Are you listening...or just hearing?

It was one of my favourite questions to GCSE students at the start of their 2 year course! Not worded quite like that, to be honest...I preferred to inject a little bit of fun: "How many of you listen to music while you do your homework?" was more like what I would have asked. Every time, every year, every hand went up. I would shake my head with a wry grin and accuse them all of being liars!

What a great way to provoke a wave of indignation! "But I DO!!!" would come back at me from all corners...and so I would go on to prove my point! Shaking my head, somewhat, I would ask them to 'listen' to a piece of music I had carefully pre-prepared! As soon as they heard the harpsichord arepeggio that led into an operatic recitative I watched the lights go out around the classroom...pupil by pupil the eyes glazed over. Which was something of a shame, really, for the words I sang on the recording included the lines, "Come, touch me on the shoulder and this fiver shall be yours!"

As the music played I took a note from my wallet and placed it, for all to see, in front of me on the desk. I waited for the music to stop, looked around the room in a questioning way for a few moments, then placed it back into my wallet. I never parted with the note in 15 years!

Of course, I would always be asked what I'd been doing with the money and I replie

d each time by writing four questions on the board:

1) Which instrument provides the accompaniment for this song?

2) From which type of work might this excerpt be taken:

a) a symphony

b) an opera

c) a pop song

3) What might have happened had I listened to the words properly first time through?

4) Write a sentence or two about the difference between listening to music and just hearing it.

Of course, second time through, the music was 'listened to' properly, one or two jokers might even try to touch me on the shoulder...but the fiver was staying in my pocket! We would go on to discuss the differences between 'hearing' music (as they now all admitted they did while doing homework) and really listening to it! An important lesson was learned very early on as part of a GCSE course that relies heavily on the ability to listen to music 'properly'

But I have discovered over the years that some people really CAN'T listen to music in the way I do (or the way I might want them to). Listening to music and enjoying it has a pre-requisite requirement* that you 'understand' what you are listening to, at least to some ext

ent. Let me explain:

If I were to play some little known excerpt of 'classical' music** to a brand new class of Year 7 pupils (11 years old) - for example, Bartok's Violin Concerto (see link below) - with the instruction from me to simply 'enjoy it', I may as well give a toothless man a 16 ounce steak with no knife and fork with the same directive! He would choke and they would, at least, feel sick!

On the contrary, if I asked the pupils to listen for the 8 note introduction by the harp, then hear how it is joined by the plucked (pizzicato) bassline played by cellos and basses - with a single French Horn note above - then, at least they will have some chance of 'digesting' at least a part of the musical 'steak'.

(The Bartok - here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcJx4KkAzW0 )

Of course, it's this very fact that makes The Beatles easier to 'listen' to than Bartok; why (Glenn) Miller sold more discs than Miles (Davis) and why Cheryl (Cole) gets more downloads than...I dunno...Sade!

It's instant palatability - the same reason more people eat bubble-gum than broccoli or drink Ribena rather than rootbeer! And***, if we never venture beyond the instantly appeasing we may go our whole lives without experiencing Elgar, reading beyond Seuss to, say, Salinger...or even doing something as basic as enjoying olives and anchovies on a pizza!

I'll happily admit that when my friend Alvin first played me the music of Yes I 'didn't get it'! When I first played the music of Eric Ball it went over my head! Just like my first month of doing the Telegraph crossword saw one or two clues a day filled in! Fortunately, most of us can continue to LEARN all the way through our lives...and thank God for that!

So...next time you do your homework or have the radio on while you do your housework why not sit down quietly for five minutes and REALLY LISTEN. There's a whole new world out there!

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*at this point I have a vision of my old English teacher, Trish Gilbert, admonishing me for a) starting a sentence with an adjective and b) breaking another rule whose name escapes me 31 years later about using two words with the same meaning...like saying, "Personally, I...". Sorry Mrs G!

** definitely a blog subject for another day: "What is Classical Music?"

***Oh-oh...he's at it again Trish!