For most of us, music is mainly the experience of music, the time of hearing it. For musicians, the music is in their heads, with them. And no doubt most of us sometimes have a "song in our hearts," but no more as a musician does than most of us can run a sub-four-minute mile or a two-twenty marathon, or memorize and perform a syllable-perfect Shakespeare play. Which is to say that if nothing else, a solo classical performance is an exhibition of a world-class athleticism...

Hahn... about rendering the feeling in the music, seeking it, finding it, studying and understanding it, performing it.

As if, in going to church of a Sunday to hear a sermon, one encountered the voice of God itself! — tim wood

Music is a presencing. Of what exactly is not-so-easy to say. — tim wood

Professor Wright introduces the course by suggesting that “listening to music” is not simply a passive activity one can use to relax, but rather, an active and rewarding process. He argues that by learning about the basic elements of Western classical music, such as rhythm, melody, and form, one learns strategies that can be used to understand many different kinds of music in a more thorough and precise way – and further, one begins to understand the magnitude of human greatness. Professor Wright draws the music examples in this lecture from recordings of techno music, American musical theater, and works by Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy and Strauss, in order to introduce the issues that the course will explore in more depth throughout the semester. — Open Yale Course: Music 112

What do you mean by 'presencing' - being in the moment ? — Amity

My own bias no doubt shared by many, is that music that has stood at least some test of time keeps more of its promises as to what it offers. — tim wood

Music is a presencing [...] the experience [...] the time of hearing it [...] , along with the conventions of the time — tim wood

People who listen to music (as opposed to merely hearing it - another topic) will have recognized that music and the interpretation of music, while seeming at first the same thing, indistinguishable, are two different things. — tim wood

I love Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs, but it's the Jessie Norman 1983 Kurt Masur version that really transports me. — Tom Storm

Why did Ana Vidovic flick off that three-note figure repeatedly in an otherwise other-wordly Scarlatti sonata? — magritte

Your highlighting the importance of presence in music sparked thoughts in a number of directions. — magritte

My wife thinks it's the best she's ever heard. So do I, but all I could think of at the time were those muted notes. Sorry me. — magritte

But presence has other notable aspects. The performers make the music and not the composer. The composer is the beneficiary or victim of the instrumentalists — magritte

A composer, arguably, wrests it from the void, coalescing music into sound of instrument and voice...

Each then, poetry and music, brought out, somehow, from a primordial reality that, finished, just is the reality of the thing itself; dressed, then, in a clothing of performance. Granted that between two competent performances one may be more resonant with one auditor, another with another. But is the performance opaque, in a sense, or more transparent? I find myself returning to the transparency that allows a view of the music itself. — tim wood

...varieties of personas: those which are transparent (such as when a singer performs more or less as that singer) and those which are opaque (such as when a singer performs more or less as a fictional character). I also distinguish between performance personas and song personas. After introducing and elucidating these distinctions, I discuss ways in which they further inform aesthetic evaluation of such performances. — Oxford Academic article: aesthetics and art criticism

... During some eras of Bowie's prolific career—perhaps during his early days, as well as his later run of albums—Bowie performed somewhat consistently under what was either a transparent performance persona or a rather stable Bowie opaque performance persona. During other times, he would adopt opaque performance personas, such as Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke. If, during his later career, Bowie were to perform a song such as the Ziggy‐era “Moonage Daydream,” we can understand this as Bowie‐qua‐Bowie adopting a temporary Ziggy song persona. The best to way understand—and, hence, fully aesthetically engage with—Bowie's many performances, then, is to see him as a performer who frequently and freely cycled through transparent performance personas, opaque performance personas, and song personas, often layering them upon one another. It is to his credit as a singer and a performer that so many of his performances, filtered through persona atop persona, were such aesthetic successes. — Oxford academic article: Transparent and opaque performance personas

Hilary calls the performance a 'wild ride'. From a very still start. — Amity

However, I tend to think that it [music] stems from the mind. — Amity

Today audiences listen to recordings with veneration and expect the performance to be true to the note, at the expense of the spontaneity and innovations of the presentation. — magritte

The wild ride also goes for the audience, especially if the performer is famous and the concert is highly anticipated. I often think that composing and performing are mostly technical with touches of creativity here and there but sometimes I am shocked into intense lasting pleasure (superior to even the best sex) by transcendent artistry. It is this that I seek as a listener. — magritte

On playing Bach
In 1999 Hahn said that she played Bach more than any other composer and had played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight.[8]

Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest. Keeping the intonation pure in double stops, bringing out the various voices where the phrasing requires it, crossing the strings so that there are not inadvertent accents, presenting the structure in such a way that it's clear to the listener without being pedantic – one can't fake things in Bach, and if one gets all of them to work, the music sings in the most wonderful way.

— Hilary Hahn, Saint Paul Sunday[48] — Wiki: Hilary Hahn

Today audiences listen to recordings with veneration and expect the performance to be true to the note, at the expense of the spontaneity and innovations of the presentation.
— magritte

That's why it is highly desirable for people to -- at least occasionally -- attend live performances. — Bitter Crank

Personally, I can't afford to regularly attend professional orchestra performances at Orchestra Hall, though when I do attend, it's worth the cost. — Bitter Crank

With over 50 concerts to choose from in the magnificent surroundings and acoustic of St Martin’s, there is no better time to rediscover the power and passion that only live performance offers. — Concerts by Candlelight at St. Martin's

Since 2016, she has piloted free concerts for parents with infants, a knitting circle, a community dance workshop, a yoga class and art students. She plans to continue these community-oriented concerts, encouraging people to combine live performances with their interests outside the concert hall and providing opportunities for parents to hear music with their infants, who might be barred from traditional concerts.
— Wiki: Hilary Hahn

However, I tend to think that it [music] stems from the mind.
— Amity
I inserted "music" into your quote. Do you suppose that composer's compositions are purely invented? I do not. Details, as allowed by the composition itself. But music qua, no. Maybe better if I call it the possibility of music as a particular piece. — tim wood

I agree that the origin of any inspiration can be seen as mysterious - some say a gift from God.
However, I tend to think that it stems from the mind.
The origin of a human creation - or product of the creative process - starts with imagination.
A coalescing of ideas, senses - a way of seeing the potential to expand existing thoughts/dreams. — Amity

I do not think we have anything worth disagreeing about, just rather two different approaches. — tim wood

Do you suppose that composer's compositions are purely invented? I do not. Details, as allowed by the composition itself. But music qua, no. Maybe better if I call it the possibility of music as a particular piece. — tim wood

... Richard Barrett goes on to say that his definition of improvisation as one way of composing, makes it clear that the two ways of creating music are in no way in opposition. Thus, composition can mean ”making music” and improvisation is a method for making music, in a spontaneous, real-time way.

Then, if ”composition” means ”music-making” and ”improvisation” means ”spontaneous music-making”, what is a useful word for the other main method of composition: ”Planning and notating how to make music in advance and have it executed at another point in time (possibly by musicians)”?

”Predetermined musical structuring or material” feels like a useful definition for me.

This material, which is usually notated in some way, is normally more or less similar from performance to performance, whereas free improvisations can, maybe even should, be very different.

I agree with Barrett’s definition, but there are some fundamental differences between what we normally associate with composition (predetermined structuring or material) and improvisation:

Improvisation is an ongoing dialogue, and is usually based on communication from the very moment it starts, with other improvisers and the audience. Composing music on paper is usually a solitary process until just before it is performed. There may be communication with the players and the composer in advance, and also when rehearsing the music, but the main form of communication is verbal or literary. In improvisation one communicates via musical sounds.
— Natural Patterns - Composition and Improvisation

No one, composer or improviser, has ever created music out of nothing, without reference to what has gone before. Both improviser and composer build up a store of musical experience before creating something new, and that ‘something new’ is both related to and in some way different from what has gone before. Beethoven drew on the tradition handed down to him, arguably neither more nor less than did jazz saxophonist John Coltrane or Indian sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar. — Open Learn: Composition and improvisation in cross-cultural perspective

but it's the Jessie Norman 1983 Kurt Masur version that really transports me. — Tom Storm

Transports you -- from whence to where? — baker

2.1 The Fundamentalist Debate
Musical works in the Western classical tradition admit of multiple instances (performances). Much of the debate over the nature of such works thus reads like a recapitulation of the debate over the “problem of universals”; the range of proposed candidates covers the spectrum of fundamental ontological theories. We might divide musical ontologists into the realists, who posit the existence of musical works, and the anti-realists, who deny their existence. Realism has been more popular than anti-realism, but there have been many conflicting realist views. — SEP says

we really should attempt to limit philosophical discussion to ontologically manageable objects. — magritte

Hw do you figure music is not manageable? It's not an object? Or it is an object, but not an ontologically manageable one. If the latter, what does that even mean? — tim wood

Unfortunately, none of these comes close enough to the world-as-it-is to sufficiently describe what most philosophers can comfortably accept. — magritte

That's why it is highly desirable for people to -- at least occasionally -- attend live performances. The live performance does not have to be up to Carnegie Hall standards, but it should be reasonably competent. I've attended amateur / semi-professional performances that were very satisfactory concerts -- and yes, sometimes noticeably imperfect. That's fine. The thing is, hear music that is performed live, before a live audience. — Bitter Crank

A good cautionary tale to this theme is the historical reception of Rachmaninoff's Third piano concerto. "Rach. 3" as it is notoriously called in some cricles can induce in some people deep existential feelings and attitudes that they are not able to cope with. — baker