Worrying that you can't understand the content of music and not knowing whether you understand it correctly is the "obsession" of many people who appreciate music, especially classical music.
It is this conceptual obstacle that keeps people out of the door of musical art.
For many years, Zhou Haihong, former vice president of the Central Conservatory of Music, has been calling for how to "understand" to appreciate music, and everyone can run freely in music.
You're not short of "musical cells"
When it comes to music, especially classical music, many people's first reaction is "can you understand it?"
Zhou Haihong, who studied piano since childhood, also suffered from "not understanding". One day he was practicing "Sunset Drum", a piano song adapted from a traditional ancient song, and it also has a familiar name - "Spring River Flower Moon Night". My father asked, "You've been practicing this song for so long, tell me which section represents Chunjiang and which one shows the night of the flower moon?" ”
At this time, Zhou Haihong was already a piano student at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, but he could not answer. His father turned and left, much to his shame. Until he went to the Central Conservatory of Music, what he was most afraid of was still that others asked him what a certain musical work expressed.
Not long ago, in a lecture held at the Shanghai Library, Zhou Haihong analyzed why music is so difficult to understand for the audience who watched the lecture live and online:
Music is composed of sound, and sound has two most basic performance characteristics: First, sound has no visuality, it is an auditory signal, and does not contain visual information, so music cannot directly convey visual images. Second, the sound has no semantics and cannot directly convey ideas and concepts. Therefore, what is not understood and heard in music is not because the listener's appreciation level is poor, the lack of "musical cells", or the lack of musical accomplishment, but because the music itself cannot directly express specific things.
As we all know, music is the art of hearing, fine art is the visual art, and literature is the art of language. The pursuit of images, scenes, stories, ideas, philosophies and other content in music is actually to appreciate music in a literary and artistic way. "Using visual, verbal content to explain auditory sensations is a misunderstanding for many years, and it is this misunderstanding that has caused great obstacles for ordinary people to appreciate music." This obstacle has kept many people out of the door of musical art. ”
Over the years, Zhou Haihong has continuously expressed his musical aesthetic views in art popularization and professional lectures held across the country: why should music be understood.
Beethoven's giant head in 1987 in Bonn, The city of Bonn, xinhua news agency
Synesthesia is an instinct
Although it is not necessary to understand music in a literary and artistic way, it does not mean that music cannot express anything. As long as people who have listened to music quietly cannot deny that music, the art of sound, can indeed make people feel outside of hearing.
So, why is listening to music so imaginative? The stimulation of sound signals can make people react in addition to hearing, which is a psychological phenomenon, and its core mechanism is called synesthesia, which is a psychological phenomenon that causes other sensations by one feeling. Synesthesia, like sight, taste, hearing, and touch, is an innate feeling of man, but it is not perceived by people under normal circumstances.
Zhou Haihong gave an example: "I have two pieces of sugar, one is chocolate flavored and the other is mint flavored. I also have two voices here, one bass and one treble. Which of these two sounds feels like chocolate or which is more like mint? "The answers given by the audience are almost all bass-like chocolate, treble-like mint. When the sensations of taste and hearing are connected, this is the phenomenon of synesthesia.
When listening to music, it is a human instinct to correspond with emotions through synesthesia. Even newborn babies can feel whether music is happy or sad. It is precisely by virtue of this instinctive synesthetic response that everyone has, that the composer consciously or unconsciously selects and organizes the sound to express the emotional content he wants to express. It is also through synesthesia that in the process of appreciating music, people may have associations with images, scenes, emotions, emotions, thoughts, philosophies and other content outside of hearing.
What doorways are the insiders listening to
Why are some musical works easy to understand, while others are "unintelligible"?
Whether a musical work can elicit a clear understanding of the content of the audience depends on whether there is a continuous and stable synesthesia correspondence. That is to say, the composer's choice of sound and the organization of the sound and the arrangement of the sound must always maintain a very good correspondence in synesthesia between what he wants to express. If the correspondence is not good, the audience will feel that they do not understand.
Of course, as a listener, it is not without responsibility at all, and sensitive synesthesia and rich associations are prerequisites for understanding music. Developing the habit of forming synesthesia is something we need to work on. Zhou Haihong said.
In most cases, it is difficult for people to feel exactly what the music is saying when listening to classical music. "If you can't hear anything, you don't have to attribute that you don't have a musical cell, the reason is that the composer doesn't write like it." Why can't it be written like a little bit? It may be because the composer's talent is not enough, and the main reason is that when the composer creates music, what he pursues is not to make the music look like anything, what he pursues is the beauty of pure music. ”
Many people have a misconception about composers, thinking that they always create for the sake of expressing something. In fact, a composer may write a piece of music for the aesthetic ideal of hearing, just to express it well. Music is the art of hearing, and feeling the beauty of pure hearing is the most important appreciation value of music art. Just as fine art is the art of vision, feeling the pleasure of vision is the most important value of fine art. Food is the art of taste, and no one will ask what profound ideological connotations and humanistic connotations are in a plate of Dongpo elbows.
The so-called "layman looks at the bustle, the insider looks at the doorway", feels the charm of the art itself, and is the doorway. When the general audience looks at a painting, they always have to explore the history behind the painting, the story, and the painter's life experience. When a painter looks at a painting, he mainly looks at the composition, color, line, light and shadow perspective, etc. The same is true for appreciating music, the more professionals, the more inclined to feel the charm of music at the level of the body, from the sound, organizational structure and other aspects.
Commemorative stamp of the austrian genius musician Mozart Xinhua Photo
There is no standard answer to understanding music
Many music lovers have always had a "shadow" in their hearts - they don't know if their understanding of music is right. Zhou Haihong even met some "enthusiasts" and found that they would also fall into this kind of doubt, always looking for professionals to give the standard answer behind the music.
So, is there a standard answer to listening to music?
According to psychological principles, sound can only cause people to have a very rough, broad synesthesia reaction, such a broad synesthesia reaction is incomplete for determining any specific content, which leads to subjectivity, ambiguity, uncertainty and multi-solution in musical understanding.
The so-called subjectivity is that each person will develop associations according to their own synesthesia, and there is no objective standard. The so-called ambiguity is that synesthesia is vague, and there is no time for a while, and it is impossible to grasp specific things. Uncertainty is when listening to music and thinking about here and there for a while. This inevitably leads to multi-solution, and different people have different feelings about the same work.
The American composer Gershwin has a well-known work called "An American in Paris", and the composer once wrote a commentary on the premiere program of this work: The work shows a sunny and sunny morning, an American strolling to the Elysées Square, he walks through a café, crosses the river, sits on the open-air seat of the café on the left bank... If you don't read this text and just listen to the music, who can hear that this is an open-air seat in the Elysées Square and Café in Paris, France?
However, this subjectivity, ambiguity, uncertainty and multi-solution are not only the shortcomings of musical art, but the great charm of this art. There is no standard answer to music, it gives everyone the freedom to imagine, and you can be free when listening to music. Music is the most free art, but also the art that can cultivate people's imagination the most.
Many people have a stereotypical mode of thinking about appreciating music, which is mainly derived from traditional music education methods: the teacher first explains the background of the work, the author's life, the creative background, the music theme, etc., and the task of the listener is to sit in the right seat and "listen" to what the teacher says.
Mozart's famous Turkish March has long been interpreted as a representation of soldiers marching, but different performers play very differently, some do sound like soldiers, and some sound like rabbits jumping. How can a performer be so demanding that the audience's understanding be consistent with the composer's expressive intent? If the performer is still like this, why should the ordinary listener care whether his feelings match the original intention of the composer?
"Feeling like I couldn't understand it, I blocked a large number of people from the door of music." Fearing that they would misunderstand, they pushed a large number of people out of the gate. In fact, as soon as people are born, they are within the door of music. Each of us can freely experience emotions in music, experience life, and project our imagination into music. So many great performers and conductors do this, what concerns do we have? Zhou Haihong believes that with the value of music and art in an emotional way, music can truly add color to life.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Huang Wei Text Editor: Chen Junjun Title Image Source: Zhou Haihong held a lecture at the Shanghai Library
Source: Author: Chen Junjun