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I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?

What we listen to we cannot trace always a border between cold or cool admiration and heart wrenching love at first sight....

I admire Bach without limit but i love also him dearly....Here admiration and love are one....

The first time li listen to Chet Baker i was not even sure if it was a great trumpetist, but i love him without knowing why....

More i listen to Miles Davis more i admire him but i still wait for love to come....I like it a lot but it is not love and i know the first time i listen to him why he is a great trumpetist, unlike Chet, his mastering of the instrument was evident.... For Chet i listen not the trumpet but the voice of his instrument, i even forgot he was playing the trumpet and the question if he was great was secondary....Miles was great without any doubts.... But i am in love with Chet because he touch my heart.....



Sometimes the frontier between these 2 are less clear, i admire Brahms but i like him more than i love him.... Bruckner i admire him like a new Bach and i love him like our old grandpa with a feeling that will never end....

I admire Monteverdi at the level of my admiration for Bach, but i like him only , it is not this passionnate love that changes my heart and life like with those i love...

I love Bill Evans dearly but i admire Keith Jarrett greatly but without any passion....

I admire and love Vivaldi at the same times.....

I admire Telemann, Haendel, Haydn more than i love them..... I am in love with Purcell tough and Josquin Desprez.....

I admire Hildegard the Bingen and i love her without words.... I am in love with the organ composer Pachelbel but i only admire Palestrina....

I admire Arvo Part very much, but am i in love? No....Excep perhaps for one or 2 of his work: Alina for example....I admire and love Gorecki symphony of tears but not much the rest....Only respect for the rest of his works....

I admire Arrau, Horowitz, many pianists but am i in love? No, but i am in total love with Ervin Nyiregyházi , Ivan Moravec, or Sofronitsky....

I admire the composer Sorabji almost like Bach but dont feel any love at all....Deep fascination and admiration for a genius  that never speak from the heart to the heart, only from his brain to my brain.... But what a genius ! 

I admire many, many, female singers, but i am in love with only a few, i love Billie Holiday, Marianne Anderson for example....

I will not go on with my list any longer...

But what speak to our heart and what speak to our brain is not the same and sometimes some music speak for us to the 2 part of ourselves...

But one thing must me clear, i dont want to live without the great musicians whom i only admire. I like them like interesting friends, even if i am not changed by love at first sight with them, swimming in the sea of adoration....


What are those you admire but only like ? What are those you clearly are in love with?

When the brain speak first and always, it is admiration and friendship not love.... In love there is a mystery in with we participate and which transform our life....

Those who we admire gives us pleasure.... Those who we love gives us not only that but an ultimate meaning that go to your heart.....


Listening music is learning to listen into the many levels in us where music can reach and transform us.... Each music or musician has this potential to change us at a level or at another one, or at all levels simultaneously....But for sure it is different for each of us......

I apologize if my OP makes no sense for some.... I hope my question will make sense for some....

Thanks......

128x128mahgister
mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,135 posts
 

If you have the time and inclination, I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts re: the process of "education".


in order to make a more complete and honest assessment of the true value of a musician’s musical vision the listener needs to have, at least, a modicum of humility.







Education of self need humility....

We must learn how to learn first....

We must accept our own limitations, music touch us in a way that is a unique perspective and a specific take on our own body/soul/spirit organization...Music increase or decrease our own spititual metabolism in each of us in a particular way... The price to pay for a deep plunge in this ocean is that we cannot inhabit all islands.... Choices must be made and are made before even our birth... Then it seems that some music will never touch us , some other will if we discover it or learn how to digest it...


Knowing that we must also open our ears and mind.... Discovery has a price.... We must Learn how to listen to music like a musician must learn... Perhaps not in the same exact way, i am not a musician, and i dont read sheet of music for example...But we must learn to listen to the effect of sounds and also the effect of music on the metabolism increase or decrease body/soul/spirit.... The interaction of these 3 will change with different sounds, frequencies, rythm, chords melody, harmony, timbre etc...

We must learn to listen to sounds and music .... They are not the same....In the 2 cases a learning experience is necessary but cannot be forced nor imposed.... We must put in place the conditions to do so ourself...Reading about what we listen to is a good idea...


We will never change our basic body/soul/spirit specific metabolism, the relation for example of will/emotion/ and thinking is different in each of us.... The goal is not to like everything , we will never be able to change totally our "taste" but we can enlarge it toward new worlds of sounds, but also to new realm of music...


Other cultures music is a good way to do so.... Not only classical or popular jazz or european music....


I remember the many important moment of my musical life:


The discovery of poetry with folk singer or popular singer....

The discovery of Bach and all choral music or of the spirit...

The discovery of Bruckner or the discovery of orchestral music....Mahler after that....

The discovery of Scriabin and of piano music with pianist Sofronitsky...And the power of the musician playing and recreating the works...

The discovery of spirit no more with only Bach but with Iranian masters....and with Indian one....

The discovery of the supremum importance of the musicians themselves with jazz music.....



We must listen also to each chapter of musical european history like if it was a chapter of our own soul history.... And it is even if we are not conscious of this deep fact....Learning why a period captivate  us more than other period is also a key to understand where we come from and where we can go....


 If the soul is an earth, music is the  geology of this spirit.....
stuartk
2,907 posts
 
What a rich discussion !  Thank you, frogman and mahgister, for offering your deeply-considered perspectives. I'm grateful for the opportunity to participate in such a dialogue. Thanks, frogman, for the clarification re: Miles and technique. 

Up until now, I've only participated in gear forums -- most often when seeking help with system upgrades. I didn't realize what I'd been missing, here, in the music forum.

Frogman: I recognize there've been plenty of times when I've given in to the impulse to reject that which does not yield pleasure imediately. I also believe what mahgister asserts-- that "a learning experience is necessary but cannot be forced nor imposed." Taken together, your collective com-ments would appear to suggest this "education" process requires a somewhat delicate balance of "effort" and "allowing". 

For me, it seems one limiting aspect involves tension. Too much tension and I feel assaulted; too little and my attention wanders. This appears to occur on an energetic, rather than an intellectual or emotional level. For example, I enjoy dissonance/atonality up to a point but beyond that point, it evokes distress and a sort of spontaneous disengagment occurs, perhaps driven by some primitive drive for self-preservation in the face of what is perceived as a "danger". 

 Saxophonist David Murray is a good example. I've heard certain recordings in which he generally plays in a zone that moves from a degree of dissonance I can just tolerate into degrees that feel (to me) overwhelmingly off-putting. On other recordings (the ones I own), he takes more of a middle ground, moving from quite consonant playing into degrees of dissonance I can enjoy. He continually moves back and forth from one to the other, and in so doing, dissonance enhances consonance and vice versa. The yin/yang symbol comes to mind, here. 

If pitch is one means by which tension operates, then rhythm is another, no? It involves far more than the beats-per-minute or time signature. What sort of "feel" or "energy" is being expressed in a player's execution of a given rhythm makes a big difference.

I could go on, but I'll restrain myself. 











 













stuartk
2,907 posts
 
mahgister: I love:  "If the soul is an earth, music is the geology of this spirit....."

You are a poet?
mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,135 posts
 
I could go on, but I’ll restrain myself.
Never restraint yourself here.... 😊

I suggest between this fine line between "effort" and "allowing" to read and study a little bit around the music which interest you without having yet all your heart in it....

Article of music critics, philosophers, or simply bios.... Reading and studying a bit help a lot....

I remember younger when the reading of the text on the vinyl cardbox presentation of the intention and epoch of the composer and his situation in it help me a lot....Same thing about Indian and persian music elementary introduction... I read biographies of Scriabin and Sun Ra that help me to appreciate their journey for example....Reading about unusual instrument help a lot....

Do you know where come from the vichitra veena or the sarangi ?


The other helping method to cross and navigate this fine line between effort and allowance is listening at small dose, and reading at the same time around the intention of the composer or the musician... It is listening without imposing anything in the attention....Like background listening.... Alternating this with some deep attentive short listenings sessions looking for the ideas and concepts we are discovered in our reading studies...


This was my way.... Perhaps good for me and not for all.... I dont know....

One thing is for sure, enlarging my musical scope was always enlarging my own soul at the same time....
stuartk
2,907 posts
 
Thanks for your suggestions, mahgister. I'm curious how intellectual understanding can impact the spontaneous reaction to music/sound that occurs on a non-intellectual level. 

If an interval "feels" unpleasant to us, it's not clear to me how understanding the composer's intention can affect the interval's  "energetic charge" -- it's effect upon our metabolism. 

I apologize if I'm missing something. 



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