The subtle art of listening guidance

I have never listened to Mahler's seventh. After this introductory overview that you have kindly provided, you have at least piqued my interest. As soon as I have a moment of time, I want to listen to it and I will also write down my impressions.

LucaCavaliere wrote:

There really are no words to say how beautiful it is for me, this progressive listening to his works in chronological order. I listen to every symphony at least 4 or 5 times before moving on to the next one.

Now I have listened to the Seventh only once but .... Excuse me: can I say that overall I find it heavy!?.. Besides, at the moment, not pleasant to listen to at all.

I don't know, obviously everyone has their own tastes. For me, it is one of the most beautiful symphonies ever... as well as one of the most "Mahlerian" (that is, one of those that most characterizes his style) in my opinion.

The instrumentation is fantastic and surprising.

Try listening to just the second movement several times:

https://youtu.be/QdxvC7NNSLQ?t=1227

If you can, don't watch the video, listen to everything in the dark (it is nocturnal music).

Rather than a listening guide (which is always very useful, for goodness' sake), perhaps you should discover what your spiritual affinities are (if there are any) with the world that this music defines. Otherwise, any music becomes difficult and heavy.

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Bianca wrote:

perhaps you should discover what your spiritual affinities are (if any) with the world that this music defines. Otherwise, any music becomes difficult and heavy.

I think so too!

with Mahler, the affinities are there. Not for long, to tell you the truth.

With the Second Symphony, it took me a while to assimilate it. Perhaps precisely thanks to the Second, with the others it was gradually faster.

A bit presumptuously, I thought I was totally at ease with Mahler's language.

Now I find myself with this Seventh which is hard for me (to be honest, only in the extreme movements).

I will surely get to listening to the second movement on its own as well.

For now, just full listening and re-listening of the symphony.

Mahler judged it "...too complicated for an audience that does not yet know anything of mine".

Maybe it's because I really like complicated music ...!!!

But you, Luca, by now you know what happened previously in the other symphonies ... and therefore, I am sure that in the end you might agree with Bianca that "it is one of the most beautiful symphonies ever... as well as one of the most 'Mahlerian'".

We'll see, Daniele! ...who knows

for now your favorites are the Second and Third. Perhaps just a tiny bit more the Second

@ Simone

I'm glad I piqued your curiosity about the Seventh, who knows how much the curiosity grew after what Bianca wrote

The only advice that comes to mind is so banal that it makes me sure you've already thought of it: have you tried listening to different versions? I don't know about the Seventh, but with other works by Mahler, I've happened to hear interpretations so different they made me doubt it was even the same piece! And even if the recording you are listening to remains the reference one, the others might perhaps help you gain a bit of "perspective"...

Alternatively, you could listen to the Seventh Symphony by ... Bruckner! (or maybe Sibelius)

Yes, of course. In fact, I alternate between Bernstein and Abbado.

Bruckner and Sibelius... in the future

I have listened to this

But returning to the issue of the heavy and the unpleasant, it comes to mind that sometimes, for various reasons, some composer has deliberately sought the ugly, sometimes they did not care about the beautiful, sometimes they carefully avoided the pleasant. I had never thought of Mahler's Seventh Symphony from this perspective, however ...

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Avoiding the pleasant... is true.

Even Beethoven, on many occasions, does not seem to have had 'the pleasant' in mind as a result.

However, I cannot conceive of an artist (not just a musician) who tries to avoid 'the beautiful': perhaps the result will be unpleasant to many, but it is—most likely—a beauty that must be.... understood? Learned to appreciate?

I believe this is the case with certain passages of Mahler's Seventh

LucaCavaliere wrote:

Avoiding the pleasant... is true.

Even Beethoven, on many occasions, does not seem to have had 'the pleasant' in mind as a result.

However, I cannot conceive of an artist (not just a musician) who tries to avoid 'the beautiful': perhaps the result will be unpleasant to many, but it is—most likely—a beauty that must be.... understood? Learned to appreciate?

I believe this is the case with certain passages of Mahler's Seventh.

Bravo Luca, nothing could be more sensible! How important words are!

Is searching for "the ugly" in art not a contradiction? The unpleasant, the harsh, the difficult, the strident.... they are something else, and can they not also be means, paths to reach the beautiful?

But what is "the beautiful" in art? Perhaps it is a question we ask ourselves far too seldom.

Beethoven is certainly the first example that comes to mind – and not only in op. 106 or op. 133, but also in less obvious places. I thought I could distinguish between the ugly/unpleasant/strident that serves a "representative" purpose, where dissonance programmatically corresponds to an image one wishes to depict (examples would be countless, from Orpheus to Lady Macbeth, passing through Don Giovanni, but also moving outside the theater, in the chromaticism of a Passion or in a graceless Fra Martino intoned by the double basses) and the ugly/unpleasant/strident as a constitutive element of a very precise "worldview" (and thus the early Beethoven, but also Mahler, and so on). However, it soon seemed to me to be a somewhat coarse and often uncertain distinction.

Regarding the possibility of the ugly in art, frankly I don't know – moreover, I fear that with these terms we do not mean the same things. I hope, however, we will agree on the fact that beauty is not the end goal of art – it is, if anything, a means (the artist may or may not use it). The example of Stravinsky, even if apocryphal, would nonetheless remain evident and significant (http://www.pianoconcerto.it/forum/index.php?/topic/1726-lorchestrazione-di-mozart-parliamone/?p=14005). Besides, I was listening to Scales, and now I wonder: how many of his numerous expressive indications refer to a "beautiful" sound? (not even counting that "Unexpected, little by little very ugly" at the thirteenth minute).

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I think that "beautiful" and "ugly" are absolutely relative values in life, and in art they are even more so.

Musically speaking, what is beautiful and what is ugly for me? Beautiful is everything that, when listening to it, transmits pleasure to me. Ugly is everything that gives me the opposite feeling.

The music that Red proposed, for example, is beautiful to me even in that fateful thirteenth minute.

Bianca wrote:

but what is "beauty" in art? Perhaps it is a question that we ask ourselves far too seldom.

Ten years ago, I had much more desire to ask this big question.

Now, much less. The further I go (assuming I am going 'forward') the more I feel inadequate to the question.

However, my desire to seek beauty in art has not diminished; even without truly understanding what it is and what it consists of.

Regarding the use of the "unpleasant" for expressive purposes, it seems to me—Bianca, Red—that we are in agreement.

Ultimately, it is what Dante meant in the exclamation «S'io avessi lerime aspre e chiocce» with which he begins Canto XXXII of Inferno.

(If I had harsh and so ungraceful rhymes... I would be sharper and clearer in expressing the—horrible—image I have in mind)

Here: without claiming to provide THE answer, "beauty" in art is, in part, the "clarity" with which one expresses what must be expressed; whether it be tragic or comic, epic or everyday.

danielescarpetti wrote:

The music that Red proposed, for example, is beautiful to me even in that fateful thirteenth minute.

lucky you Daniele.

i, from the first to the twentieth minute, cannot hear anything musical.

Unless one also considers the occupation of time and space with organized sonic objects as musical (a consideration that, frankly, I cannot make)

Here: regarding a piece like Scales, if someone were to practice towards me the subtle art of listening guidance...

Perhaps he himself (the exegete) could be considered an artist in his own way.

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air."

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair"

Who knows what the purpose of art is? At most, we could ask ourselves what the purpose of each artist is.

But words, if they exist, have a meaning and tend, sooner or later, to find their own place in everyone's world.

LucaCavaliere wrote:

you're lucky, Daniele.

i, from the first to the twentieth minute, cannot hear anything musical.

Unless one also considers the occupation of time and space with organized sonic objects as musical (a consideration that, frankly, I cannot make)

In effect, that is the point, Luca: you cannot hear anything musical in that piece, and this means that, inevitably, for you it is not music.

Berio used to say that "music is everything we listen to with the intention of listening to music, and that everything can become music... provided that this totality can be musically conceptualized, analyzed, and translated on different levels. Such a conception and such a translation are only possible with the notion of music as Text: a multidimensional text in continuous evolution."

In plain words, everything is relative, as always, to what we want to be or not be - music (but that would be valid for anything) - music.

So I am not a blessed man, Luca; I am just someone who, at a certain point in my life as a musical listener, asked myself whether music from a certain era onwards was such or not. I asked myself this because, evidently, up to that moment, it was not.

Today, after so many impositions and so much listening, I realize that my ears can be delighted by the sounds of even this music.

Obviously, I am absolutely not capable of providing you with a "subtle art" of listening: I am not capable even for tonal music, let alone for atonal music!

And yet I tell you that on Radio 3, even in these weeks - always available as podcasts - Carlo Boccadoro gives his Music Lessons referring to certain historical atonal pieces from the musical repertoire...

Bianca wrote:

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air."

"Bello è il brutto, e brutto il bello"

Who knows what the purpose of art is? At most, we could ask ourselves what the purpose of each artist is.

But words, if they exist, have a meaning and tend, sooner or later, to find their own place in everyone's world.

I continue to think that true Art is a non-economic activity that, by connecting with the evolution of aesthetics, seeks to represent the reality surrounding humanity.

Now, the reality surrounding humanity is made of the beautiful and the ugly, the pleasant and the unpleasant - then everyone can decide the percentage - and Art represents the whole. However, performing the miracle that even the ugly becomes beautiful, and never vice versa.

Guernica, for example, is one of the greatest expressions of this concept.

danielescarpetti wrote:

In fact, that is the point Luca: you cannot hear anything musical in that piece and this means that, inevitably, for you it is not music.

Berio used to say that "music is everything we listen to with the intention of listening to music, and that everything can become music... provided that this totality can be musically conceptualized, analyzed, and translated on different levels. Such a conception and such a translation are only possible with the notion of music as Text: a multidimensional text in continuous evolution."

In plain words, everything is relative, as always, to what we want to be or not be - but that would be valid for anything - music.

Yes, but the trouble is that when listening to Scales, I want and intend to listen to music. Unfortunately, however, I do not hear music. Why?

Probably (to be honest, I am quite sure!) it is because the personal possibilities of aesthetic enjoyment of every work of art must necessarily follow an ascent in which one cannot skip steps on a scale.

If a piece like Scales is located - let's say - between the 20th and 21st floor, I cannot traverse that elevation gap if I am still on the 10th floor. Not even if I want to with all my good intentions.