Sonny Boy Terry and Michael Durbin In Conroe’s Corner Pub (04/14/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The more one loves music,
the less music one loves.”
— Really?!!
I was going through some of my brother’s notes on music this morning and came upon the Roger Sessions statement, “The more one loves music, the less music one loves.” From my own personal experience, there is music I may not have liked but learned to love it.
So, I decided to research the context of what Sessions was saying.
“. . . this initial stage in listening to music is an entirely direct one; the listener brings to the music whatever he can bring, with no other preoccupation than that of hearing. This is, of course, what is to be desired; it is the condition of his really hearing. He will hear the music only to the extent that he identifies himself with it, establishing a fresh and essentially naive contact with it, without preconceived ideas and without strained effort.
. . . the listener’s reaction is immediate and seems, in a sense, identical with the act of hearing. Undoubtedly this is what many listeners expect. And yet, on occasion, one may listen to music attentively, without any conscious response to it until afterward; one’s very attention may be so absorbed that a vivid sense of the sound is retained, but a sense of communications experienced only later. It is this sense of communication to which I refer under the term ‘enjoyment’; obviously, one may not and often does not, in any real sense, ‘enjoy’ what is being communities. There is certainly some music that we never ‘enjoy’; experience inevitably fosters discrimination, and there is certainly some truth even in the frequent, seemingly paradoxical statement that ‘the more one loves music, the less music one loves.’ This statement is true in a sense if we understand it as applying to the experience of an individual, and not a general rule. But if our relation to the music is a healthy one — that is to say, a direct and simple one — our primary and quite spontaneous effort will to deny it.”
The more you learn about something you like, the more you will love it.
— kenne
