On music perception

The colors in music

The charm of listening to music is also given by the numerous synesthetic suggestions that sounds bring with them. While listening to or reading music it is common to associate precise colors with certain harmonies, with singular perceptive coincidences on the part of different listeners.Among the composers who have dealt most with the synesthesia between colors and music, the names of the Russians Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Skrjabin stand out, who built his own compositional system based on precise combinations of colors and sounds. If, on the one hand, there is no univocal and objective correspondence between notes and colors to date, it is unequivocal that the musical idea is always linked to an image, often well defined even in the chromatic details. Even an apparently mechanical and "black and white" instrument like the piano can evoke an infinite range of chiaroscuro, thanks to the management of the dynamic relationships between the various voices that make up a chord or a polyphonic texture. And the greatest composers were masters in precisely this, that is in exploiting the means at their disposal (the instruments of the orchestra) to draw with sounds, giving shapes, contours and colors to their musical ideas.There are countless examples of orchestra conductors who ask the instruments for a "bluer" or "less purplish" sound during rehearsals.It is obvious that we are speaking in metaphors, but they are metaphors often shared by many musicians, and this cannot be a coincidence: there is, therefore, a dimension of music that transcends the physical qualities of sound, and which escapes a scientific classification. After all, the greatness of music certainly cannot be circumscribed with a verbal description. A fortiori, it would be impossible, as well as useless, to seek a mathematical correspondence between single sounds and as many chromatic tints. The point of this writing is, if anything, to encourage musicians and listeners to let their visual imagination permeate during the musical performance. After all, the sound aspect of the music we listen to is nothing more than a projection, often only partial, of a much broader artistic idea.In the case of great masterpieces, the composer's message transcends sensory, auditory and visual limits, and it is in these cases that something more is perceived through the sounds, something more that cannot be described, yet very present and unequivocal.The greatness of music lies precisely in that mystery, and we have the opportunity to grasp it with every listening, if we manage to place ourselves in the right condition.

Music and Space

“Music is the space between the notes”.This statement, attributed to various composers, including Claude Debussy, is one of the most suggestive and acceptable definitions of music.Space is a category that not everyone instinctively associates with music, yet a musical discourse could not exist if each sound did not have a precise positioning in relation to the other sounds of the same composition.We can speak of space at various levels: from the more immediate one, linked to the graphic position of the notes in a score, to the more abstract one, evoked by particular timbral alchemies that project the listener into dimensions of extreme spatial distance.Musical space is in close correlation with time, and its perception is given precisely by the management of the agogics: the sense of large distances is easily given with a dilated and tense time, and, vice versa, the idea of a restricted space it is rendered by the condensing of several sounds in a short space of time.And, like time, the perception of space in music is also strictly subjective, and linked to the sensitivity of the individual listener and the context (including visual) in which he finds himself.Another, fascinating and more concrete meaning of space in music is given by the distribution of sounds between the various registers of the orchestra or of a single instrument: many composers place the themes on different pitches, thus exploiting the tonal peculiarities of each specific texture of an instrument, to distribute sounds in space, like drawing a musical map in which each voice has a specific physical location.A further parameter that serves to define the spatial coordinates of the sounds is that of dynamics: for example, it is sufficient to dose two overlapping melodic lines with different dynamics, to place one in the foreground (the louder one) and the other in the background.And this principle is obviously applicable with infinite degrees and nuances, especially in the case of scores with a greater number of voices.Therefore, it can also be very useful for performers to have a definite spatial vision of the music being played, and to be able to place each voice exactly in a specific position, consequently managing its dynamic and agogic characteristics.Metaphor aside, this means knowing how to give each melodic line a precise tonal connotation, linked to the degree of distance or "distance from the ground" that the interpreter imagines.And even more fascinating is thinking of musical themes as object-vectors moving in space, each with its own specific direction and speed.Music is ultimately based on the relationships between sounds, and almost always they are multiple and complex relationships. The more we are able to grasp the nuances of these relationships, the more intense and fulfilling the experience of interpreting and listening to music will be.

"Listening to the time"

The relationship with time is a founding element of any musical interpretation. The "time of music", however, is very different from the time that marks the daily rhythms, as it extends in a closed area, delimited by the duration of the single composition: it is a time that is both internal and external to ourselves, i.e. subjective and objective together. The listener's perception of time is in turn subjective, and influenced by many elements, linked both to the interpreter and to contingent factors (reverberation of the hall, distance from the sound source, degree of anxiety of the listener, rhythmic stability of execution). One of the main characteristics of great performers (whether they are musicians, actors, or dancers or orators) is that they never have a passive, subordinate relationship with time. Or, better, not to consider time as an external entity to adapt to, but, on the contrary, as something that they themselves can shape, giving it the right shape based on the expressive and dramaturgical needs that music requires, and on the continuous feedback with the place where the performance takes place. And, on closer inspection, some great musical masterpieces, such as, for example, the latest Sonatas or the latest Quartets by Schubert, when interpreted by inspired and charismatic artists have the ability to take us "out of earthly time", bringing us into new perceptive dimensions, which respond to other temporal laws.In other words, the great performers don't "go to time", but "create time". Moreover, the listener perceives the vertigo of speed or the suspended enchantment of an Adagio not only according to the real speed of the metronomic tactus, but above all according to the motor energy and musical tension communicated by the interpreter.This does not only depend on the speed, on the skilful management of the agogics and dynamics, which exploits imperceptible changes of tempo and dynamic nuances in a way that is functional to the dramaturgy of the piece. A long essay would not be enough to discuss the infinite possibilities of managing time in music, and this is not the place to attempt a more detailed analysis on the subject.Rather, this brief thought is meant to be an encouragement to listeners and performers to allow themselves to be amazed and guided by the subjective perception of musical tempo, to "listen" to it in its peculiarities.Too often, still today, there are music teachers who insist on "being in time", on "respecting time", as if time were only the time marked by the metronome bar or the hands of the clock, beyondout of music and ourselves.Instead, I am sure that the most fulfilling and intense musical experiences can occur when a natural, organic relationship with time is recovered, listening internally to one's own "subjective time", and letting this be shaped by the intensity of great music.

Listening with the eyes

Classical music, and chamber music in particular, has always been characterized by a certain degree of abstraction, almost as if it were independent of any aspect linked to the image. After all, by definition instrumental music (excluding that for cinema or theatre) would seem to be independent of sight, being made up of sounds that are perceived by hearing in a completely independent way from visual stimuli.Yet all musicians are well aware that every sound brings with it an image: perhaps not concrete, subjective, indefinite, but still an integral part of the musical message.Even the listener is influenced by what he sees during a concert, and it is easy to ascertain that, with different conditions of light and field of vision, the perception of the same piece of music will be different.It is therefore surprising that even today in classical music concerts the visual aspect is often considered secondary, if not downright negligible.The musicians, often obsessively attentive to the smallest tonal nuances of their interpretation, usually don't care what the audience sees of them and the visual frame in which their performance comes to life.Far from wanting to encourage a prevalence of the image over the content, this thought however aims to shed light on the importance of the relationship between sound message and visual content.Taking care of this aspect is not necessarily to the detriment of the musical content, but, if anything, it can enhance it more effectively.A striking example in this sense is that of the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter.In the last years of his career, Richter chose to play no longer from memory, but with the score on the piano stand.His prescriptions in terms of scene lighting were very precise and peculiar: very little light on the audience in the hall and a small table lamp placed on the piano, to illuminate the score, rather than the pianist.I have personally attended three of Richter's concerts, and 25 years later, I still have a vivid, and dare I say photographic, memory of them.And the degree of asceticism of those interpretations remained impressed on me also thanks to the visual context to which they were combined.Music is also heard with the eyes.

Tasting music, listening to the wine

There are several festivals and concert projects that combine wine tasting with music. And, in fact, the two things have a lot in common, to the point that the terms can easily be reversed: tasting music, listening to wine. After all, tasting a fine wine is an act of profound concentration.Every instant takes on a precise emotional connotation.The scan of time transforms.The floral or tannic notes of a great wine emerge in a gradual temporal path: the "listening time" of a tasting is not so different from that of a musical masterpiece.Even attending a live concert requires similar attention to the smallest details, which can also transform listening into an inner experience of great intensity and gratification.And even the sounds have their flavors and aftertastes, corresponding to the different resonances and timbral alchemies that are spread by the musicians.Recently I happened to give a recital at the Cantine Jermann (www.jermann.it), as part of the EnoArmonie festival.While listening to the concert, the audience tasted three samples of as many Jermann wines, to which I thought of coordinating as many listenings of Mendelssohn, chosen according to age: it started with a young white wine, combined with the music of the adolescent Mendelssohn, to reach a more full-bodied red, combined with the more mature and intense pieces of the Hamburg composer.The result was surprisingly positive: the listeners, also stimulated from a gustatory and olfactory point of view, seemed more ready to grasp the slightest nuances of the piano, in parallel with "listening" to the wines and their ever-changing decanting.In summary, thanks to this we have reached a more shared perception, and the fact of being outside the ritual customs of a typical concert hall has allowed everyone, myself included, to acquire a freer disposition to listen. Based on my experience, I can testify that the most inspired concerts I can remember, i.e. those in which I perceived a special emotional tension between performer and audience, were almost always in "private" concerts, held in rooms of ancient palaces, foran audience of several dozen people.Almost all chamber music, after all, was written to be played in such contexts.And precisely in the silence and warmth of an ancient hall, or, why not, of a wine cellar, nuances, breaths, allusions can emerge that a listener will hardly be able to grasp in a large modern auditorium with the same intensity.

Historical tunings and temperaments

Piano tuning is now globally standardized and is based on equal temperament, i.e. on the division of the octave into twelve equal parts.Yet in the era of Haydn and Mozart this type of tuning was not yet used, and in its place other systems of division of the octave were widespread, based on asymmetrical intervals: these are so-called "well-tempered" tunings, as they provided"temperaments" of the intervals to be able to play in different keys, but without distorting the purity of the natural intervals too much: these systems, in fact, are based on the tuning of some "pure" fifths, tempering other intervals with adjustments of comma fractions.The topic is vast and complex, but it is worth considering, since each different type of tuning involves great differences even when listening.Equal temperament, which gradually spread in the 19th century, has the undeniable advantage of making all keys equally tuned: its use has allowed the evolution of complex harmonies, up to the dissolution of the tonal system with atonal and dodecaphonic music.But, if we consider the baroque and classical repertoire, it can be very interesting to listen to it with the tunings that the composers of the time used: for example, Bach's keyboard music sounds wonderful with the well-tempered but not equal systems, such as the one mentioned "Werkmeister III”, while Mozart's piano pieces acquire a richer expressiveness with the “Vallotti” tuning, which takes its name from its inventor, Francesco Antonio Vallotti.It is a well-tempered tuning, with six pure natural fifths and another six tempered.In fact, Mozart's sonatas are all in key with few accidentals, and most are in C, F and B-flat major, making them particularly compatible with this tuning.The advantage over the usual modern tuning is that each tonality acquires a different color, and tonalities with few alterations sound much better, richer in harmonics and "warmer".In this way we understand why Mozart chooses F minor to express moods of profound sadness, and D major for playful and sunny atmospheres.Each tonality corresponds to a well-characterized place in the soul, and the modulations therefore take on a particularly enthralling dramatic force.For more insights into the evolution of temperaments and their influence on Western music and culture, I recommend the wonderful book by Stuart Isacoff: "Temperaments - History of a musical enigma", published in Italian by EdT.

Music as education for listening to others

In Italy the presence of music as an educational subject in compulsory schooling is still very limited. And, where it is present, the “music education” often consists of practical lessons, where the pupils try to play a “didactic” instrument, like a recorder made of plastic, or rudimentary electronic keyboards. This is the result of a limited view of the potential role of music in the formation of an individual. The most important, and often neglected, aspect is education for listening, where listening means not just the ability to a distinguish a piano from a forte or a rising scale from a falling one, but the aptitude to develop the individual's concentration and sensitivity, to perceive and understand the stimuli we receive from others. Put briefly, listening education should translate into learning to recognize our state of mind, which music will help us to find. And, as a consequence, this can enhance the students' aptitude to “look inside themselves”, to become aware of their own emotional reactions, and, thus, to know how to communicate them better to others. A greater awareness of our states of mind can help us to recognize the states of mind of our interlocutors, and so, as we said, learn how to “listen” to them. The aptitude to listen will promote understanding, sharing, compassion: all indispensable tools to guide man towards a coexistence that is not just civil, but above all rich, marked by harmony and respect for others. This is why it is hoped that music education will be reconsidered in this direction, and will become increasingly present in all phases of schooling, right from the kindergarten.

Classical music in the age of interruption

The ever greater diffusion of social networks and smartphones is profoundly changing our habits and, according to recent research, also our brain. The everyday life of western man, perpetually connected to the internet on cell phones, tablets and computers, is being transformed into what a recent study of the University of Southern California has defined “the age of interruption”: that is, a way of living and interacting based precisely on the impossibility (and, consequently, the inability) to pursue a single action, since we are accustomed to interrupting it with others. The ability to concentrate and keep our attention focused on a single source is thus becoming increasingly rarer and, if you like, also unfashionable. However, according to Paolo Legrenzi, it is those few people who are able to maintain their concentration that will know how to change the world. Today, a classical music concert is one of the very few occasions when we can afford ourselves the luxury (or, depending on our point of view, the obligation) to turn off our cell phones, disconnect ourselves from social networks, and focus our attention on one single message: music. And the message is not only single, that is it comes from a single listening source (the stage), not amplified or reproduced by other loudspeakers; but, above all, the message is complex and extends over a period of time, during which the listener's attention cannot be interrupted. You can read a book a bit at a time, you can take breaks while watching a film, but you can't listen to a live performance of a Beethoven symphony and put the orchestra on pause. This is why, today more than ever, listening to live music, and complex music in particular, that is to say music that demands an effort of concentration and attention extending over a determined space of time, is a prime opportunity to reappropriate our critical thought, to let our mind and heart breathe. In other words, to live better.

The awareness of one's emotions

One of the most significant “side-effects” of making music at an in-depth level is surely the fact of becoming aware of one's interiority, knowing how to listen: this doesn't just involve a more acute sense of hearing, but above all the capacity to be able to look inside oneself in order to recognize and experience one's emotions with awareness. This is well known to many musicians, but it is now further confirmed by a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, which investigates the effects of studying a musical instrument on brain development in adolescents. Learning to control the complex movements necessary to play a violin or a piano, in fact, enhances one's mental capacities. According to this study, which used magnetic resonance to monitor 232 students aged between 6 and 18 years, the areas of the cerebral cortex dedicated to the working memory and mental organization are thicker in young people who study a musical instrument. As also confirmed by other studies reported in the Journal of Neuro Science, the practice of music makes our brain more reactive and flexible, with positive effects that last throughout our entire life span. Not by chance, many Anglo-Saxon agencies often consider individuals whose curriculum includes a music diploma more favorably, since the study of music facilitates our relational capacities, the management of the emotions and the organization of work: all qualities that are indispensable in many professional areas, also outside of the world of music.

Slow listening - tasting music

If there is one expression that best sums up the characteristics of modern life, it is perhaps "multitasking", that is to say, carrying out several activities at the same time. It might seem a positive sign of progress, which facilitates and speeds up our activities, but this life-style turns out to be scarcely compatible with our brain, which isn't designed to handle superimposed activities. The negative effects of multitasking on our health have emerged in a recent study by the neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, director of the Laboratory for Music, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University and author of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.”

In synthesis, the constant overlapping of different kinds of information that we are subjected to today runs the risk of weakening our capacity for attention and concentration. It is also said to trigger a hormonal process that causes addiction, “rewarding” the brain when it becomes distracted and passes from one piece of information to another. Addiction to Facebook or messaging is, in fact, a growing phenomenon, which could condition the serenity and health of future generations. A simple remedy is to become a “taster” of classical music: knowing how to listen to and savor a piece of music implies developing one's personal sensitivity and can often represent the first step in a path to rediscovering the beauty of places, landscapes and tastes, which could be summed up by the concept of slow listening. Just like slow food, slow listening involves the absence of any type of hurry, and gives priority to the quality of the listening message, as opposed to the quantity. Classical music is quintessentially slow, and this doesn't mean that it is lacking in energy or passion, but, on the contrary, that precisely on account of the greater variety of nuances and degrees of expression, it affords a more intense and gratifying listening experience.

Free to listen, free to judge?

By definition, music is not a science, but a form of art, and as such, cannot be judged in absolute or perfect terms. It is not difficult, then, to explain the very frequent differences of opinion regarding a given interpretation: each listener, beyond any doubt, has different preferences depending on their own particular culture and sensitivity. But are we really sure that our judgments are really our own, and that they aren't, instead, the result of a series of complex external influences? Are we really free from prejudices when we listen to a musical performance? For example. The newspapers publish various articles that announce the coming of a great event, a concert featuring a famous artist who is returning to perform in Italy after many years. They talk about it on TV as well, and many people hurry to buy a costly ticket before they run out. Finally the long awaited moment arrives. The hall is packed, the great musician makes a slow and confident entry, and after a few intense moments of silence begins the performance. Many listeners savor these notes with bated breath: after months of anticipation they are listening to the great artist who has been so much talked about. So, how many of them in this particular state of emotion will really be able to take in what the musician is doing? Not many. A large part of the emotions that reach the audience could be more due to the publicity campaign, well prepared by the artist's highly efficient press office and the concert organizer, than to the actual charisma of the performer. And the high cost of the ticket is a crafty way of leaving the audience satisfied: the spectators will unconsciously try to find all the virtues of the performance that they have paid so much for, even at the cost of resorting to mirages! And what would have happened if the same artist had played in exactly the same way, but in different conditions (in a small, half-empty hall in the outskirts, ticket at 3 Euros, no publicity, not even a notice in the local paper)? The same level of success would be unlikely... It seems that the world classical music is becoming increasingly similar to that of commercial music, where the construction of the image, often made with the aid of generous sponsorships, counts much more than the actual artistic quality. Some concert seasons are consistently "sold out" despite a low level of music, while others invest all in a schedule that includes the best artists of the moment, but never manage to fill even half of the hall. This is not intended to be a moralistic denunciation: on the contrary, treating music as a commercial product could also be an advantage, in that it might become a means of making more money for the important financing bodies and attracting bigger audiences and more capital. But what is important (and not only in the field of music!) is that each one of us does not completely lose our freedom of judgment. An independent and sensitive listener should know how to distinguish between a publicity stunt and a great artist, even if the latter hasn't yet (or no longer has) an agency or recording company influential enough to endorse him/her in the most prestigious circles. The freedom to listen and to choose is a right that, luckily, still exists, but that not everyone knows how to exercise. How, then? For instance, by taking advantage of the huge supply of recordings available, at least virtually, in Italy today. Maybe the shops in our town don't offer a vast and varied selection of CDs, but thanks to online sales or large-scale retailers everyone can listen with their own ears to a great deal of recordings, even those of artists that are unknown or disregarded a priori. And often the rarer recordings are a lot cheaper than those that are more widely publicized, not to speak of the re-releases of old recordings: these often turn out to be real treasures to be rediscovered, at a cost of 6 or 7 Euros! This also applies to chances to listen to live music: there are many small or medium-size concert seasons, less linked to the business concerns of the large agencies, which invite artists who are unknown or neglected in Italy, certainly worthy of being heard at least once. On the other hand, it is really up to the listener to know how to grasp as deeply as possible what the performer is communicating. It is well known that each of us perceives music in a different way, depending on our cultural background and our mood at the moment. The most important thing is that we shouldn't have too many preconceived ideas that will distort our perception of the music. Listening to the same recording over and over again, then using it as a benchmark to assess other interpretations, is perhaps not the best way to be "free listeners". Making comparisons is certainly useful and natural, but it is well to consider that such a comparison is often influenced by the different conditions of listening (and, in the case of disks, of recording and reproduction).The risk of losing the freedom of listening affects most of all those who deal with music at a professional level. If a pianist listens to another pianist, they will easily be conditioned by their own performing habits, by what they learned from their own teacher, by any possible professional preferences or dislikes, and will tend to impose terms of comparison that are anything but objective. The pianist will, perhaps, be, freer when listening to an orchestra or a singer, not being in that case conditioned by technical factors or by the fact of belonging to a particular "school". This doesn't mean that ignorance helps to receive the musical message better, also because there is no such thing as a completely virgin perception. However, an attitude of trust towards what a new performer has to offer can surely facilitate a better comprehension and a deeper appreciation of the art of music. An ideal listener should also know how to distinguish the affinity of taste of a musician from sheer Talent. Talent is a gift that transcends the stylistic or cultural choices of the artist, and allows the fortunate who possess it to truly move the listener, to speak "the truth" in a wholly natural and profound way. Unfortunately, in most cases true Talent is replaced by a more banal professionalism together with an adequate stylistic preparation, supported by carefully planned commercial strategies. If listeners learn how to recognize and appreciate true Talent, music will still have plenty of surprises and much joy in store for us.

Roberto Prosseda