How I Listen to a new Classical Piece
I don’t think I’m that good at listening really. Not really.
It takes me AGES to get into a new piece. I’m crap at doing the thing where you get a new CD and dim the lights (probably after taking a bubble bath with acres of scented candles while being fed grapes in that really impractical, dangling them over your gaping mouth kinda way) and then focus every little exquisite amount of attention you can possibly round up at this new slice o’ music.
I’m not very good at that. I can’t hang on to the melodies quickly enough to see the piece through, there’s too much going on to get a proper grip on things, and I feel lost.
The first time (and the second time, and probably the third fourth and fifth) I hear a piece, it’s washing over me, breaking me in, preparing me to really hear it. It’s like when you first wake up and there’s this smudged, vague period in which the real world is creeping in. Your body isn’t quite prepared to let you bounce open into all the meniality of the day without a bit of a gentle wearing in and soaking up.
Just as you twist from unconsciousness to consciousness in bed, my grasp of a new piece of music starts with a lazy sort of nothing: a deep sleep with simply the broad initial feelings handed over on the first listening. They’re like the vague stew of feelings your dreams have slipped you into before you wake, a starting place, the general scene. With progressive listenings I become more and more awake, more aware of my surroundings. Things tighten up, melodies crystallize, lines separate into instruments and objects.
Hmmm. I don’t think I can push this metaphor too much further, but it’s working out a lot better than I thought it would. I need to regroup and think of a better one. Then I can have a grandish unifiedish theory of listening to a piece of music.
I’m such a geek.