- Listening strategy
LCB and EC listened to Bartok in two sessions, 17th and 24th August, 2011. The first listenings
benefited from the fact that the Bartok score indicates three slightly different titles: ”An Evening in the
Countryside”, ”An Evening in the Village”, ”An Evening with the Szekelys”. EC proposed to use these
three titles as the context for three hermeneutical listenings (No. 3,4,5). These listenings cleared the
way for the subsequent music-focused listenings, which clarified musical form (No. 6,7,8,9,10), and
the qualities of single tones (No. 12,13,14). The second session did not follow a predetermined plan.
Questions and tasks aimed at bringing up new fields of observations deepened the investigations. - Experimental listening
LCB and EC listened 28 times to the Bartok piece.
First session (No. 1-14) : The contexts suggested by three different titles evoked three specific
sceneries: A familiar Danish countryside (No. 3), A village scenery from a novel (No. 4), and a the-
atre-like scene of the Szekely people in exile (No. 5). Subsequently, futher imagery emerged: a nar-
rator’s voice (No. 7) and a tightrope walker (No. 8).
Wide temporal-spatial focus on form (No. 6-10) and narrow temporal-spatial focus on the single
tones (No.12-14) promoted description and appropriation of the piece.
In No.14, listening for the endings of the tones induced a significant change in the way of listen-
ing for LCB and EC. This is a parallel to the change of multistability in visual images, as described
by Ihde (1977). LCB ”saw the music from the back door”. EC was overwhelmed by the emptiness
succeeding the disappearence of a layer of sound. These are experiences of the horizon of sound,
corresponding to Ihde’s statement: ”The horizon is the limit where presence is ”limited” by absence.”
(1976:108)
Second session: A high degree of familiarity facilitated careful description of simple and composite
sounds (No. 19-22, 25-26). Listening No.15 suggested an integration of visual and auditory percep-
tion. No. 18 yielded new insight in the individual variability of spatial experience. No. 23 and 24 illu-
minated the experience of surroundability and directionality, and bodily awareness of the music. No.
23 provided a strong experience of the horizon between sound and silence. LCB responded: ”I am
surrounded by non-sound!”. No. 18, 20, 23 and 24 confirmed that it is possible to change focus de-
liberately as well as involuntarily. No. 25 focused on the attention-attracting power of the single tone.
No. 27 yielded awareness of an important field of investigation, musical expression based on small
variations of tempo, sound quality and volume.
The sessions engendered the following additional fields of investigation:
Music-focused
Spatial focus: Surroundability and directionality.Spatial-temporal focus: Interference. Simultaneity of noise and tone. Physical production of
sound.Temporal focus: Flow versus marked rhythm. Syncopation.
Relationship between tones and feeling of underlying meter: pushing / on the beat / laid back