Focus

I've come to realise over many years that experiencing music in a live context adds to the value of that music immeasurably for me. I used to think this could be accounted for in two ways. The first was the obvious fact that it simply sounded better as it was coming at me directly, unmediated by a mechanical system of reproduction. The second was the idea that watching the music being made was a reminder of the difficulty involved in the making of it, leading to an exciting sense of the danger that it might all go wrong and a concomitant excitement when it didn't.

I now think there's a third reason, and this relates to the odd satisfaction I feel when watching recordings of live performances, a satisfaction not far off that felt by being there for the real thing. It's a simple, rather obvious point, so obvious that I've rarely consciously acknowledged it. And here it is: Watching musicians perform gives a non-musician like myself an abundance of clues as to how the music works and what I need to be listening for. It's an aid to focus, and I need more help in that direction than I sometimes care to acknowledge.

This has come home to me with unusual force of late when I've been listening to music on youtube for which someone has uploaded the scores. Now I know that on the surface that's something quite different from watching musicians play, yet the idea of being afforded a visual aid enabling focus is essentially the same. In truth, I can hardly read music at all, but watching the broad ups and downs of what I see in the score acts as a kind of commentary, shedding enormous light on the sound world I'm trying to navigate.

Today I was listening to a particularly gorgeous piece by the ever-wonderful Toru Takemitsu entitled Rain Spell. I'm sure its spell would have been cast on me without being able to view the score as I went along, but trying to follow the score seemed to draw me into the music in an almost physical way, acting as a guarantee of undivided attention. And the rewards were spectacular - quite out of this world.