Issue One

As our thoughts turn not only to the end of our own century but also toward the temporal landmark of the new millennium, it seems an appropriate time to acknowledge the extraordinary changes that the last hundred years have wrought in the world of music. It certainly has been a period of stunning artistic innovation, mirroring unprecedented developments in technology. The last hundred years have brought us astonishing advancement in our ability to appreciate music—or have they? We certainly enter the next millennium armed with a prodigious array of technological achievements. Are we leaving anything behind?

In a society in which we are continually besieged with visual stimulation, assaulted with noise of all forms, battered with an unceasing stream of sensory overload from a myriad of sources, why should we go to a concert? What real and vital place in our lives does a Mozart concerto, an Elgar symphony or a Debussy tone poem hold? Has our world progressed beyond the point where classical music can communicate something uniquely precious to us?

Life in 2000 revolves ever-increasingly around our sense of sight. Products are sold through visual stimulation, classes are taught with more and more reliance on visual aids, and entertainment options are sight-oriented to an ever greater degree. Even in terms of musical enjoyment, tapes and CDs seem not to be sufficient—video discs are fast gaining in popularity. Have we forgotten how to listen?

A century ago, a concert was a very different experience than what we have come to expect. Listeners were disappointed if the duration of a concert was less than three hours, and performances of four hours or more were not uncommon. Some may remember that even a scant three or four decades ago, many a Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon were contentedly spent in listening–just listening– to the radio. Could many people today spend three hours listening to a symphony broadcast or to an opera on CD without reading, or working, or "supplementing" the experience in some other way? Has progress robbed us of our ability to have a satisfying, purely aural experience?

The problem of "good listening" is a complex one. Part of it lies in the fact that we live in a world that has a much higher ambient decibel level than the environment of our ancestors. We have become so accustomed to this fact that we scarcely notice that we are surrounded by a constant din of sound waves. Can you hear it? If you are like most of us, you cannot.

Yet I am convinced that a time traveler catapulted from 2000 into the year 1200 would be amazed first by the incredible, wonderful quiet of a pre-machinery age. On the other hand, the unfortunate medieval peasant who found himself in any large city today might easily lose his hearing from the shock of the suddenly increased decibel level. Bombarded with noise pollution as we are, it is small wonder that we are not accustomed to sheer, unadulterated, intensive listening.

Another aspect of the problem lies in the fact that the progress of our communications technology has made that most wonderful of aural experiences—the enjoyment of music—almost too accessible. In the past, a concert or a broadcast was a special experience, one to be anticipated, relished and remembered. A musical event was exactly that—an event—unaccompanied by other trappings.

Today, we can hardly escape from the "music" that has become a background noise to every other aspect of our lives. In elevators, in stores, in cars, in office buildings, at the dentist, our ears are never free from a continuous stream of music specifically designed to be nondescript. As a result, we have become desensitized to that most wonderful of art forms.

The very nature of music contributes to this dilemma. Music is the only art form that exist completely in time.

Visual art, once created, is fixed and unchanging. We can study Van Gogh’s "Starry Night", for example, at our leisure, assimilating it at our own pace. This is not the case with music, however. Once a series of notes has passed by our ears, they are gone. If we’ve missed the melody, or a beautiful harmonic transition, or a shimmering blend of instrumental color, the moment is lost until the next performance. And since all these moments are inextricably connected and interwoven, our inability to listen may mean that we’ve missed the overall shape of the piece.

This quality of tenuous evanescence, of exquisite fragility, of fleeting impermanence is part of what makes music so special. Should we be content to deny ourselves an experience that can deeply enrich us because our noisy world has taught us not to listen?

Our ears are the most flexible, the least limiting of all our senses. They require no education, no training, no special talent to communicate to our brains a uniquely personal interpretation of the sound waves that set them resonating. Every listener brings his or her own life experience and personality to a concert, and the aural communication of sound to brain is an intensely individual one. This experience, too subtle and subconscious to be expressed verbally, is unique to each of us; one listener’s personal emotional reaction to a Beethoven symphony, for example, can never be exactly duplicated by any other human being.

All of us have the necessary gift to be able to appreciate good music: our humanness. As living, breathing men and women we possess everything we need to understand music fully, to relish an experience that can be immensely ennobling and enriching. If we can open our ears and listen, we are the heirs to an art that can move us, can touch us, can deepen our humanity as nothing in our lives can.