Music expresses, at different moments, serenity or exuberance, regret or triumph, fury or delight. It expresses each of these moods, and many others, in a numberless variety of subtle shadings and differences. It may even express a state of meaning for which there exists no adequate word in any language. In that case, musicians often like to say that it has only a purely musical meaning.
While listening, each listener feels for himself the specific expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece of music. And if it is a great work of art, don’t expect it to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return to it.
Themes or pieces need not express only one emotion, of course. Take such a theme as the first main one of the Ninth Symphony, for example. It is clearly made up of different elements. It does not say only one thing.
Now, perhaps, the reader will know better what I mean when I say that music does have an expressive meaning but that we cannot say in so many words what that meaning is.
The third plane on which music exists is the sheerly musical plane. Besides the pleasurable sound of music and the expressive feeling that it gives off, music does exist in terms of the notes themselves and of their manipulation. Most listeners are not sufficiently conscious of this third plane.
It is very important for all of us to become more alive to music on its sheerly musical plane. After all, an actual musical material is being used. The intelligent listener must be prepared to increase his awareness of the musical material and what happens to it. He must hear the melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors in a more conscious fashion. But above all he must, in order to follow the line of the composer’s thought, know something of the principles of musical form. Listening to all of these elements is listening on the sheerly musical plane.
I have split up mechanically the three hypothetical, separate planes on which we listen merely for the sake of greater clarity. Actually, we never listen on one or the other of the three planes. What we do is to correlate them--- listening in all three ways at the same time. It takes no mental effort, for we do it instinctively.
In a sense, the ideal listener is both inside and outside the music at the same moment, judging it and enjoying it, wishing it would go one way and watching it go another--- almost like the composer at the moment he composes it; because in order to write his music, the composer must also be inside and outside his music, carried away by it and yet coldly critical of it. A subjective attitude is implied in both creating and listening to music.
What the listener should strive for, then is a more active kind of listening. Whether you listen to Mozart or Duke Ellington, you can deepen your understanding of music only by being a more conscious and aware listener-- not someone who is just listening, but someone who is listening for something.
16. Which of the following statements may be advocated by the author of this passage?
A. The value of music is commensurate with its sensuous appeal.
B. Since there are three separate planes, every time we listen to music it takes us great
mental effort.
C. Music may even express a state of meaning for which there exists no adequate word in any language to pin it down.
D. Ravel is a greater creator than Beethoven.
17. What does the example of Ninth Symphony indicate? A. We listen on one or the other of the three planes.
B. We all listen to music according to our separate capacities. C. Themes need not express only one emotion.
D. The sound appeal of music is a potent and primitive force.
18. On which plane do we hear music without thinking, without considering it in any way?
A. The sheerly musical plane. B. The emotional plane.
C. The expressive musical plane. D. The sensuous plane.
19. What does the sheerly musical plane refer to?
A. It refers to a kind of brainless but attractive state of mind is engendered by the mere sound appeal of the music.
B. It refers to the actual musical material being used, the melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors, the principles of musical form.
C. It refers to the specific expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece of music.
D. All of the above.
20. Why is it important to be a more active listener?
A. Because we never listen on one or the other of the three planes. B. Because you can deepen your understanding of music.
C. Because the sound appeal of music is a potent and primitive force. D. Because all composers do not use that sound stuff in the same way.
Passage 1 CACDC
Passage 2 CBCAC
Passage 3 ACDDA
Passage 4 CBDBA
