More on Listening to Music

I had discussed Theodor Adorno's "types of musical conduct" in regard to listening to music. It is very useful, but a bit more of a sociological analysis than some might want. I recently came across another, simpler, approach which sheds light on the way in which people listen to music in a book entitled "Thinking about Music" by Lewis Rowell. It is a very good summary. He discusses three ways of listening to music:

1) The first approach identified by Leonard Meyer as "associative listening." According to Meyer:

"Often music arouses affect through the mediation of conscious connotation or unconscious image processes. A sight, a sound or a fragrance evokes half-forgotten thoughts of persons, places, and experiences; stirs up dreams 'mixing memory with desire;' or awakens conscious connotations of referential things. These imaginings, whether conscious or unconscious, are the stimuli to which the affective response is really made. In short, music may give rise to images and trains of thought which, because of their relation to the inner life of the particular individual, may eventually culminate in affect."

This is basically Adorno's "emotional listener." Music is seen exclusively as a stimulus to reverie and affect. It is the least sophisticated approach to listening to music. I used to listen to music this way when I was a teenager.

The next two approaches were named by Edward Cone:

2) "Synoptic listening" is a name for what Adorno calls the "expert listener." "Synoptic" means "side by side," so it refers to the ability to hear individual moments and put them together "side by side" in the mind into a whole. It is another name for "structural hearing." This is something that requires a fair amount of training and experience.

3) "Immediate Apprehension" is [t]he mode by which we directly perceive the sensuous medium, its primitive elements, and their closest relationships." It is what most people are capable of - hearing a theme or melody. The relationship between immediate apprehension and synoptic listening is analogous to that between "experience and contemplation" according to Edward Cone.

So, to summarize, "immediate apprehension" combined with "synoptic listening" is the ideal, while "associative listening" alone is the least sophisticated.