Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

Appendix

 2.03

 Experimental

 listening
 Bartok

8

Experimental listening 24 Aug 2011. LCB and EC (Bartok continued)

Observations and comments by LCB, if not otherwise indicated

15th listening: Open listening open

LCB: The very first tone pushes me back in the chair, and lowers my personal tempo immediately.

And I know the music very well, I expect the merry sections.

The piccolo in B2 is very good, his playing is ”laid back”, he does not rush the tempo, does not

stumble.

I feel my attention as a pressure around the eyes, as if I am observing from the back side of my

eyeballs

EC’s afterthought: sensory integration; listening activates not only auditory attention, but also the

skin and muscles around the eyes.

”We feel ourselves seeing with the eyes” (Damasio 2010: 91,196)

16th listening: Open listening, lying down open

LCB: It is dangerous to lie down, I don’t concentrate on the music, I come to think of other things,

the weather, a choir rehearsal yesterday, a Disney movie...

I come to think of the sound, I am curious to see the notation in the printed score.

The direction of the sound is different, flowing over my body.

And I feel the basses physically as vibrations in the floor

17th listening: Instruction: Listen for transparence and density foc/herm

I feel there is a membrane between me and the music, thicker than the surface of a soap bubble.

A1: I am looking through the surface, then comes the first tone

B1: The music is whirling, like a surface of pixels partly filled in

A2: The sound of the oboe is like fire, quiet flames which penetrate and enliven the membrane

B2: The membrane dissolves and disappears completely

A3: The melody is like columns in an open scene. The accompaniment plays in the orchestra pit

EC’s afterthought: LCB understood the instruction as hermeneutical, setting a scene behind a

transparent surface. The alternative possibility is to adopt a wide focus, listening for the texture of

the music in order to observe varying degrees of transparence or density.

Appendix 2.02 Experimental listening Bartok