We Must Learn to Love

In "The Gay Science" 334 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote :

One must learn to love. This is what happens to us in music: First

one has to learn to hear a figure and tune at all, to be able to hear

it, to distinguish it, isolate and delimit it as a life of its own.

Then it demands of us hard work and our good will that we tolerate

it in spite of its strangeness, patience with its appearance and

expression, and kind-heartedness towards its oddity. Finally there

comes a moment when we are use to it, when we wait for it, when we

intuit that we should miss it if it were missing; and now it continues

to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble

and enraptured lovers who desire nothing from the world than it and

only it. 

But that happens to us not only in music. That is how have learned

to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded

for good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness towards

what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a

new and indescribable beauty. That is its thanks for our hospitality.

Even those who love themselves will have learned it this way: there

exists no other path. Love, too, must be learned. 

My own translation

Man muss lieben lernen. - So geht es uns in der Musik: erst muss

man eine Figur und Weise überhaupt hören lernen, heraushören,

unterscheiden, als ein Leben für sich isolieren und abgrenzen; dann

braucht es Mühe und guten Willen, sie zu ertragen, trotz ihrer

Fremdheit, Geduld gegen ihren Blick und Ausdruck, Mildherzigkeit

gegen das Wunderliche an ihr zu üben -: endlich kommt ein Augenblick,

wo wir ihrer gewohnt sind, wo wir sie erwarten, wo wir ahnen, dass

sie uns fehlen würde, wenn sie fehlte; und nun wirkt sie ihren Zwang

und Zauber fort und fort und endet nicht eher, als bis wir ihre

demütigen und entzückten Liebhaber geworden sind, die nichts

Besseres von der Welt mehr wollen als sie und wieder sie. 

- So geht es uns aber nicht nur mit der Musik: gerade so haben

wir alle Dinge, die wir jetzt lieben, lieben gelernt. Wir werden

schliesslich immer für unsern guten Willen, unsere Geduld, Billigkeit,

Sanftmütigkeit gegen das Fremde belohnt, indem das Fremde langsam

seinen Schleier abwirft und sich als neue unsaegliche Schönheit

darstellt -: es ist sein Dank für unsre Gastfreundschaft. Auch wer

sich selber liebt, wird es auf diesem Wege gelernt haben: es gibt

keinen anderen Weg. Auch die Liebe muss man lernen.

With just a few notable exceptions, I think virtually all of the music I really love is music I have learned to love. In the case of Wagner's Ring, it took me a good decade before I even began to understand it. Another decade on and I still felt as though I was only beginning to understand it at a deeper level. When I first heard Bruckner, I felt little more than cold indifference, and I continued to feel that way for many years. It was only when I attended a public rehearsal of the Bruckner Fourth with Sergiu Celibidache in Munich that the scales fell from my eyes. 

On the other hand, much music that made me gush as a young pup, where comprehension came all too easily, leaves me rather indifferent today. A good example of such music include many compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Chaykovsky* (Пётр Ильич Чайковский) - composer of the Pathétique Symphony, 1812 Overture etc. Even Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius and Dimitri Shostakovich surprisingly leave me mildly indifferent. 

This is why music that eludes me at first listening only intrigues me. With time and patience my love for music by the likes of Schoenberg, and Boulez has greatly outgrown that for Chaykovsky Liszt, or Sibelius. 

It has alway struck me as a great pity that nobody really tells you is how to learn to listen to music. In fact, there is much skill in listening to music. It would take an immensely well educated and cultivated ear to be able to instantly comprehend absolutely any unfamiliar music thrown their way - from Monteverdi, to Obrecht, to Nono, to contemporary, to jazz, to world music etc etc.

The first thing is that you must admit to yourself that your ability to listen will always be finite. If you are familiar with one idiom/style/language/epoch then there will be music in the vicinity that will be a good stepping stone to new discoveries and learning experiences. You should also accept that some music is easier to understand and that some music will be harder for you.

If you have just discovered Beethoven's Für Elise then neither the Hammerklavier nor die Grosse Fuge are very good next steps - there is an easier path to walk. The Moonlight Sonata or Pathétique would be much more suitable. Likewise, if you enjoyed Finlandia by Sibelius then don't jump into the Fourth Symphony. The Karelia Suite might be a better choice. If you enjoyed Mahler's Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen then the earlier symphonies (First or Second) are the place to start. Late Mahler (9th Symphony, and das Lied von der Erde) is much harder listening, and is actually a good stepping stone towards Alban Berg. There too, if you liked the Berg Violin Concerto don't rush into the Webern Piano Sonata. Never go leaping into the deep end as you will  most likely find the experience alienating and off putting.

Next thing is never fall into the trap of thinking that Für Elise is "better" than die Grosse Fuge just because you find it easier for your beginner's ears to grasp. Generally, people think that music that is easier to comprehend is "better" than music that is harder to grasp. So most people in this world think that the Strauss Blue Danube waltz is "better" than the Beethoven Grosse Fuge because it is easier to grasp. In many cases, this uneducated way of thinking becomes so ingrained into people that they spend their whole lives thinking that their beloved sweetmeats are "better" than all sorts of more difficult, complex and challenging works, which are all dismissed as being "bad music". These types often vent their frustration on the composer at being unable to comprehend a more challenging work by accusing the composer having written "bad music" ("Johann Strauss is so much better than Brahms"). You will hear people of various levels of ability to comprehend music dismissing composers from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven to Reger and Boulez as being "bad composers" in this manner. In reality, it is more than not a case of bad listeners than of bad composers. The brick is better thrown at the accuser's own head.

I have a few tips for trying to make sense of a new and unfamiliar work:

1. Listen Carefully to the Opening of the Work

Pay very careful attention to the start of a work. If you can't make sense of the opening, the chances that a later passage will grab your fancy are highly remote. So don't sit there suffering through a work that is totally going over your head.

2. Listen Repeatedly to the Opening

Until you can make sense of it. In difficult cases, you may have to listen to the opening a seemingly ridiculous number of times before it starts to make sense. At that public rehearsal I attended, Celibidache got his orchestra to replay the opening of the Bruckner Fourth several times.   After hearing the introduction and start of the main section a few times the doors opened for me. Not only that, but the rest of the first movement suddenly all made complete sense. So did the rest of the work, and, indeed, the rest of the composer's output. Suddenly Bruckner's musical language spoke to me.

3. Leave it Until Later

If you just can't make sense of it, don't torture yourself by forcing yourself to listen to something you are not enjoying, when comprehension eludes you. You will only make yourself hate it. Sometimes, just leaving it until the next day is all you need. At other times, you may have to admit defeat and put a work into the too hard basket. Usually, it just means that the work is too difficult for your level of music comprehension skills. Try to slowly increase the level of difficulty and complexity rather making yourself hate the music by forcibly drowning yourself in the deep end. 

This sort of "block" happens to professional musicians too. Some musicians end up finding that dissection of a work in an analysis class ends up atomising the work into an unpleasant jumble of meaningless abstract notes and chords. The more you analyse, the less the heart understands the music as music. Other musicians are forced to mechanically rote learn a work without their heart being in a single note. I remember one famous Russian pianist saying that only after a great many years of playing the Liszt Piano Sonata, the meaning of the work suddenly dawned on him.

Sometimes you may have to leave certain works or even whole composers in the "too hard" basket for years until your listening skills are developed enough to enjoy them. Other times, things just won't "click" for seemingly no reason at all. I once developed a kind of phobia towards the Beethoven Missa Solemnis. Despite an extensive familiarity with late Beethoven, for some incomprehensible reason, I found this work incomprehensible compared to many a work from Stockhausen or Webern that I could sing in the shower. The more I tried to force myself to understand the Beethoven, the worse it got. After about fifteen years in the "too hard basket", I happened to listened to Klemperer's recording of the Missa Solemnis. Suddenly the flood gates flung open. In an instant, I went from having it go over my head without rhyme or reason, to struggling to hold back tears. 

4. Have Rests

Where you reward yourself by listening to easier music that you are familiar with already and enjoy. Most of us find it tiresome listening to a constant stream of demanding and unfamiliar music because of the extra concentration this demands.

5. Try Different Interpretations

A good interpreter of a score is a guide and advocate to the work. A bad one is a poor advocate of the work. The trouble is that some rarely played music may be available on recordings by advocates who do more harm than the composer's worst enemy! At times, a good advocate may help open the portals that turn an incomprehensible work into a thing of great beauty.

6. If you Enjoy Something do it Often

If you suddenly discover an insane passion for, say, Max Reger, Elliot Carter, Jacob Obrecht or Engelbert Humperdinck, revel in it. Immerse yourself in the first composition that opened the doors for you. Then let your love for the rest of the composer's music bloom and grow. The more music by the same composer you go on listen to, the more you will feel intimate with their sound world. With time you will only feel the musical language utters secrets that only the most deeply initiated seem to understand. Try not to become too insular eg become so blindly obsessed with Shostakovitch, Ockeghem, Humperdinck, or whoever, that you drive everyone mad evangelising them about how your pet composer is the Messiah.

Despite all warnings, sometimes you may find that a complete novice to classical music beginning to explore Beethoven might take an instant liking to die Grosse Fuge instead of the much simpler Moonlight Sonata. If you then decided that, based on this experience, every pop music fan should be introduced to Beethoven by being exposed first to die Grosse Fuge, you will find this experiment is going to severely backfire on you. 

Sometimes you may find your ability to appreciate increasingly complex and demanding music doesn't progress in a perfectly linear fashion, but rather in a stepwise fashion. If you try force such leaps of progress to happen by jumping into the deep end all the time, you are going to have little joy. However, if a major breakthrough like this happens to you, take full advantage of it. That means that when you, the life-long Chaykovsky fan, find yourself totally smitten by Boulez's Pli Selon Pli, then you should enjoy your new found love often. Your listening ears will never be the same again.  

The more cultivated your musical palette becomes, the more you will get out of listening to music. You will find yourself hearing things in music that previously escaped your notice. Always try to at least push the boundaries of your comfort zone at least just a little bit, rather than playing it safe all the time. This learning process is never ending. 

Sadly, most people's comfort zone remains stuck around the mid 1700s to late 1800s. The further you go beyond this, either backwards or forwards in time, you start to lose an increasing number of people. Likewise, as you move away in location away from Western Europe to world music you will find yourself out of your comfort zone too. However, if you slowly move out of your comfort zone in time and space, so as to only very gradually increase your exposure to what may first seem strange and alien to you, you will be more likely to find your exploration into foreign territory a pleasurable one.

So, with music, as with life itself - we must learn to love. 

Notes:

Chaykovsky: the proper English language Latinisation of the Russian composer's name. The Latinised spelling of "Tchaikovsky" out of  Чайковский is likely a French Latinisation, although strictly speaking the French write Tchaïkovsky. French was the official language of the Russian aristocracy. In French "ch" is soft, as in "chanson", so to get the hard "ch" sound in French, you have to add a "T". The Germans also write Tschaikowski with the added "T" to get the hard "ch" sound.  However, there is no letter "T" at the start of his name in Cyrillic, and so there is no reason for placing one there in English. You will find that latter-day descendants of Pyotr Ilyich's relatives will have the Latinised version of their names printed on their Russian passports as "Chaykovsky". As for "Peter" instead of "Pyotr" - why not also write John Sebastian Brook instead of Johann Sebastian Bach? Or would perhaps "Pierre Tchaïkovsky" be better? It is pronounced Chair-KyOV-ski.