Writing my late night report - well, late for me, that is - on the excellent film A Late Quartet reminded me of the importance as far as music is concerned of listening - I mean really listening! Not many of us do that, I certainly don't. Perhaps occasionally in the car on a long tedious motorway drive with no distractions I might begin to concentrate on listening but outside of that there are simply too many distractions. Thus, most of the subtleties and the inner language of music pass me by. I suppose, on reflection, that is why rhythm and melody seem so important in music because they are easily assimilated without effort on the part of the listener.
In the film, the key piece of music played by the characters is Beethoven's late string quartet No. 131. I bought CDs of all the late string quartets because people had raved about them but, alas, they passed me by untouched. The reason, of course, was that I wasn't really listening, plus, as I mentioned in my remarks about Elgar the other day, I just don't speak the (musical) language, I don't know the difference between a crotchet and quaver! Part of the sub-text in the film is that the man playing first violin is something of a control freak and in several close-ups you can see his score is heavily notated with exactly the correct instructions for playing any particular passage. It reminded me of my own scripts when playing Shakespeare when it was necessary to analyze the language and the rhythm and the content in order to meld them together so as to deliver them with maximum effect - even if most of the audience remained unaware of the details.
Anyway, thanks to this film I shall return to Beethoven's late string quartets, especially #131, with slightly more knowledge. Even so, and perhaps in a way this destroys my thesis above, I remember buying the entire collection of string quartets by Shostakovich, some of which are very 'modernist', and despite my ignorance, loving most of them immediately. Funny old thing, the human mind!