I recently shared ideas on the subject of musical literacy in response to some questions posed by one of our readers. One question was “Why is repeated listening the key to musical literacy?”
Repetition is key to so many things. We can’t begin to define verbs like “practice,” “exercise,” and “drill” without including repetition. It’s how we learn the multiplication tables and foreign languages, how we get into physical shape, and how we understand the passage of time. Without repetition, everything is chaos.
Much of learning involves memorization: spelling, math facts, chronologies. We develop muscle memory as well: stepping on the car’s brake, a golf swing, musical scales and arpeggios. All these skills come only with repetition. Once learned, they are not forgotten, like riding a bicycle.
Music relies on repetition for coherence. It may be literal repetition as when successive verses of a hymn are sung to the same tune. The repetition may involve various types of imitation where the repetition takes on a slightly different character such as a melody repeated at a different pitch level or decorated with trills and grace notes. Aural aspects of repetition, patterns of similarity and contrast, define musical form.
Most of us first learn to analyze things visually. We read for knowledge. Charts and graphs help us to digest data. We understand our surroundings mostly by what we see. These skills help us to experience and appreciate a work of visual art.
When we look at a painting, we can see (if not grasp) all of it at once—its subject and form, its entire color palette, its minute details.
Music, however, unfolds in time. It requires patience. And critically, it requires memory because all musical events, once sounded, disappear into the ether. Individual musical events have to be remembered for the listener to recognize them when they reappear. You cannot so easily refer back to them as you might turn back a few pages in a book to recall some detail.
Just as you read or watch a film with your attention focused, you need to listen to music carefully and without distractions. So much of the music we hear these days comes to us unbidden, piped into our surroundings for some utilitarian or commercial purpose—to get us to relax in the dentist’s chair or on the airplane, to keep us moving through the turnstiles, to direct our attention to an advertisement, or to mask an uncomfortable silence. We have developed the habit—through repetition—of tuning it out.
What were they playing the last time you went to the grocery store or a restaurant? Surely something, but probably nothing you can recall.
So while repetition holds the key, listening needs to be intentional. Interruptions and distractions defeat the goal. You can multitask perhaps with things that involve only a different part of the brain—manual tasks like sorting, cooking, or knitting or anything you do that doesn’t push your listening into a passive activity. But, otherwise, listening requires your focus.
One of my undergraduate professors long ago constantly exposed our small class to new music—often new in the sense of being recently composed and always new in the sense of being something we had never heard before. He insisted that we listen to it twice with no pause in between.
Of course, two hearings is not enough to get to know a complex piece of music, but it helps us to begin the process. The second time you will have some memory to work with, and that memory is fresh.
Hearing a new piece of music once is rather like walking into a room of strangers and being introduced by name to multiple people. You will likely remember very few, or none, of those names if that is the full extent of your interaction with those people. But a few minutes of conversation or a second round of introductions can make a huge difference. A person may become an actual acquaintance after numerous interactions, and maybe even a friend. Once a friend, someone you know and care about, you will remember that person for a lifetime.
Music is like that. With repeated listenings, it becomes a friend. Once a friend, it stays with you for a lifetime.
In our Discovering Music course, we ask our students to listen to each recommended musical work six times. There is no magic in the number “six,” but there is magic in the repetition. We also suggest several methods associated with each hearing to aid in focusing the student’s attention on the music and thereby promoting retention.
I have no idea how many pieces of music I have gotten to know well, certainly many hundreds at least. Perhaps thousands. Some I learned more than 50 years ago and may not have heard since. But when I go back to them, I remember them in remarkable detail. You likely experience the same thing when you hear a song from your childhood or teen years. This human ability to retain music in the deepest parts of our mind and heart is extraordinary. As an illustration, here are videos of how music reawakens people suffering from Alzheimer’s. It is something quite profound.
And of course it is not music in general that has this effect, but specific music that has been embedded deeply in the patient’s memory. Ultimately, the trigger is not just something remembered, but the intense memory of something that was loved.
Maybe that’s a place to start in a new post that discusses not the what and the how of musical literacy, but the question of why it matters.