Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

Appendix

 2.03

 Experimental

 listening
 Bartok

4

Experimental listening 17 Aug 2011. LCB and EC

Bartok: Orchestral piece ”An Evening in the Village” / ”Ein Abend auf dem Lande”

/ ”An Evening with the Szekely” , Hungarian Sketches Sz 97 no. 1.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra cond. Pierre Boulez. CD: DG 445 825-2

EC: Short introduction to Don Ihde’s Listening and Voice (1976) and Experimental Phenomenology

(1977), Ihde’s listening strategies, and his model of fields of investigation:

The musical object - The way of listening - The listener - The intersubjective interchange

”noema” ”noesis” ”I” ”You”

The survey of listenings reports observations and comments by LCB, if not otherwise indicated.

1st and 2nd listening: Open listening open

Information: ”This is an orchestral piece by Bartok”

The first tone enters me directly, a very fine tone, it is like a spearhead, a unicorn’s horn, it does

not snarl. The intro hit something in me. ”I miss playing”.

The following section is happy music, halfway Chinese. Begins in major, ends in minor.

The first melody returns, main characters oboe and flute. The impression is not as strong this time.

The funny Chinese music comes again.

At the end a final chord which is not a final chord. It is fun to listen, and peculiar that Bartok is so

tonal.

3rd-4th-5th listenings are hermeneutical strategies. A title evokes a context (Ihde 1977:88)

Three listenings according to three different titles indicated in the score.

3rd listening: Hermeneutic listening herm

Information: The title is ”An Evening in the Countryside”

Associations to Carl Nielsen, the Danish countryside of Funen. Fields, gravel road, dusk, ground

mist. Standstill. Then birds fly off, parting.

The melody returns in oboe. Memories of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, the duck, water, Hans

Christian Andersen, a village pond. Carl Nielsen’s My Childhood in Funen.

A happy section, associations to the Disney cartoon Mulan. Action, apple blossoms.

Final section, ”grand music”. I stick to the Orient, China, Japan. Nothing happens.

Appendix 2.02 Experimental listening Bartok