way, listeners open their minds, and ears, to the experience of the music, without prejudging its merits based on when or by whom it was composed. In this way, works are appreciated for their intrinsic musical power, rather than extrinsic factors, such as the reputation of the composer or biographical or historical contexts.

Music does not have to have “meaning”, but rather it should be meaningful – as it undoubtedly is, for a multitude of reasons, and we each take our own personal meaningfulness from it.

Minimalist music has proved that fewer notes can still be powerful and arresting. Perhaps a similar “less is more” approach should be applied to programme notes, introductions and the presentation of classical music?

“Music doesn’t have to be understood, It just has to be heard” – Hermann Scherchen, conductor

A few of my late-night, ‘innocent ear” discoveries:

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Friday 30th September, 7.30pm, at St George’s Hanover Square, London W1

Poppy Beddoe – clarinet

Matthew Taylor – conductor

A special concert in memory of conductor, Artistic Director and producer Tom Hammond, who died suddenly just after Christmas 2021 at the age of 47, will be held on 30 September at St George’s church, Hanover Square.

Organised by a group of Tom’s close friends and colleagues, the concert will feature music by Tom’s favourite composer, Jean Sibelius, as well as works by Mozart and Nielsen, and pieces by composer friends Bernard Hughes, James Francis Brown and Matthew Taylor, who will also conduct the concert. The soloist is clarinettist Poppy Beddoe.

Programme:
Mozart Adagio and Fugue in C minor
James Francis Brown Lost Lanes – Shadow Groves
Bernard Hughes 3 Pieces for Tom
Sibelius Impromptu for Strings
Matthew Taylor Romanza
Nielsen 3 Pieces Op.3, orchestrated for strings

Conductor, soloist, orchestral players and publicist are offering their services free of charge, and proceeds from the concert will be donated to Future Talent and London Music Fund, two charities which support young musicians, especially those with limited financial means, to reach their full potential – a mission very close to Tom’s heart.

Tickets cost £10-£30 and can be booked via this link: www.ticketsource.co.uk/thmemorial

Thank you for your support of this concert

A passionate and thoroughly engaging conductor, Tom Hammond always put *people* first – the musicians he was leading, the audience to whom they were performing, or the composer whose notes they were illuminating. He was a champion for increasing access to music for people from all walks of life, firmly believing in its power as a tool for social change, community spirit, and pure enjoyment.

Despite claiming he ‘couldn’t play it’, Tom would spend hours dissecting each score at the piano, whilst delving into published letters, biographies and anecdotes to find out what made a composer tick so that he could convey that understanding to others. Amongst his orchestras are now many converts to the same composers Tom loved.

Tom’s conducting took him around the UK and internationally. On several occasions he was proud to lead the Palestine Youth Orchestra, with whom he visited Jordan, Dubai and Oman. One of the world’s true driving forces, Tom also founded the chamber ensemble sound collective, the Hertfordshire Festival of Music as Co-Artistic Director, and the recording company Chiaro as a producer.

Alongside seemingly endless energy and a zest for life, Tom’s encouragement for all music-makers leaves thousands of people with awakened curiosity and so many wonderful memories.

For press/media enquiries, please contact Frances Wilson frances_wilson66@live.com

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“I wish I’d kept up my piano lessons!”

How many people do you meet who express this regret, that they’d continued childhood piano lessons into adulthood?

At my piano club, there are people who have played all their life; others who, like me, gave up, often in childhood or their teens, only to return to the instrument later in life; and those who have taken up the piano from scratch as adults, setting themselves on a path which brings pleasure and frustration in equal measure. For all of us, there is a huge sense of personal growth, self-determination and fulfilment.

The idea that once one reaches adulthood it is “too late” to take up the piano – or indeed any other instrument – is nonsense. The body and, more importantly, the brain is still receptive and highly malleable, and research has amply demonstrated that the brain remains “plastic” (able to adapt and change) throughout our life. Learning a musical instrument stimulates almost every part of the brain, especially those areas associated with memory. Contrary to common misconceptions, the adult brain continues to carve new neural pathways throughout life, and learning an instrument stimulates this and improves cognitive function.

Dismiss any idea that it is “harder” to learn an instrument as an adult. Unlike children, who may be compelled to learn an instrument by their parents, the adult learner makes the personal choice to pursue music and has the motivation, intent and self-discipline to stay the course.

It takes a degree of courage to decide to learn, or return to, an instrument, and to take lessons with the teacher and the first few lessons can be extremely daunting, but find the right teacher and the activity is an extraordinarily fulfilling experience. No dull exercises or drills or exams, but a stimulating flow of ideas and inspiration, exploring repertoire and honing one’s skills, while life experience and maturity bring a special dimension to lessons and learning.

I first started to learn the piano when I was about five years old, took all my grade exams, and then abruptly stopped playing when I left home to go to university (to study not music but Anglo-Saxon and Medieval literature). I hardly touched the piano for 20 years, but when I returned to it, I did so with an all-consuming passion. I took lessons with master teachers and attended masterclasses with leading concert pianists. I set myself the personal target of learning and preparing music at a very high level to fulfil the requirements of professional musical qualifications (two performance diplomas which I passed with distinction) and organised and performed in my own concerts. Today the piano is my life – and my work – and it has put me in touch with so many wonderful, inspiring and interesting people. I certainly intend to go on playing the piano and engaging with the literature and those who play it for as long as I can.

It’s never too late!

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**STOP PRESS** Join Paul Roberts and pianist Charles Owen at Kings Place on Sunday 9th October for an exploration of the literary inspiration behind Liszt’s greatest piano works. London Piano Festival co-founder Charles Owen performs the visionary music springing from Liszt’s intense identification with Biblical texts. Details/tickets here

In the introduction to his new book, pianist Paul Roberts recounts a conversation with “an elderly and much celebrated piano teacher” when he was just starting out as the inspiration for a lifetime’s fascination with literature and language and the essential connections between literature and music: “I introduced myself. I cannot remember quite how the topic came about, but within a few minutes we were talking about Liszt’s great triptych of piano pieces known as the Petrarch Sonnets, inspired by the love poetry of the 14th-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. “Oh!” I enthused, “those poems …!” She entered her studio. “We don’t need them,” she said, and closed the door. I was deflated. And dumbfounded.”

Paul Roberts feels that music comes from sources beyond simply itself – from, for example, the composer’s life experience, the influence of others, and, in the case of Liszt, poetry and literature, and that as pianists we do the music, and its composer, a disservice by not paying attention to these external sources of inspiration. In his engaging, eloquent and highly readable text, Roberts explores what he believes to be an inseparable bond between poetry and the piano music of Franz Liszt, and how literary inquiry affects musical interpretation and performance. For Roberts, an appreciation of the poetry which inspired or informed Liszt’s music gives the pianist, and listener, significant insights into the composer’s creative imagination, bringing one closer to his music and allowing a deeper understanding, and, for the performer, a richer, more multi-dimensional interpretation of the music. It also offers a better appreciation of Liszt the man: too often dismissed as a superficial showman, in this book Roberts reveals Liszt as a man of passionate intellectual and emotional curiosity, who read widely and with immense discernment, all of which is reflected in his music. As Alfred Brendel said, “Liszt’s music….projects the man”.

Poetry and literature were meat and drink to Franz Liszt, who performed in and attended the cultural salons of 1830s Paris where he knew writers such as Victor Hugo and George Sand. He was familiar with the writing of Byron, Sénancour, Goethe, Dante, Petrarch and others, and his scores are littered with literary quotations which offer fascinating glimpses into the breadth of his creative imagination and what that literature meant to him. For the pianist, they provide an opportunity to “live inside his mind” and open “our imaginations to the wonder of his music”.

Perhaps the most obvious connection between Liszt and poetry is his Tre Sonetti del Petrarca – the three Petrarch Sonnets. They began life as songs which Liszt later arranged for piano solo, and included them in the Italian volume of his Années de pèlerinage. Liszt and his lover Marie d’Agoult spent two years in Italy and it was here that Liszt was exposed to the marvels of Italian Renaissance art and architecture and the poetry of Dante and Petrarch.

The poetry of Petrarch was central to Liszt’s creative imagination and in his triptych inspired by the Italian poet’s sonnets, we find an extraordinary depth of expression and emotional breadth. In the chapter ‘The Music of Desire’, Roberts explores Petrarch’s sonnets in detail and demonstrates how Liszt translates the passion of the poet into some of the finest writing for piano by Liszt, or indeed anyone else.

Perhaps because I have studied and performed these pieces myself, a study which included close reference to Petrarch’s poetry, it is here that I find Roberts’ argument most persuasive, that the pianist really needs this literary context and understanding to bring the music fully to life. He shows how Liszt responds to the ebb and flow of emotions in Petrarch’s writing, in particular in the most passionately dramatic of the three sonnets, No. 104, “Pace no trovo” (I find no peace), where the poet veers almost schizophrenically between extremes of emotion, from the depths of despair to ecstasy.

Subsequent chapters explore other great piano works – the extraordinary B-minor Sonata which Roberts believes is firmly connected to that pinnacle of nineteenth century European literature, Goethe’s Faust, the existentialism of Vallée d’Obermann, a work which exemplifies the Romantic spirit, and its relationship with Etienne de Sénancour’s cult novel Obermann, the “aura” of Byron and his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which pervade the Swiss volume of the Années alongside Liszt’s personal experience of the majestic landscape of Switzerland and the Alps. The final chapter explores the Dante Sonata and Liszt’s reverence for The Divine Comedy at a time when Dante’s poetry was being rediscovered by English and European Romantic writers like Keats, Coleridge, Shelley and Stendhal. Throughout, Roberts conveys the power of literature to awaken and inspire the Romantic imagination and sensibilities, and demonstrates how this might inform the way one performs Liszt’s music – from the physical cadence of poetry to its drama, narrative arc and emotional impact which had such a profound effect on Liszt and which infuses his music in almost every note. Here Liszt finds a new kind of expression in which, in his own words, music becomes “a poetic language, one that, better than poetry itself perhaps, more readily expresses everything in us that transcends the commonplace, everything that eludes analysis”.

A useful Appendix explores the influence of other poets such as Alphonse de Lamartine and Lenau, with analysis of other pianos works, including Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, the Mephisto Waltz, the two St Francis legends, and Mazeppa, inspired by a poem by Victor Hugo.

In this book, Paul Roberts reveals the essence of Liszt literary world, providing the pianist with valuable insight and inspiration with which to appreciate, shape and perform his music.

Reading Franz Liszt: Revealing the Poetry behind the Piano Music is published by Amadeus Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, USA.

Photo of Paul Roberts by Viktor Erik Emanuel

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