Music

          Author: Aaron Collins 

        

     

         While sitting in my underwear drinking coffee this morning, I put on a record my grandpa gave to me years ago: Delius' North Country Sketches. I was about to grab my phone to start reading about Delius and the context of the piece until i remembered that I was listening to a vinyl LP and like all old recordings, there was an entire article written on the back of the record sleeve designed to give the listener some context and background of the composer and piece of music. I realized that classical music was meant to hear while listening with undivided attention. It was written and performed to capture your imagination; to take you somewhere else. It was not an accompaniment to a visual; it was both the sound and the visual together. Hence why so many composers have specific places and visuals in mind for their compositions (North Country Sketches or the English countryside in Northern England). The listener is urged to imagine the context/image/scene/setting in which the music will elaborate. I only now seem to be realizing that when I'm listening to a recording of a classical piece, it may be only one interpretation many times removed from the composer. I have to remember, this isn't them I'm hearing. This isn't their recording. It's not like Delius went into the studio for a session. He imagined it all, visualized it and then transcribed it into a tedious format of notation which is truly the official record of the song. A piece of paper with notations doesn't make any sound. Thus the only true record we have of the piece exists inside of the mind of the composer.  All recordings of it then are merely interpretations. All performances too, are interpretations. Until recently music was inextricably tied to live performance. One couldn't hear music except to be in the room hearing the musicians perform it. And I say room loosely. The setting of where the piece would be performed and how many musicians, the instruments to be played, was as much a part of the song as the actual content. Chamber music was meant to be played in a...chamber? A smaller space. Symphonies were meant to be played in huge concert halls in which the concept of "stereo" was invented. Fifty or so musicians spread out laterally to blast you with sounds that hit your 180 degree periphery but also reverberate behind you making it a 360 degree experience technically. Music and live performance were inextricably linked. Instead of going to see a movie on a screen while the music plays as accompaniment, the music WAS the visual! It's a theater of the imagination. 

     At this point I'd almost finished my coffee and realized I should probably put some pants on but then I read that it was written by some guy who personally knew the composer and even helped transcribe while the composer was blind and paralyzed. Wow. How often I hear recordings of music as opposed to being present for a live performance; how silly it must be then, to feel so much pressure in recording my own songs and making the "definitive version" of the song. That many many incarnations of the song will exist. Every time it is performed, it can continue to evolve and morph and change. Damn. I need to get more live music in my life!