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Posted by Romy the Cat on
01-29-2026
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What to do with a performance that you do not like? Mind you that this is Not a surface question and does not require surface answer. Let's pretend that objective of this question is not to learn why we want to discard it, but learn what does it mean to us. So, does discarded and not like by us interpretations has any practical value to us?
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Posted by Paul S on
01-29-2026
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A whole lot happens between the time that someone composes a piece and we "finally hear it". Included in this observation is the fact that we "have to hear it" before "we know we don't like it". Immediately to mind pops Gary Karr's "The Spirit of Koussevitzky", which sounded "pop" to me until I heard it via my current set-up. Here is one example (to prove the notion) of a changed reaction to a piece/performance in this case as being listened to in a different way. I suppose mood might be another factor. Still, there are plenty of performances I have disliked my whole life, even if I heard them differently on different occasions. Also, note that a particular performance might "lift" a piece that I "never liked until I heard that version", just as surely as there are pieces I always +/- enjoyed except for a given performance that "ruins the piece" for me. What value Aesthetics? For comprehensive discussions since Kant, look to Hegel or Adorno. That oughta hold most people.
Paul S
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Posted by Paul S on
01-30-2026
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Time to add that the previous post was (perhaps too) focused on thoroughly scripted Music and it is shaded by the idea of playback. "Spontaneous" Music is different enough to merit its own thread, whether Eastern/Asian, or Jazz, whatever, and it might include anything "heard for the first time" as this regards isolating initial reactions, even though the actual particulars involved with playing of spontaneous Music "should" distinguish it, and there is the obvious fact that "there is no second chance to hear original Music". It did not take me long to home in on jazz, and one does tend to build up contextual notions of what goes on to constitute "standards". Yet it is always "differences" that particularly distinguish anything from the conceptual broth.
Paul S
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Posted by rowuk on
01-31-2026
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Many years ago I got as a Christmas present, tickets for a new years concert with "The 5 Tenors". The program announcement had a bunch of pieces suitable for 1 to 5 tenors so we went. After 20 minutes into the concert, I told my wife that I can not sit through 5 "screaming" tenors and a Yamaha keyboard (not even a real piano). It was a waste of time and money. We left and got something good to eat. Now my family asks before giving us tickets...
With my playback however, I generally listen with purpose and that makes "lesser" performances more tolerable. I may get the score and go in "analytical" mode to get something from the composition itself. It is also possible that I tune out the ensemble and listen to the trumpet player just to see what they did with it. I do not think that I have any recordings that fail across all categories (composition/interpretation/intonation, quality and precision of play/plausibility of the recording: timbre, space, proportion. That being said, I do not have much random listening at home, so I usually do not struggle once the music is playing.
To talk about practical value to us, finding out what is missing - or too much, is a great emotional challenge. I have to be in the mood for challenges like this. My mood changes my tolerance level. If I have had my "hot shower" before listening and am relaxed, I am far more tolerant. If my wife comes in and wants me to turn it down, I lose interest quickly. If I have the score open, I am least critical of the auditory experience because what I read has priority over what I hear.
The critical reactions experienced (not in any order): experience is not worthy of my time, performance or composition is too "busy" making concentration difficult, performer/conductor needs to spend some time learning the piece, recording engineer was a deaf rock and roll survivor, is the play excessively "spectacular" or depressively uninformed? The most critical reaction is being "at home" completely comfortable with what is happening. This makes me think about if I am just missing something or if the performance is truly so memorable.
More positive is when I ask myself WHY the performance is this way. A good example is a "way too slow" Bruckner adagio. Is the tempo due to the live acoustics of the performance venue? Recordings from large churches generally have the microphones much closer to the instruments, enhancing intelligibility but losing the effects of the large room. Many times something in D-Major will sound way too dark or too bright (for my expectations). This can be due to "historic intonation" being a half step lower or higher. This has been a huge effect from the Historically Informed Performance movement since the 1950s. Not only do we have zealots trying to purge everything romantic or classical from renaissance or baroque music, we also have a huge amount of well founded research documenting probable playing technique and musical interpretation and a large group of performers that have specialized in this. Listening to works played on historic instruments requires that we be more tolerant of playing demands and spend more time with intonation that is not evenly tempered. A big advantage is the playing being much closer to singing than with modern play.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
02-01-2026
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Robin, I genuinely appreciate how you describe the circumstances of your life outside the listening room and how you connect them to your listening experiences, forming a kind of personal mosaic. I hold a strong theory, that a listening event, whether at home or at a live performance, is not derived solely from what is heard. It is a complex multidimensional phenomenon in which sound itself is only one ingredient among many.
What was exceptionally beautiful in your reply is something you most likely overlooked yourself. You wrote, “Many times something in D-major will sound way too dark or too bright for my expectations.” That single sentence is the key to everything.
There is no argument about whether your perception of darkness or brightness is accurate. We do not need to debate it at all. The fact that you experience this feeling is already data. From there, you begin to examine the circumstances of the recording or performance and try to build a causal pattern between what you believe is important, such as microphone placement or the church space, and your subjective impressions. This is perfectly reasonable if your objective in listening is simply to have those subjective feelings, full stop.
However, if your objective is not the feelings themselves but the consequences of those feelings at the level of consciousness, then the entire orientation changes. You no longer ask why you had a feeling or failed to have one. Instead, you ask a different question: what is it within this feeling that caused me to reflect on something.
This is a completely different level of inquiry, and the difference is enormous. At this level, whether you had a feeling or did not have one, how intense it was, or whether it came from beautiful trumpet phrasing or refined driver tube articulation becomes irrelevant. What matters is not the sensation itself but what in you responded in a particular way to a particular sensation.The mere fact that a sensation occurred is no longer a noble objective. What becomes truly interesting is the mechanism by which sensation turns into consciousness, far more than the mechanism by which sensation is produced in the first place.
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