How to enjoy music

How to enjoy music

George R. Marek

Music may be used in two different ways. The first way is the road taken by the music lover. He need not be able to tell a fugue from fandango. But to him, the hearing of music is an experence that grips his mind and tears at his heart. He cannot remain indifferent.

How does one become a music lover? There is but one way: Listen to music! Only direct experience, not study or explanation or any sort of prop, will lead you to music.

I have two suggestions for the beginner. First, listen to the same composition often, until you can respond to it emotionally. Do not expect to encompass a symphony at first hearing. And do not be discouraged or feel guilty if, while listening to an unfamiliar symphony, your attention wanders. Initially, absorb from it as much as you can - nd coast through the rest. There will come a time when the clouds roll away and the landscape lies clearly before you. In music, the familiar is the enjoyable. Don't dart from one composition to the next. Stay with it.

Second, choose - in the beginning, at least, - romantic music. This is repertoire that begins with Beethoven and ends with Sibelius and that, in its wide orbit, includes the most popular works - those fo Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Wagner, Berlioz and a dozen other composers of the 19th century. Such music, with its rich coloring, its exuberance, its sweetness, its exciting oratory, makes an immediate appeal. But it is not safe to predict what you will like. We do know that people tend to repond more easily to Chopin and Puccini then Handel or Haydn. Yet your experience may differ.

Of all the arts, music is the freest. Most music does not "mean" anything except in its own world and on its own terms. But because it has little to do with what we call real life, because it is free of the weekday, it can effectively take us away from our own lives, from our nine-to-five worries.

The other way of using music is as background accompaniment - like a tepid bath in which you induce a drowsy reverie. You hardly listen to what you hear, any more than you consiciously listen to the surf of the sea. Almost any kind of music can be used for such a purpose, though most people prefer a smooth blend of sound. We meet such music in the most unlikely places- in the dentist's office, in the airport and the bus depot, at the meat market.

In factories, such music helps relieve the boredom of routine labor. So it does in the home: women mix the sound of violins with the sound of the dishwasher, but mental processes- creative or calculating- seem to be aided as well. El Greco hired musicians to play for him as he painted. Many men, thinking their problems through, like to have the radio or the phonograph going. Many background-music records-"Music for Dining" "Music for Reading" and the like help to calm nerves and assuage fatigue.