Experiencing Mozart

While studying for my greek exam I listened to Mozart's requiem.

The reason I tell this story is to understand and engage with how music is experienced, sometimes the same piece of music or composer, differently by different people in different contexts.

In an interview Micheal Ignatieff mentions how his uncle George Grant would listen to Mozart on records, smoking a large cigar and a singing along.

The two contexts are clearly different: myself quietly listening to Mozart ripped off Youtube and the thinker George Grant smoking and singing along to Mozart's music on a record. I can only imagine how different the context would be for the Austrian aristocracy sitting down for the first time to listen and enjoy one of the man's operas.

This got me thinking further.

I have, with the aide of the internet and the computer, access to countless digital recordings of almost any piece of music that I can listen to within a few moments of wanting to listen to it.

George Grant's choice and speed of what he listened to was both widened to anything recorded for a record and limited to owning or borrowing the record to listen to.

The Austrian aristocracy had even less choice only being able to listen to music live, and probably less at that, although I am sure the Hapsburgs would have live court musicians.

This leads me to a firm conclusion: the way I use technology shapes and fashions the way I enjoy, receive, reproduce and think about music. The three examples I gave illustrate that at different points in time depending on the technology and socioeconomic location of the listener music was experienced very differently. There are other factors but right now I want to focus on just the technological aspects of experiencing music.

Why?

I have recently been considering giving up a lot of my consumption of music both online and digitally? I do this first of all because I sometimes consume far to much of it and thus causes me to appreciate it (the music) less. If I am truly to live liberated from satiation (as my last post suggests I wanted too). Secondly I know people who play music; what a great way to build meaningful friendship with these people if the number one way I consume music is listening to their talents?

And finally most of the music I listen to is a pop culture canon (by that I mean an eclectic mixture of different musical suggestions - not the 'top 40') - whether that is Metric for Canadian Alternative, Miles Davis for Jazz or Relient K for Chirstian pop - I don't really have my own taste in music. It's a hodge-podge of digital malaise and I desire something better.

I want to experience the beauty of music. But I need to learn how to do this. Being self-aware is the first step.