“Come mothers and fathers throughout
the land and don't criticize what you can't understand, your sons and your
daughters are beyond your command your old road is rapidly agin'” – Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-changin’, 1964
My family preferred Pat
Boone to Elvis and they found Dylan irreverent and annoying, but for me, Dylan
gave voice to questions and possibilities when I was just a child and the first
consciousness of my own deepest thoughts manifested in my mind.
Those questions and
thoughts have dragged me around my life for over sixty years and have helped to
keep me awake. “Little children remember,
but only a few, and down they forgot as up they grew.” – e.e. cummings
Since first hearing
Dylan’s song I have observed that, in fact, the times are always a-changin’ and
the times are also never a-changin’, because everything changes, yet everything
remains the same.
Take listening to
music. In the old days, I mean the really old days—before recordings and
broadcasts—there were two ways to hear music, listening to others making music
or making music oneself. Now, in the brand new spiffy days, there are still
only two ways to hear music, listening to others making music or making music
oneself.
No, I am not forgetting
recordings and ‘live’ broadcasts, but I do make a distinction between recorded
music, electrically transmitted music, and music heard live with the performer
and the audience together in the same place and at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, I
am not against recorded music; I listen to it and enjoy the experience, it’s
just that it’s a different experience and I don’t want to lose the ability to
be able to discriminate between a thing and its reproduction. Take, for
example, paintings hanging in a gallery. What if one night all the paintings
were replaced by photographic reproductions—very good reproductions placed in
the frames of the originals?
Leaving aside the
question of how many viewers would notice the difference, the question I pose
is: Even for those who do not recognize the ‘paintings’ are reproductions, is
there a fundamental change in the quality of their experience—a change that
they may not even be aware of? My opinion is that there would be and that the
experience of viewing the reproductions instead of the original would be not
only different, but inferior.
Still, as I said,
recordings do have their place, just not as a total replacement for the ‘live ’
music experience, but leaving aside that question for a while, I would like to
address the question of how music, recorded or otherwise, is listened to, for
here too, the time are a-changin’.
I ask my students;
“When was the last time you sat down and listened to music and gave it your
full attention—without doing anything else, not eating or drinking or reading
or carrying on conversations or working…?” For some, the answer is never, or
almost never. Some ask me if watching music videos count. “That depends on how
you do it,” is usually my reply. Music is something that is primarily heard not
‘watched’.
I am not arguing the irrelevancy of recorded music
as background or as a component of atmosphere; but what I wish to discuss is
that the pure, pristine, focused, listening experience and the knowledge and
discipline necessary to really listen to music or recorded music. Knowing that if
a muscle is not used it atrophies, I would like to do what I can to assure that
the ability and the desire to listen to music is not lost.
Think about wine; there
are many different wines and many different occasions for drinking wine, but
some wines demand a special occasion—the right food, the right atmosphere,
sometimes the right companion, and most important of all, the right state.
I ask my students to
include as part of their musical work at least one focused listening session of
ten to thirty minutes each week. I suggest that when listening to recorded
music, use the best sound system that is available, sit comfortably with back
straight, stay alert and relaxed—don’t try to figure things out, just stay open
and let the music come in. Identifying elements of the music, i.e. melodies,
chord progressions, instruments, lyrics, etc. is natural and part of the
listening experience, but don’t let the mind go off on them at the expense of losing
the moment of the music. Always try to stay in the moment—in the present—of the
music.
Records, became tapes,
tapes became cds, and cds became digital downloads and one day we will all have
chips in are brains that allow us to access all that can be accessed in the
world by just wishing to. Yes, the times they are a-changin’ but to create and
appreciate the arts—and perhaps life itself—the need for attention,
concentration, and contemplation never changes.
