Saturday, July 22, 2006
Music
I worked ushering while the CSO played Mahler 4 last night. I absoloutely love that symphony because of the motif with the woodwinds in the beginning. Mahler's music is very dramatic (I like a lot of dramatic music like Beethoven, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, etc.), and it made me think about how I listen to music.
As I listen to a symphony, I like to identify what instruments or what, structural things like whether it is chromatic, or minor, or in arpeggios, and think about how the themes weave together and how the symphony fits together as a whole. But on the other hand, although there are moments of a more "intellectual" kind of anaysis of the music, I also just enjoy it emotionally. I vacillate between the two modes of thought--mind buzzing with anaytical types of thoughts, and mind almost inactive, just soaking it in and enjoying it.
I do the same sort of thing while experiencing other types of art, I guess. In fact, the process of reading fiction or poetry is very similar, now that I think of it. I just have enough of a background with classical music to think like that as I experience it, whereas I don't know as much about, say, visual art or dance.
As I listen to a symphony, I like to identify what instruments or what, structural things like whether it is chromatic, or minor, or in arpeggios, and think about how the themes weave together and how the symphony fits together as a whole. But on the other hand, although there are moments of a more "intellectual" kind of anaysis of the music, I also just enjoy it emotionally. I vacillate between the two modes of thought--mind buzzing with anaytical types of thoughts, and mind almost inactive, just soaking it in and enjoying it.
I do the same sort of thing while experiencing other types of art, I guess. In fact, the process of reading fiction or poetry is very similar, now that I think of it. I just have enough of a background with classical music to think like that as I experience it, whereas I don't know as much about, say, visual art or dance.
