The Art of Listening Music
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007“Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable”- Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
When a human being born, the first thing he or she experiences is the surrounding sound. From then to the end of life we live in a world which is full of sound. But there is a basic difference between hearing and listening. What we here is not exactly what we listen. While hearing can be called as a process of entertaining different source of sound, the listening is none other than an art. It’s an art of acquiring happiness through different sounds. It needs lots of attention, a beautiful mind to see the beauty of sound through ones mind, a great adoptability to feel and understand that beauty.
Music is a mental food. It caters our taste bud of our mind. If delicious food is to tongue then good music is to our beautiful mind. To get the joy of eating someone needs to have a tasty approach for tasty food. Likewise to be a good listener one needs to develop a very sensitive penchant for music. Since listening is always different from hearing, someone must be able to hone own self to be a good listener. Since to acquire and adopt a sensibility for any kind of art we need to train and learn, we must develop and give a shape to our mind so much so that we can appreciate and capture the mood of music. To go deep in to the mood and essence of music one must open up their mind to the aesthetics of music and then devote the whole mind set and psychology to it. Music is a very exquisite form of performing art. So to be a part of it, the listeners also must be very sensitive. To grow that sensitivity, to understand the philosophy of music and to enjoy the beauty of music, at the out set one must go through the conditioning of inner feelings towards it. One must be literate enough to be a good listener. It is the literacy of adopting and acquiring pulse and sense for good music. Music itself has its own grading and class. So it’s another angle, what kind of music would we prefer to make our mind delighted.
There are different genres of music. And every genre has its own characteristics. Genre to genre different music has different tastes. So it is equally important which class is to attend. Listening Beethoven or Mozart’s symphony can not be compared to listening Rock music or Blues. Listening Jazz is different from listening any folk music. Indian classical music is different from western music. So it’s all about a listener’s choice and his passion which way to turn around and become sensible for the art of listening music. Whatever it might be, the focal point of adopting and mastering the art of listening music is to develop and create a highly sensitive mind. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body”. So to feel every freshness in mind one needs to bath a fresh for the art of listening music, what is sometime referred to as the elixir of human life.
Tags: Art, Beethoven, Blues, Folk, Happiness, Jazz, Listening, Martin Luther, Mind, Mozart, Music, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rock, Sound
