A program note... how difficult
Five years ago, reflecting on this very thing, I wrote this small distinction between 'listening guide' and 'listening key'
Listening guide and listening key
How can one ‘talk about music’? What is correct, and what is incorrect, to say regarding a musical work? Without arriving at the never-closed question of whether music means something or not (a question too broad), it is interesting to observe what happens when, for a work, it is necessary to provide some stimulus for a more conscious and participatory listening: an intention that is presumed to be that of every listening guide, CD booklet, or program note one might find.
Often the composer is discussed: biographical events, happy or tormented, during the years of the work's gestation; or even news reports concerning the first performance, with practical decisions, changes dictated by necessity, the reception by audience and critics, and everything that surrounded the work when it was born: shortly before and shortly after. Other times, one enters the body of the music at a ‘surgical’ level. This is the case for those analyses which consist of nothing more than entries of the theme, modulating bridges, rhythmic cells, ascents to the dominant, tonal areas; analyses from which even the most motivated music enthusiast, but not an expert, would hardly derive any benefit in their living relationship with that work.
That these two ways of approaching a musical work are correct is beyond doubt. Perplexities arise regarding their utility, certainly not in the context of historical research or stylistic analysis, but when one wishes to produce a listening guide.
On the opposite side, there is another observation to be made. An observation that is mandatory first and foremost for me, who does not consider it ‘heresy’ to dare words that are certainly debatable, but aimed at breaking through the heart of a work of art. Namely, that not all musical works lend themselves to being approached in such a way. Taking, for example, Beethoven's symphonies alone, the Seventh and the Eighth are not at all interested, or are very little interested, in the amount of ‘extramusical’ ink spilled for the Eroica and the Ninth.
To acknowledge these differences between various works even of the same genre, and to accept them, for those who still wish to attempt similar reflections, involves renouncing considering them scientifically serious.
But the search for a living relationship with a work from the past is something that is part of being human, and which does not allow itself to be exhausted in rigorous and scientific terms. Reflecting on an eventual meaning of a musical work, whether clear or vague, is always ‘compromising’ on a personal level: it forces the author of the reflection to bring forth, even if in a veiled way, something intimate. This is because, in the face of a work of art, the same thing happens as in a non-superficial relationship between two individuals: by seeking the other, one also discovers, in part, oneself.
In the face of such reflections, it is therefore necessary to move from the notion of ‘listening guide’ to that of ‘listening key’. He who relies on a guide lets himself be guided: in this case, it is necessary that the guide be sober and correct. He who accepts a listening key must know that he is dealing with something more problematic. It is the result of a personal relationship with the work, certainly truthful for the author of such a reflection, but whoever receives it has no guarantee that even in their own hands, in relation to their own experience, that key will equally ‘open’ the heart of the work. However, it is a stimulus for comparison and for seeking, in turn, a personal way to enter into a vital relationship with the work in question.
Mah... I do not disavow these things I had written. Today, however, I think that in the bustle of a concert hall filling up with people, of friends greeting each other, of people holding seats for others who will arrive... I think that in such a climate it is better to have in hand a sober, correct - brief - listening guide.
