The Fine Art of Listening

Gregorio Allegri: Miserere Mei – Psalm 51 was supposedly written by David after he had slept with another man’s wife. Even if you’re not an adulterer yourself, you can feel the heavy weight of regret in Allegri‘s famous setting of this text.

Herbert Howells: Like as the Hart – Dated April 1941, legend* has it that this anthem was written while the Nazis were bombing London. When I hear it, I imagine Howells crouching in fear in the corner of a dark house, listening to the explosions outside. He’s trying to calm his brain and find some peace. He dreams up music that is misty and serene, and tries to remember a prayer or a psalm to say. Psalm 42 comes to mind: a deer, thirsting for a stream of water. The beginning and ending sections feels unsettled and timeless; the middle section is full of stress and suffering.

*the legend probably isn’t true, since the work lists Cheltenham as the place it was composed – nearly 100 miles away from London. But it creates such a powerful image for this piece!

Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata 38 “Aus tiefer Noth” – “Out of the depths I cry to you O God.” This piece is based on Martin Luther’s hymn setting of Psalm 130, another popular penitential psalm (P.P.P. – is that even a thing?). Bach magnifies it into a short masterwork. The final chorus begins on the highly unstable V42 chord (nerd alert!) – inconceivable!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvJDnR-bELM

Thomas Morley: Nolo Mortem Peccatoris – A contemporary of Shakespeare, Morley is best known for his madrigals. This sweet little devotional song sets an imagined prayer of Jesus before his arrest, using both Latin and English.

Gerald Finzi: Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice – This festal anthem is a hymn to the Eucharist. Many prefer this to be sung during Eastertide, I consider it a Lenten piece because of its association with the Last Supper, plus the overall mood of the music: dark and passionate. And, it is one of two anthems I know that use the word “pelican.” (The other anthem that uses the word “pelican” is The Weasel Cantata, which claims to be the only anthem on the dietary laws of Leviticus.)

Giovanni Pergolesi: Stabat Mater – The Stabat Mater is a devotional that envisions Mary at the foot of the cross, watching her son die. The video below is only the first and last movements of a twelve movement work. Like most composers before Beethoven, Pergolesi probably didn’t compose this so he himself could become immortal, so there are some great movements that are great, and some that are … okay. We’ll skip to the best stuff for this one.

John Sanders: The Reproaches for Good Friday – The Reproaches are a set of devotional responses which originated in the Medieval era. The text is written in first person from the perspective of Jesus, who compares instances of God’s grace from the Old Testament to the cruelty of his crucifixion. No musical setting of this text is more powerful than Sanders‘.

Joel Thompson: Seven Last Words of the Unarmed – Another Lenten devotion is known as the Seven Last Words (sayings) of Christ. I’ll be honest and say I’m not really a fan of any of the settings I’ve heard. However, this new work by Joel Thompson is really powerful. Instead of the words of Jesus, Thompson sets the last words uttered by unarmed victims of police brutality. It’s chilling to hear.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Mache dich, mein Herze, rein – I guess I should end on a positive note, for those of you who like happy endings (as for me, give me a miserable ending every time!) This aria is from Bach’s setting of the Passion from the book of Matthew, and is sung just after Jesus dies, and provides a moment of respite from the very turbulent and emotional drama of the crucifixion.

read PART I of this post: Why do we make music?

Why do we enjoy music? And why are some pieces more likable than others? It’s a big question for a single blog post. I’ll do my best to be as clear and concise as possible!

Take a look at this video:

Why is this fun for us to watch? Would a simpler-minded animal enjoy this as much as humans do? Many YouTube videos of dominoes (and other physical events) are described as “satisfying” – why satisfying?

I start with this video because ultimately it is meaningless (like music?) – the domino build has no purpose other than to be destroyed. And once the chain reaction starts, we want to watch until the end. The pleasure we find has to do with expectation and fulfillment. Through our understanding of the physical world, we know that if you push the first block, it will knock down the next, and the next, etc. But why is it fulfilling to watch what we already know will happen?

Our brains are constantly working to predict what will happen next in the world, and many of our emotions are tied directly to our predictions. Consider a common scenario: the delicious, cheesy aroma of a pizza reaches your nose. You predict that you’ll soon be eating pizza, and if that expectation is fulfilled, you’ll be fat and happy. If, on the other hand, the expectation that you’ll be eating pizza is NOT fulfilled, you might react in a number of ways: Anger (the pizza is not for you to eat!), Curiosity (it turns out it’s not a pizza – what could be making that smell?), or Delight (it’s not a pizza, it’s a Stromboli, even better!)

Part of the pleasure of music comes from a combination of knowing AND not knowing what is coming next – and I should mention that this applies to any style or genre of music. We have expectations of sound (timbre), harmony, melody, and rhythm from any music we listen to. Whether or not you are aware of it, your brain has organized these musical qualities so that you can listen to a few seconds of any song/piece and instantly categorize it in a way that best suites your needs.

When you hear the opening chords of your favorite song, your ears perk up, and you get ready to dance and sing. Your body recognizes the sounds of the music, and identifies them as something familiar, known, and loved.

But consider your reaction when your expectation is shattered by an unwanted alteration.

Disaster.

This is a macro-example of expectation and fulfilment in music. But our enjoyment of music is based on this same principle on a subtle scale – so subtle that it’s possible you’re only unconsciously aware of it. Consider something as simple as the “ode to joy” theme. Hearing the first phrase of this hymn, a number of expectations are set:

Whether or not we know it, we now have an expectation of harmony (D major or one of its close relatives), rhythm (4/4 time of mostly quarter notes, one dotted near the end), and melody (goes up, goes down, goes up, goes down.) The music then continues:

The first three measures are identical to the one above! Expectation fulfilled. The last measure is slightly adapted to bring the phrase to a more solid conclusion. Expectation not met, but perhaps more fulfilling this way (it’s Stromboli!) (or perhaps, it was the first phrase which didn’t meet our expectation of a solid conclusion, and the second which did fulfill the expectation. Or maybe both at the same time, in different ways.)

Then comes this phrase, which uses a different set of harmonies, wider melodic range, and much more rhythmic variety:

So this is new material – where did it come from, and where are we going? Thankfully, before we start to lose our composure, we get a return of the initial phrase, concluding in the more fulfilling way:

This might seem a little far-fetched, but I believe this series of expectations and fulfillments (denied and delivered) are what drive our love of music – classical or popular. If you’re not yet convinced, let’s try pushing expectation and fulfillment to their extremes. What if our expectation is ALWAYS fulfilled, and virtually nothing is new?

Maybe at first it’s exciting because you recognize it (or equally exciting because you don’t recognize it), but after a while, it can get dull. After hearing only two pitches for the first few minutes, the unexpected third pitch sounds like an atomic bomb. On the other hand, when nothing is predictable …

… our attention is lost quickly because we have no expectations, and therefore nothing to fulfill. In this piece, the vocal melody is built on large leaps, instead of steps – definitely not the common expectation for a vocal melody. The harmony is not based on triads, and the rhythm doesn’t fit into the clean-cut measures that we expect in nearly all other music.

So we need both a set of musical rules that we accept as normal, and a composer who is willing to work within those rules, bending and breaking them at just the right moments, from micro to macro levels. What is especially interesting about this is that, even when we know how the composer is going to break the rules, it still excites us. We also might use this to consider our reactions when we dislike music – can we back up our distaste with concrete complaints or are we just lacking knowledge of a different style’s musical rules?

I want to end with the iconic 5th symphony of Beethoven, because both the primary theme is built on a short, easily recognizable 4-note motif:

After just a measure, we have very clear expectation. But Beethoven is able to craft this simple idea in new ways, over and over again, keeping our attention. We know what we expect, but are constantly delighted in the different ways the two motifs are presented. Even when we know this piece well, our brains stay in a state of delightful surprise.

Why do we (humans) make music? I’ll try to sum up the current theories I’ve read into one short blog post.

Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively new science which attempts to explain everything humans do through an evolutionary purpose. The danger in this science is that many of the speculations are quite difficult to turn into testable hypotheses; therefore clear and precise answers are nearly impossible. In other words, this is, at best, educated conjecture.

Darwin thought that our ability to create and enjoy music was rooted in sexual selection. From his book The Descent of Man:

“… primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; … this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes,—would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph,—and would have served as a challenge to rivals.”

Nature is full of examples of animals doing crazy things in order to attract a mate. From a pure survival standpoint, it’s easy for us to see why the biggest male lion gets to breed with the most females. On the other hand, it’s a little weirder when you think about, for example, the sexual selection of these exotic birds:

A big, strong lion is desirable because it will supposedly produce big, strong offspring. But why would some birds choose the best dancer (or singer), when dance offers very little in terms of survival technique (how often does a fabulous dance protect from predators, or provide the next meal)?

In short, Darwin’s theory suggests that music started as mating calls, and became increasingly complex as humans themselves became complex. Choosing the best mate became much more than a body inspection or a show of strength. The best mate would be the one who was healthy enough to have free time for creating art, not to mention the brains to make his/her song stand out. And it’s very possible that this sexual desire for “brainy” art helped drive us to become as (supposedly) intelligent as we are today.

This theory’s shortcoming is that music isn’t only about sex; we find it in so many aspects of our lives, serving many different purposes. We have incredibly complex social circles and hierarchies, and music is often used as part of our identity of “self”: think about a song that is special to you and your lover, your alma mater ditty, your favorite piece, your favorite genre, the songs that “belong” to your circle of friends. Music is closely linked to our social and personal life and identity – I’d argue that it is very similar to the concept of Wittgenstein‘s Language-Game.

So, building on Darwin’s original idea, the current thinkers believe that human musical competence began as a tool for sexual selection (mating calls), driving the brain to develop dramatically. As this music-based sexual selection pushed humans to become more and more intelligent, our brains became increasingly capable of more complex music – some even argue that spoken language actually was a byproduct of our musical skills’ growth. As humans became more and more intelligent, our musical abilities grew to relate not only to sexual selection, but also social status, identity, and other things. There is some debate whether the advanced musical abilities served an evolutionary purpose (for example, tribal identity: using a certain song or musical style) or if our obsession with music was just a “lucky” byproduct of these other evolved abilities.

So our reason to listen to or create music could be anything from love, identity, etc., or for no reason at all – simply to enjoy it.

Check out PART II of this – Why do we enjoy music! And in the meantime, listen to this guy play a copy of a 60,000 year old instrument, and ask yourself, could he be a potential mate?

If you want to go deeper, the bulk of this post was based on these books:

Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: Robert Jourdain
This is your Brain on Music: Daniel Levitin