The Innocent Ear?

[A Lark Ascending]

Interesting article in this months Gramophone by Simon Callow about the associations we carry with music and how hard it is to disassociate them in later listening. He gives the obvious example of Mahler 5 and Dirk Bogarde wandering round Venice; and the less obvious example of buying a copy of Elgar's First and on the way out of the shop bumping into a figure he half recognised who he later found out to be Sir Oswald Mosley (leader of the British Union of Facists in the '30s). The latter must really spoil your listening!

Thought about it again this afternoon whilst listening to Alex's organ trio record - the sound of the organ threw me back to the 70s when it was a major sound in rock. I don't imagine that association ever enterred Alex's head, nor would it make any sense to anyone who came of age after the mid-70s.

I wonder if this is part of the reason we become so attached to older music; because the power of music is not just in the notes but in what was going on around us when we heard that music (or even a sound or style which we might hear in a very different context).

Or is it possible to completely detach the music from everything else and hear it pure. I would imagine that this is what some of the more extreme free musicians might be aiming at - Year Zero with no associations at every moment.

I'll admit that, for me, music is always drenched with associations not explicit in the sounds themselves - I seem incapable of detaching them.

How about you?

[papsrus]

I think you know this story Bev, but I come at jazz or improvised music in particular, and music overall more generally, from the opposite direction, I think.

While I had a brief flirtation with jazz in the late 70s, I quickly turned to more rock-based or country blues music, and just as quickly lost interest in music altogether for most of my adult life, up until recently. (sad but true)

My taste for jazz / improvised music was re-ignited after listening almost by chance to Coltrane's "One Down, One Up, Live at the Half Note," and I was off like a bird.

So I don't think I draw any early associations with much of the music that I listen to today. It's all fresh, in that sense. Any associations I do draw are post 2005.

Now if I listen to some old albums by Ry Cooder or Dylan or the Dead -- music in that vein, I think it does spark memories or revive generally warm or nostalgic feelings. But not so with jazz.

[A Lark Ascending]

That throws up some interesting points.

When we are exploring a new music we are reliant on advice from people versed in the music, often for many years, even decades. But when they make their recommendations of greatness, how much of that is inherent in the music, how much includes a layering of their own memories. In which case, should our 'innocent ear' be necessarily hearing the richness that they do?

I often think this about 60s/70s music that I recommend - it still has enormous power for me but is enough of that in the music itself? I know I often find myself unable to hear the power that others locate in some past musics (a fair bit of UK jazz from the 50s/60s, for example).

[BillF]

The opening paragraphs of Brian Priestley's sleeve note to Jazz Combo from "I Want to Live!" (Affinity 1988) are worth reading in this context:

"The influence of nostalgia runs through much of what passes for jazz appreciation. Doubtless it always has been a factor in cases where the individual fan is out of sympathy with more recent jazz but finds that the jazz of his youth has a continuing impact. The effect of this on a musician's career is sometimes beneficial in terms of employability (in fact, musicians only ever feel nostalgia themselves for earlier successes when the employability barometer has turned down irreversibly.) It's often less beneficial, however, in encouraging continued creativity although (to be fair) creativity has sometimes fallen victm to other pressures even before they become the object of nostalgia.

The musical developmemt of Gerry Mulligan and his constantly renewed vigour, long after his original period of celebrity, proves that loss of creativity doesn't always go hand in hand with popularity. This fortunate fact emphasises that the undeniable nostalgia rating of his 1950s music - again, like a lot of nostalgia - depends as least as much on image as on sound. So, of course, people remember the tunes (and probably the solos too, since those records were so very well-known) but also they remember the crew-cut cover-photo of Mulligan's famous 10-inch LPs. And they no doubt recall that, on his first visit to the UK in 1957, he looked like an animated version of that iconic illustration. Unusually, as far as image is concerned, Mulligan had a second bite of the cherry, for the flowing-haired full-bearded sage who toured with Dave Brubeck a decade later has gone into the collective unconscious as well."

Edited January 18, 2010 by BillF

[Shrdlu]

My Math Ph.D. supervisor said that he wished he could hear the Beethoven late Quartets again for the first time. I know exactly what he meant. Apply that to "Kind of Blue", "Parker's Mood" and so on.

Lol, the crew cut! We all had them when I was a kid in grade school, plus the Davey Crockett hat - those were pretty cool, and I'd love to wear one clubbing today.