Listening Fatigue
Tue, May 7 2013, 12:48PM
#2
RE: Listening Fatigue
Isn't the real problem with this, the tendency for schedulers to go for big-ticket popular numbers. You could blame ClassicFM with its "Hall of Fame" (which I deliberately avoid) but Radio3 can be just as bad. How often do you hear a Bax symphony, or "rare" Bruckner choral piece (ie NOT a symphony), or an opera by C.V. Stanford at the Proms?
DSM
Tue, May 7 2013, 2:04PM
#3
RE: Listening Fatigue
Passing the rather distasteful joke about my family, I want to clarify something, Jane. When you're talking about this "listening fatigue", do you admit that the fault lies with you or the problem is elsewhere?
Parla
P.S.: For all it's worth, I wish to inform you that listening to Classical Music has worked for me as healing from the fatigue of the hectic day's work.
Tue, May 7 2013, 3:34PM
#4
RE: Listening Fatigue
Isn't the real problem with this, the tendency for schedulers to go for big-ticket popular numbers. You could blame ClassicFM with its "Hall of Fame" (which I deliberately avoid) but Radio3 can be just as bad. How often do you hear a Bax symphony, or "rare" Bruckner choral piece (ie NOT a symphony), or an opera by C.V. Stanford at the Proms?
Another reason not to listen to the radio? (The first reason being that I don't trust anyone else's taste above my own.)
I certainly have a policy of not over-listening to works I really love, and there are several discs which always catch my eye, but then I think "No, it hasn't been long enough yet. I want to be sure that, when I next listen to it, I'm delighted, not bored." Being bored by music you love is far worse than being bored by music you hate!
Luckily the works I metaphorically wore out at the start of my listening career turned out not to belong to the area I eventually, naturally gravitated to.
Tue, May 7 2013, 4:47PM
#5
RE: Listening Fatigue
The issue
that was raised in this post is the most interesting to me.
I find that
an important source of pleasure in listening to good music is anticipation,
which is the enjoyment I get when I know there is a passage that I particularly
like and that will come in a few seconds or minutes. When that happens I start enjoying
that passage even before it arrives.
When I was
in college I would even skip the "boring" parts and go directly to the parts I
liked the best, like wanting instant ecstasy. But then I learned that waiting for that
anticipated part increased its enjoyment.
Traveling through the music is part of the fun.
Of course
the enjoyment of anticipation cannot happen when I am listening a piece for the
first time, so in a way it is a price you get only when you listen to something
several times.
I do
believe there is listening fatigue, mainly when you listen to something several
times in a short period of time, but in my case I find I can rest of this
fatigue and latter enjoy it again, including the value added of anticipation.
Felipe
Tue, May 7 2013, 5:02PM
#6
RE: Listening Fatigue
Let's just think ourselves lucky that the Gramophone has never lowered it's standards and gone down the 'Hall of fame' route. That would be too much to bare.
The naked truth is out.
Tue, May 7 2013, 5:45PM
#7
RE: Listening Fatigue
When I was in college I would even skip the "boring" parts and go directly to the parts I liked the best, like wanting instant ecstasy.
I am ashamed to say that I still do that sometimes.........It's one of the problems with digital music, perhaps: too easy to move back and forth to find the "best bits". I try hard not to do it, but sometimes it is just too tempting.I am particularly bad when it comes to opera, perhaps because it is easy and even conventional to isolate individual parts. A few years ago, I listened to nothing but the Act 2 finale from Figaro for weeks on end........(especially in the underrated Abbado version.) I didn't quite manage to kill it off, but I did take some of the sparkle away.Listening is certainly a strange business.
Tue, May 7 2013, 5:49PM
#8
RE: Listening Fatigue
I have always had great difficulty with the order of movements in Mahler's 6th symphony. Neither solution seems quite right. I must admit that several times I have listened to this work leaving out the Scherzo altogether!
You are right Jane it's all too easy with recordings just to listen to one's favourite bits. But it can be fatal!
Tue, May 7 2013, 10:36PM
#9
RE: Listening Fatigue
I wonder if the desire of some to own multiple versions of some works (something to which I plead guilty) is to try to get new freshness to familiar works.
After many years of listening to music, I am aware that over exposure might dim my enthusiasm for some works. With most composers, there are other genres and less familiar works to explore, there are also contemporaries.
best wishes,
P
Tue, May 7 2013, 10:59PM
#10
RE: Listening Fatigue
Scherzo first, andante second. It makes no sense the other way around. None whatsoever. And it's an andante, not an adagio. Are you listening Bernstein, are you listening Karajan.
God no, andante first. I always loved the 6th, even with all the recordings I had having the movements in the wrong order (Alma Mahler overriding her husband's final verdict) but it always irritated me that after the march-like first movement, you get another march (the scherzo), and if you're unlucky, your conductor of choice has them played in the exact same tempo. Also, after the whimsical scherzo in 3rd position, the finale, with its slow introduction comes off much more powerful. Otherwise you get a slow movement followed by a slow finale-introduction, doesn't work.
Tue, May 7 2013, 11:02PM
#11
RE: Listening Fatigue
God no, andante first. I always loved the 6th, even with all the recordings I had having the movements in the wrong order (Alma Mahler overriding her husband's final verdict) but it always irritated me that after the march-like first movement, you get another march (the scherzo), and if you're unlucky, your conductor of choice has them played in the exact same tempo. Also, after the whimsical scherzo in 3rd position, the finale, with its slow introduction comes off much more powerful. Otherwise you get a slow movement followed by a slow finale-introduction, doesn't work.
..is the correct answer.
Wed, May 8 2013, 12:41AM
#12
RE: Listening Fatigue
And Bruckner's 2nd should be exactly the same. Scherzo followed by Andante. You sit down to a lot of noise, then you get a nice quiet movement and just as you are beginning to nod off a scherzo, I don't think so.
Well, the original version, played by Tintner and others has it this way - gotta say I like it.
I'd love to have the 7th played with the middle movements reversed too. Now you've got 2 big mainly introvert movements followed by two short fast ones. Never becomes a unity, no matter how good the performance. If you play the scherzo before the adagio, you get a far better distribution of tempi and dimensions. Colin Davis got ridiculed when he did this in his Orfeo recording, too bad.
Wed, May 8 2013, 2:09AM
#13
RE: Listening Fatigue
God no, andante first. I always loved the 6th, even with all the recordings I had having the movements in the wrong order (Alma Mahler overriding her husband's final verdict) but it always irritated me that after the march-like first movement, you get another march (the scherzo), and if you're unlucky, your conductor of choice has them played in the exact same tempo. Also, after the whimsical scherzo in 3rd position, the finale, with its slow introduction comes off much more powerful. Otherwise you get a slow movement followed by a slow finale-introduction, doesn't work.
..is the correct answer.
I have said this before but I stick with the view that the order of the movements works both ways, if the performance sets out the argument correctly. I think looking at the two march movements in terms of tempo and style doesn't actually see to the heart of the music. The first movement may start out with a strident march but ends in music that is full of joyous release and faintly naive. The scherzo is suddenly a more ghoulish and pessamistic, shifting the sense of trimuphalism to one to tragedy that is basically the whole of the final movement.
I have also never had a problme with the adante before the last movement introduction, as the moods are just so different (and even more so when the andante is payed as an andante). The andante is a last chance of solace before the decent into the violent tragedy of the last movement.
Flip the moevments round and the narartive is subtly different. The andante placed second is less a last chance as an affirmation that things have their time and that there is another sie to the world, counterbalancing the threat (seemingly defeated by the end of the first movement). Then the scherzo comes in third and bsically says 'not so fast, more trouble to come'. Placed third I think one has to work hard with the dance elements in the music, giving the heavy tred of fond memories. This makes the descent into the last movement one prefigured by the scherzo before - the contrast now is more subtle but no less troubling. Whatever the order we choose it really is a magnificent work, but not, if played properly, for everyday listening.
Just checking the shelves the opinion is divided among musicians:
Scherzo 2nd - Chailly, Gergiev, Gielen, Sinopoli, Tennstedt
Schezo 3rd - Abbado, Fischer, Jansons, Salonen, Solti
Wed, May 8 2013, 3:23AM
#14
RE: Listening Fatigue
That is an actual thread on fatigue, after all. I feel exhausted...Some Rossini might be on call.
Parla
Wed, May 8 2013, 8:43AM
#15
RE: Listening Fatigue
Yes, a little Rossini might be a good cure for listening fatigue, but for me a little Rossini goes a long way, soon listening fatigue returns! But with so many posts suddenly, there's been no chance of listening fatigue, more a question of listening deficit - not enough time to seriously listen to music!
Naupilus, your splendid analysis of Mahler 6th was much more splendid than my tongue-in-cheek post deserved! I must say I agree very much with most of your eloquent arguments, whilst still always feeling a degree of dissatisfaction whichever order is chosen
In another magazine Robin Matthews-Walker (a determined proponent of the Scherzo before the Andante) all but ruled out a CD recording because it placed the movements in the 'wrong' order. That's surely going too far, but what is annoying is that on some 2-CD versions the first CD contains the first two movements, the second the other two, so preventing an easy programming of the listener's choice of order.
Chris
If only I could hear the Eroica again for the first time..........
That, I suppose, would be true for someone with a really exceptional understanding of music. The first listen, in which everything is understood and apprehended with the utmost clarity, would be the greatest. But for me, the point of maximum pleasure usually occurs somewhat further down the line....... If it is a complex piece, or one I find difficult for whatever reason, it can take dozens and dozens of listens before the pleasure reaches its zenith. This isn't, by the way, the point of maximum understanding. That usually occurs with the onset of fatigue. For me, the greatest listening pleasure seems to require a unique balance of understanding and incomprehension - a sense of mystery in the piece, areas of darkness which I still don't feel able to fathom. Once they begin to clear, I know I am drawing to the end of my enjoyment........
Which reminds me of an old joke in one of Thomas Love Peacock's novels. A landowner is showing some guests around his new garden. He explains, as they walk around, that the thing he most admires about the garden is its quality of surprise. To which one of the guests replies: and what would you call that quality the second time you walked around the garden?
You can never listen to the same piece of music twice, just as you can never (if you know Proust) walk down the same road twice. For houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.