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Meaning in music is elusive — in fact, there are those who have said that music has no meaning

Alan Gilbert, conductor

Must we always find “meaning” in music? Why can’t our listening experience simply be one of absorbing the sounds which enter our ears without constantly questioning what those sounds might “mean”?

But of course we find meaning in music: it triggers an intuitive, visceral reaction in every one of us, a palpable emotional response, regardless of the genre of the music, and that alone demonstrates that it has meaning. Exactly what that ‘meaning’ is is personal and subjective, and it is this emotional subjectivity in the listening experience that leads me to feel tearfully moved by the slow movement of a piano sonata by Schubert, for example, while others may not feel the same.

This emotional, subjective reaction to music, which we all experience (even those people who say they “don’t know anything about classical music” but can explain how ‘The Lark Ascending’ makes them feel) suggests that the music itself has no meaning, that we invest our personal meaning in the music depending on context. This notion was examined by the composer and scientist Dr David Cope in his explorations of music composed by artificial intelligence: “The feelings that we get from listening to music are something we produce, it’s not there in the notes. It comes from emotional insight in each of us, the music is just the trigger” (interview in The Guardian, 2010). For many of us, classical music in particular is associated with beautiful sadness, deep joy, dramatic battles (between themes or characters), excitement, celebration, reflection, melancholy, tenderness, affection….. The experience of music can be very cathartic for listeners, invoking tears or laughter, with or without reason for the release.

I slightly take issue with Dr Cope’s assertion that feeling is “not there in the notes”, for composers deliberately use various devices in the written score – tempo, dynamics, articulation, harmony, silence – to convey meaning (emotion), and as sentient human beings, just like us, composers experience the full gamut of human emotion which they seek to portray in their music. Performers transmit this meaning through their own response to the score which is based not only on their musical knowledge and expertise, but also their personal emotional response and life experience. And they would not choose to play the music if it did not have some kind of meaning for them. The listener then completes the circle by bringing their own personal emotional reaction to the music.

music is very powerful. It is very difficult to remain unmoved by music

Daniel Barenboim

Responses to music and interpretations of its ‘meaning’ may also be determined by extrinsic factors, such as the reputation of the composer and/or performer/s (classical music being rather too obsessed with greatness in this regard) or the urban legend or infamy surrounding a certain work (for example, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata). It’s curious too how highly virtuosic music often has a greater cultural meaning for audiences and critics than simpler music (is it that the difficulty of the music makes it “better”?), yet many performers would agree that playing Mozart or the very spare music of a composer like Arvo Pärt is actually more challenging. Programme and liner notes also play a part in influencing how music is heard and understood; if the programme notes suggest that the Andantino of Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata is an expression of anguish because he was dying of syphilis, some people will inevitably hear that anguish in the harsh modulation, frenzied demisemiquavers and dark chromaticism. And then there are associations which come from other media where certain pieces used in film soundtracks, for example, when heard in concert immediately conjure up emotional responses associated with seeing that film; Also Sprach Zarathustra, a tone poem by Richard Strauss, is for many of us synonymous with space travel after it was used in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Thus we find meaning through the association of certain pieces of music with personal experiences.

In terms of its construction, every element of music can trigger a response from the listener: a jaunty rhythm or fast tempo may set feet tapping and raise the heartbeat, thus increasing a sense of excitement and energy (think of the opening of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries). A beautiful melody may elicit a sense of serenity, hushed pianissimo sections tenderness or intimacy, a particular interval or suspended harmony poignancy or yearning

The wonderful thing about music is that it offers the listener an experience of value which can be translated however she/he chooses. So while religious or politcally-motivated works of music, for example, may have a specific meaning for the composer in the context of the time when they were written (works by Messiaen or Shostakovich, for instance), each listener will take their own experience – and meaning – from that music. The great power of music, regardless of its genre, is that its meaning is ineffable – “where words fail music speaks” (Hans Christian Andersen) – and for many of us music perfectly expresses that which cannot be adequately expressed in words….

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Guest post by Sylvia Segal

Sylvia is a music-lover and The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s most longstanding reader

Dear Fran,

Your blog’s 10th anniversary reminded me that I’ve been meaning to send you a musical message. Lockdown has meant a lot more listening time which, though solitary, has been a great pleasure.

As you know, I have a tendency to have mini love affairs with selected composers, meaning that temporarily I listen to little else. You’ll remember my ‘Chopin period,’ I’m sure. Before that there was Ravel. And Mendelssohn’s chamber music. Bach puts in an appearance regularly, as does Haydn, who always lifts my spirits. And so on.

Anyway, lately it’s been all about Schubert’s piano sonatas for me. Not necessarily the final three, but early and middle ones. Years ago, I bought a 7-CD set of them, played by Ingrid Haebler. The earliest sonata on there is no. 3, and already he’s modulating in a way that reminds me of a tightrope walker without a safety net! It makes me smile to hear him tie himself up in knots, only to untie them a moment later, as if by magic.

Beethoven famously remarked that the piano “couldn’t sing,” but I think Schubert put paid to that idea. (And Mendelssohn.) If you’re able, listen to the slow movement of Schubert’s sonata in B major (D.575). It’s a song. It IS a song. A beautiful, sad one.

On the subject of whether the piano sings or not, I have never forgotten the study day that Robert Levin presented at the British Museum about the evolution of the piano. Focusing on the period that is his forte (sorry, pun), late 18th/early 19th century, he made the very interesting point that composers like Mozart and Haydn didn’t expect the piano to sing, they wanted it to SPEAK, in the manner of well-argued discourse or civilised conversation.

I was reminded of this in Paris in February, where I picked up a free copy of the New York Times in our hotel, and read an article about John Eliot Gardiner entitled “Treating Beethoven as a Revolutionary.” It was about rehearsing Beethoven’s symphonies with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in connection with Beethoven 250 (I expect those performances didn’t happen, sadly), and he said something that really struck me:

“Another thing I think is important [as well as the clarity and exhilaration you can achieve with original instruments] is to encourage the players to “speak” their lines, so that each phrase emerges as a kind of sentence made up of words that they articulate with consonants as well as vowels. Beethoven, it seems to me, is asking for declaimed narration. He conceives of his symphonies as developing and dramatic narratives, and that, in turn, demands an acutely conscious declamatory approach from the players.”

So interesting! I do often think of music as a language, and individual composers’ styles as their ‘handwriting.’ This wordless language has its own structure, vocabulary, grammar—none more so than the music composed around the time of the Enlightenment. Mozart and Haydn spoke it fluently and effortlessly, and we as listeners need to be familiar with the rules of the language before we can experience the thrill that comes when we hear them broken.

Beethoven and Schubert – both voracious readers – inherited this formal language. But I think they became less and less interested in the discourse/conversation aspect, focusing rather more on what Gardiner calls “dramatic narratives.”

Lockdown has afforded me time to think more about the music I’m listening to, which is one of the many good things that have come out of it. A good friend and I keep marvelling at how unconstrained we’ve felt (I know, a contradiction!), and how the extra time we’ve had has not been a burden. Rather, it’s been a gift.

I’ll leave you on that happy note.

With love and warmest congratulations on The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s tenth birthday,

Sylvia

A note from The Cross-Eyed Pianist:

Sylvia is a good friend of mine and, when she lived in London, a very keen concert-goer, especially at the Wigmore Hall. It was Sylvia who encouraged me to start going to classical concerts again, when my son was at an age when he could be left more happily with a babysitter, and we have enjoyed many memorable concerts together. Sylvia was this blog’s first reader and remains a loyal supporter (and eagle-eyed proof-reader!).

 

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The pleasures and rituals of home listening

There is nothing quite like the excitement and atmosphere of hearing music performed live, but immense pleasure can be gained from listening at home, in the privacy of one’s living room or other personal space.

Once upon a time, the only media for home listening were the radio or the record player. As a child growing up in the 1960s and 70s, long before the advent of CDs, my parents (and by default myself) listened to classical music on the radio and on vinyl LPs. My parents enjoyed music and took me to concerts from a young age, but the majority of listening was done at home and putting an LP on the record player was a deliberate act to encourage engaged and concentrated listening. In some ways, home listening mirrored the etiquette of the concert hall. We would listen quietly and respectfully, and often whole works – symphonies by Beethoven and Schubert, Divertimenti by Mozart, lieder and piano music. When my father upgraded his old mono record player to a rather sleek Bang & Olufsen stereo system, I took the old Decca record player up to my bedroom and it became “mine”. Here, listening alone, I could explore the fantastically varied emotional realm of music, from the drama of the opening of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which briefly gives way to a lyrical melody, to Tchaikovsky’s soaringly romantic first Piano Concerto. Left alone, I could sing along, if I chose to, or, more often than not, conduct an imaginary orchestra. In this way, I explored and enjoyed a wide range of music, which put me in good stead when I came to study music more formally.

In addition to the music itself, there was the parallel pleasure of preparing a vinyl LP for the player. LPs had to be treated with care, slid reverentially from their cardboard cover and the paper envelope which protected the precious grooved surface (where the music magically resided). Before placing the disc on the player, one had to clean it with a special cloth to remove fine particles which could clog the stylus and create intrusive crackles or muffle sound as the disc was playing. Then the disc was carefully placed on the turntable and, in the case of my old mono record player, the stylus had to be manually lifted into position over the outermost groove of the LP. I am sure this special process contributed to one’s listening regime. It certainly wasn’t the same when I upgraded to a radio cassette player…..

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Today we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to the medium by which we enjoy our home listening. The recorded back catalogue available to the home listener is bigger and more varied than ever before, and is continually being updated; we have better quality sound than at any previous time which offers a better listening experience; and the cost of discovering classical music is much less – and even free – now.

We can enjoy home listening 24/7, should we desire it. I’ve got a stack of CDs to choose from, but more often than not I now listen via a music streaming service through a high-quality Bluetooth speaker system. The same Bluetooth system also connects with other music services such as YouTube (where many high-quality recordings and performances can now be found), Medici TV or the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall (live concert streaming).

These platforms have undoubtedly changed the way we listen at home, making our listening experience incredibly diverse. Streaming services like Spotify and IDAGIO allow users to create personalised playlists or listen to specially-curated playlists. Thus, we may not necessarily be listening to music by the same composer, but rather a mix, giving us the opportunity to explore and listen more widely. In addition, algorithm-generated playlists, based on one’s regular listening habits rather than by genre, offer spontaneity and unexpected surprises.

But despite all this up-to-the-minute technology, I often find my bedside radio provides the most intimate and intense home listening, and it is often through this concentrated listening experience that I discover new repertoire. Perhaps it is the organization of playlists on, say, BBC Radio Three’s Breakfast programme where early Renaissance choral music is side by side with an Etude by Philip Glass – the old shining a light on the new, and vice versa. A live concert broadcast can create a special kind of intimacy: right up close to the device, you feel the announcer is talking exclusively to you, and with the technology available today, a broadcast concert often offers a higher quality audio experience at home.

It’s where I experience the most intimate connection…..listening to a concert through the smallest of speakers – the stereo kitchen radio.

– Jon Jacob/Thoroughly Good

There are, of course, more prosaic reasons for enjoying home listening. It’s entirely own your own terms: you’re not obliged to remain seated for the entire experience, you can take food and drink into your own private concert hall, and if you’re not enjoying it, you can simply switch it off!

All music trains the ear to hear it properly, but classical music trains the ear to hear with a peculiar acuity. It wants to be explored, not just heard … it trains both the body’s ear and the mind’s to hearken, to attend closely, to listen deeply, as one wants to listen to something not to be missed.

– Lawrence Kramer, Why Classical Music Still Matters (University of California Press, 2009)

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The pleasures and rituals of home listening

There is nothing quite like the excitement and atmosphere of hearing music performed live in a concert hall, but immense pleasure can be gained from listening at home, in the privacy of one’s living room or other personal space.

Once upon a time, the only media for home listening were the radio or the record player. As a child growing up in the 1960s and 70s, long before the advent of CDs, my parents (and by default myself) listened to classical music on the radio and on vinyl LPs. My parents enjoyed music and took me to concerts from a young age, but the majority of listening was done at home and putting an LP on the record player was a deliberate act to encourage engaged and concentrated listening. In some ways, home listening mirrored the etiquette of the concert hall. We would listen quietly and respectfully, and often whole works – symphonies by Beethoven and Schubert, Divertimenti by Mozart, lieder and piano music. When my father upgraded his old mono record player to a rather sleek Bang & Olufsen stereo system, I took the record player up to my bedroom and it became “mine”. Here, listening alone, I could explore the fantastically varied emotional realm of music, from the drama of the opening of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony which briefly gives way to a lyrical melody, to Tchaikovsky’s soaringly romantic first Piano Concerto. Left alone, I could sing along, if I chose to, or, more often than not, conduct an imaginary orchestra. In this way, I explored and enjoyed a wide range of music, which put me in good stead when I came to study music formally.

In addition to the music itself, there was the parallel pleasure of preparing a vinyl LP for the player. LPs had to be treated with care, slid reverentially from their cardboard cover and the paper envelope which protected the precious grooved surface (where the music resided). Before placing the disc on the player, one had to clean it with a special cloth to remove fine particles which could clog the stylus and create intrusive crackles or muffle sound as the disc was playing. Then the disc was carefully placed on the turntable and, in the case of my old mono record player, the stylus had to be manually lifted into position over the outermost groove of the LP. I am sure this special process contributed to one’s listening regime. It certainly wasn’t the same when I upgraded to a radio cassette player…..

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Today we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to the medium by which we enjoy our home listening. The recorded back catalogue available to the home listener is bigger and more varied than ever before, and is continually being updated; we have better quality sound that at any previous time which gives us a much better listening experience; and the cost of discovering classical music is much less – and even free – now.

We can enjoy home listening 24/7, should we desire it. I’ve got a stack of CDs to choose from, but more often than not I now listen via a music streaming service through a high-quality Bluetooth speaker system. The same Bluetooth system also connects with other music services such as YouTube (where many high-quality recordings and performances can now be found), Medici TV or the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall (live concert streaming).

These platforms have undoubtedly changed the way we listen at home, making our listening experience incredibly diverse. Streaming services like Spotify and IDAGIO allow users to create personalised playlists or listen to specially-curated playlists. Thus, we may not necessarily be listening to music by the same composer, but rather a mix, giving us the opportunity to explore and listen more widely. In addition, algorithm-generated playlists, based on one’s regular listening habits rather than by genre, offer spontaneity and unexpected surprises.

But despite all this up-to-the-minute technology, I often find my bed-side radio provides the most intimate and intense home listening, and it is often through this concentrated listening experience that I discover new repertoire. Perhaps it is the organization of playlists on, say, BBC Radio Three’s Breakfast programme where early Renaissance choral music is side by side with an Etude by Philip Glass – the old shining a light on the new, and vice versa. A live concert broadcast can create a special kind of intimacy: right up close to the device, you feel the announcer is talking exclusively to you, and with the technology available today, a broadcast concert often offers a higher quality audio experience at home.

It’s where I experience the most intimate connection…..listening to a concert through the smallest of speakers – the stereo kitchen radio.

– Jon Jacob/Thoroughly Good

There are, of course, more prosaic reasons for enjoying home listening. It’s entirely own your own terms: you’re not obliged to remain seated for the entire experience, you can take food and drink into your own private concert hall, and if you’re not enjoying it, you can simply switch it off!

All music trains the ear to hear it properly, but classical music trains the ear to hear with a peculiar acuity. It wants to be explored, not just heard … it trains both the body’s ear and the mind’s to hearken, to attend closely, to listen deeply, as one wants to listen to something not to be missed.

– Lawrence Kramer, Why Classical Music Still Matters (University of California Press, 2009)

 

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How we consume and listen to music has been transformed by digital technology. Where once recorded music was available only on the radio and vinyl LPs, reel-to-reel tape (and later tape cassettes) and CDs, it is now possible to access music 24/7 with the same ease with which one turns on a tap.

Today our listening takes many forms – at home on the radio, to a CD or vinyl LP, via a streaming service or YouTube; “on the go” through individually-curated or recommended playlists on an iPod or a smartphone; or to music that is played seemingly ubiquitously in social environments such as shopping centres, bars and restaurants, stations and even banks.

In our instant gratification-driven culture, streaming services like Spotify or IDAGIO (a specialist classical music streaming platform) in particular offer endless listening possibilities, and their portability (an app on your smartphone) means that music can be enjoyed wherever and whenever you are. Platforms such as these also allow users to create and share playlists (much in the way we used to make and share “mixtapes” when I was a teenager, only far less laborious in their creation today with just a click of the mouse!), and it’s wonderful to be able to access a vast range of performers and performances, including vintage recordings of Ravel and Rachmaninov, for example, playing their own music.

Some argue that the instant availability of music via platforms such as Spotify devalues the experience of listening to music, encouraging “passive listening” over “long” or “deep” listening and flitting between different tracks without listening to an entire album or even an entire song/track. These platforms have undoubtedly changed the way we listen, allowing us to engage with a far greater range of music than ever before, making our listening experience incredibly diverse. This has the potential, if we allow it, to revolutionise our everyday listening by mixing genres (classical, jazz, pop, world etc – and their sub-genres) and offering us “algorithm-curated” listening options based on our regular listening habits: the digital version of a friend saying “if you like that, you might like this”, or the recommendations of the record review section of the Sunday newspaper. Set your music service to “shuffle” and you add surprise and spontaneity to your listening experience (not recommended for those who enjoy hearing a piano sonata or symphony in its entirety, the movements in the right order!). Now one’s listening may not be wholly defined by genre, but by the music itself. Spotify creates a Daily Mix playlist “based on the different styles of music you regularly listen to, each mix is loaded with artists you love, plus a sprinkling of new discoveries that fit the vibe too” (Spotify website) and also a Discover Weekly playlist “made just for you [me]” which changes every Monday. I have enjoyed both playlists and have even made some new discoveries as a result.

In his book Every Song Ever author Ben Ratliff overturns the habit of listening by genre and instead suggests listening based on other, more general parameters such as speed, virtuosity, repetition or volume, thus offering cross-genre listening which may encourage one to make unexpected musical connections.

Meanwhile, over in the classical concert hall, some argue that the instant availability of music today and the erosion of the habit of deep or mindful listening is impacting on the way audiences engage with live music, making them less prepared to sit through a long programme or even works longer than c30 mins at a time, and more interested in programmes comprising a variety of shorter works. My experience and observations as a regular concert-goer don’t really concur with this view, and in general I think audiences are very much still prepared to put in the effort to listen in an engaged and respectful way. This is partly because current classical music audiences tend to be of an age and demographic that is less conversant or interested in the current technology to consume music, and I’m certain that it is also because the experience of hearing music live is so very different from the experience of listening on the radio, disc or via a streaming service. Those of us who go to concerts enjoy the spontaneity, the sense of risk and of music being created in the moment. The excitement of live music is a “total experience” – not only of the music itself but all the special rituals of concert-going which can never be recreated on a disc or MP3 track.

 

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listen

There are many benefits in listening to the repertoire you are working on, on disc and in concert, as well as “listening around” the music – works from the same period by the same composer, and works by his/her contemporaries. Such listening gives us a clearer sense of the composer’s individual soundworld and an understanding of how aspects such as orchestral writing or string quartet textures are presented in piano music, for example. You are unlikely to pick up any nuggets of technique in the concert hall – you’re often too far away from the stage to see details – but listening attentively is helpful. Keep ears and mind alert to details such as articulation, phrasing and breathing space, dynamic shading and nuance, wit and humour, giving rests their full value (or slightly more) to create drama, tempo, and a sense of the overall architecture and narrative of the piece. We should never seek to imitate what we hear, but there is much to be learned from this kind of focused listening and I regularly come away from concerts of music I am working on with new ideas and insights.

Conversely, hearing a performance which I may dislike is never a waste of time. When I heard Andras Schiff perform Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata (in A, D959), a work with which I have spent a long time in recent years, and continue to work on, I found myself balking at certain things he did to the music – not that anything was “wrong”, it was simply not to my taste. But one thing I took away from that performance was his pedantic treatment of rests (Schubert uses rests to create drama, rhythmic drive and moments of suspension or repose) and this has really informed my practising.

In broader terms, hearing a group of pieces in performance is instructive in demonstrating how a good (or bad!) programme is put together. At one time, performers were concerned with things like key relationships between pieces, but now a programme that “works” tends to be one which contains a variety of contrasting moods, tempi and characters which help to create flow from the start of the concert to the end, or which focuses on a particular theme. Audiences – and performers – enjoy different levels of energy within a programme, while a programme with too many longeurs of tempo and mood can seem overly long or dull.

Most of us are limited by our own imagination, experience and knowledge and great performances and interpretations can broaden our horizons, inspire us and inform our own approach to music. But listening at concerts, and particularly to recordings and YouTube clips does have its pitfalls too. Recorded performances capture a moment in time and while they can certainly offer ideas and inspiration, they can also become embedded in our memory and may influence our sense of a piece or obscure our own original thoughts about the music. This may lead us to imitate a magical moment that another performer has found in a note or a phrase – a moment over which that particular performer has taken ownership which in someone else’s hands may sound contrived or unconvincing. It is important that we form our own special relationship with our music, and in order to do that we must investment time and effort in our study, while remaining open-minded and receptive to new ideas or approaches.

The other problem with recordings is that some performers may take liberties with the score to make certain passages or an entire piece more personal. This tends to happen in very well known repertoire, where an artist will put their own mark on the music to make it more distinctively their own, while not always remaining completely faithful to the score. Thus, some recordings may not truly represent what the composer intended, yet these recordings have become the benchmark or “correct” version.

So when we listen we should do so with an advisory note to self: that recordings and YouTube clips can be helpful, but we should never seek to imitate what we hear. It is the work we do ourselves on our music which is most important, going through the score to understand what makes it special, and listening around the music to gain a deeper understanding of the composer’s intentions so that our own interpretation is both personal and faithful.