[Smt-talk] the impossibility of listening

[Fieldman, Hali]

Provocative, indeed!

Had I not wanted to understand intellectually my aural analysis, through performance and listening, of "notes interacting with each other," I would never have been drawn to music theory.  Perhaps "we" -- the music-theory community, the community of professional musicians as a whole, the community of people whose role is to act as interface between the thorny behaviors of musical elements and the tender sensibilities of our audiences — perhaps we underestimate the very power of musical sound, as well as the ability of musically-untrained people to hear such sound with great insight and clarity.

It is interesting to read the responses Rick has provoked with this post.  I hope there are wonderful, thoughtful discussions about these issues in New Orleans, and I wish I were there to hear and share.

I hope it's a wonderful conference, all.

Hali Fieldman
Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music Theory
UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
University of Missouri — Kansas City


From: Richard Cohn <richard.cohn at yale.edu<mailto:richard.cohn at yale.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 3:04 PM
To: "smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org<mailto:smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org>" <smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org<mailto:smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org>>
Subject: [Smt-talk] the impossibility of listening

I just received a copy of A History of Opera, a new book co-authored by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker. In their preface, they write that "at a very early stage... we we decided that this history would contain no musical examples...we wanted to write a book without reference to musical scores." After the usual justification about not wanting to swamp readers with anything that might be challenging to their technical facility, they write the following: "Readers will look in vain for abstract structural analyses of music, or extended descriptions of notes interacting with each other: that kind of information, although relatively easy --- with training --- to extract from a score, is virtually impossible to extract from listening to or attending an opera."

Without further comment on my part, I thought this was a sufficiently provocative set of claims that I would just pass it on to the community for savoring, in advance our congregation in New Orleans.

--Rick Cohn
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