It does grab me, because I've had the same thoughts, and my post was almost a reproach to my own tendency towards essentialism. — jamalrob

No worries. Nothing wrong with beating down essentialism. :D

This might be an unwelcome spanner in the works, but I feel like asking, why is this about listening? The complete appreciation or absorption in a piece of music is just as often represented by dancing. Thinking of it like that puts a different light on the question, I think. Unless we want to restrict the discussion to art music.

Hrmm, I think it just started there with me because of the original song that inspired the line of thinking, and then also because listening is related to quietism.

But, no, I don't think we have to restrict ourselves purely to music. And I like the idea of including dance, and just being absorbed in some work of art -- though I'll admit that I'm much more versed in musical appreciation than dance appreciation.

Then it might seem like the whole idea of the "entire piece" is a historical artifact of the development of music alongside visual art since the Renaissance: the work of art as a neatly delimited thing of special value. Maybe a great piece of music can be a living, changing thing, hardly just a thing at all.

I wonder, though I am sympathetic to this line of thinking too in my intuitions, if we might call lateer iterations of the same artwork different from the original? Or is it better to call them the same, but organic?

Maybe just a terminological preference.

Your example of Coltrane's My Favorite Things is a good example of a living work of art though. And it is very much his own.

EDIT: RIP McCoy Tyner

:(

May he rest in peace.

I did get drawn into your thread, but on reflection, it seems rather a contrivance to me now. Why should the word 'listening' actually have meaning at all if we interrupt a piece of music to do something seeming more important at the time? — ernestm

I'm not sure I'm following here. I mean I might have to go do something else but everything I was doing before having to do something else was still what I was doing, regardless. The verb still has meaning.

So if I'm hammering nails from nine to noon "Hammering" still has the same meaning even though I went to lunch after that.

Or by "meaning" do you mean something like "significance"?



Cool.

What if, as jamalrob said before, our mind happens to drift during a large performance for a moment but then we're right back, attentive. Still the same as a pause?

And if so, when do we hear it?

You know YouTube has the audacity to intersperse ads into long orchestral recordings? Heathens, I tell you. — Moliere

Interesting! That perhaps can be explained with greed. Money talks, you know. Even musicians must eat.

I'm not sure I'm following here. I mean I might have to go do something else but everything I was doing before having to do something else was still what I was doing, regardless. The verb still has meaning. — Moliere

So yoiu're saying you were listening, then stopped, then started listening again? Well that makes sense to me, sure. It was your thing about 'was I listening to the whole piece of music or not' that didnt make sense to me. Maybe thats too much of a false dichotomy, lol. Anyway its an interesting thought even so )

Let's go along with this. The identity of a musical artwork is a set or class of sound-events identified through notation, recording, or both. — Moliere

I'm stretched on the carpet and purring...

So we could say, in the above that we heard the entire piece, at least. — Moliere

Hang on, though... not to be ungrateful but, is "the above" the OP? So you are agreeing after all with the suggestion that an instance of an artwork can be served up in two halves and still be an instance of the same artwork? :grimace:

I like how you [@TheMadFool] point out that when we push pause we're introducing something to our experience which the composer also uses in the artwork. That would be why the visual division served as analogue -- because the artist uses space in the case of paintings. — Moliere

:100: :party:

Still, I think I'm being won over by the identity theory posited by bongo fury, for now at least. — Moliere

Still?? Despite the preceding? But I'm totally on board with you and the @TheMadFool for that preceding paragraph. So, what's coming?...

Whereas pausing it does introduce a significant difference to the work of art, — Moliere

I'm saying that your pausing it does definitely create a (longer) sound event which fails to count as an instance of the artwork, just (roughly) as your butchering of the Picasso fails to count as a reproduction of the painting. It potentially though not inevitably impairs the aesthetic merits of your listening experience, which is of a sound event obviously related to but not instantiating the artwork.

the identity of the work of art is unchanged by my pausing it and starting it back up again. — Moliere

Well, in the sense that the artwork is still either the set of continuous plays of the recording or the set of complete realisations of the score, whether or not you facilitated one of those plays or realisations on this occasion, yes. But in the sense that you got both halves and therefore all of one of the continuous plays or realisations that multiply instantiate the artwork, no.

Hope that clarifies my position, and doesn't misrepresent @TheMadFool's.

:cool:

Hang on, though... not to be ungrateful but, is "the above" the OP? So you are agreeing after all with the suggestion that an instance of an artwork can be served up in two halves and still be an instance of the same artwork? :grimace: — bongo fury

The above was the OP, but like I said I'm still meandering and it's entirely possible that I'm conflating things or just saying something stupid without realizing all the implications. Thanks for the patience you've had.

I think I'd like to accept the distinction between hearing and listening, and try to be more rigorous from now on with it. Hearing refers to the physical sound-events, and so the identity, so I should say that I did not hear the same artwork -- introducing a pause causes me to hear something very similar, but not the same, because it introduces a sound event to the set of sound-events. (should probably introduce some sense of ordered sets, too, considering the joke that actually made a good point in the video you linked).

Whereas, say I am reading a book but the recording goes on un-interrupted, so I do hear the same work of art -- it retains its identity -- but perhaps I did not listen.

However, maybe we could say that we still listened to the artwork in spite of hearing something different -- listening, at this point, remaining vague but is in some way related to our ability to judge a work aesthetically. Or, maybe, more just related to an audience's experience of sound events. Not sure, as that is exactly the vague somewhere I'm still trying to puzzle through! :D

Still?? Despite the preceding? But I'm totally on board with you and the TheMadFool for that preceding paragraph. So, what's coming?... — bongo fury

Sorry, chalk it up to the meandering style. I think the above is clearer. Hopefully?

Well, in the sense that the artwork is still either the set of continuous plays of the recording or the set of complete realisations of the score, whether or not you facilitated one of those plays or realisations on this occasion, yes. But in the sense that you got both halves and therefore all of one of the continuous plays or realisations that multiply instantiate the artwork, no. — bongo fury

Cool. I think that does clarify your position. Sorry for being unclear on my part! I'm very much a novice here, so I'm bound to conflate things or miss implications without even realizing it.

In a sense, yes you listened to the whole piece. However, you did not listen to it in the way the composer designed it to be heard as. You listened to it in pieces to get to the whole instead of listening to it in one piece. Music is made in a way to absorb the whole rhythm, style,etc as a whole to see the full beauty of it.

In a sense, yes you listened to the whole piece. However, you did not listen to it in the way the composer designed it to be heard as. You listened to it in pieces to get to the whole instead of listening to it in one piece. Music is made in a way to absorb the whole rhythm, style,etc as a whole to see the full beauty of it. — Julia

I agree.

I'm wanting to finish this Goodman stuff before posting next, but I think I'd say that though one could be in a position to form a rudimantry judgment on a first listen, even with maybe a single pause in the middle, that listening depends upon hearing the whole piece in one sitting -- actually hearing what the score sets out as the identity of the piece.

the above is clearer. Hopefully? — Moliere

:up: :cool:

I was quite happily sampling Ground Zero in ten or 15-minute "bleeding chunks" (which I believe is the musicological term). Probably that was on the assumption I could then decide whether it was worth giving it a full 50 minute listen. Now though I'm far enough through to see why it was a particularly apt example (something about the 'dramatic arc'?), and also slightly ashamed that I shall now never have the experience of a first-listen-that-is-also-a-full-listen, if that makes sense?

Especially if that was,

the way the composer designed it to be heard — Julia

Ashamed is too strong, but...