top of page

The whole sum

The cliche is still among us: music is made up of melody, harmony, and rhythm. That, alas, (or not!) is not at all how the ear works. Unless, of course, the ear has been so preconditioned by over-simplistic pedagogy and/or lousy recording or playback engineering that total sound is nowhere in evidence. In fact, the ear hears a totality, all the time, regardless of style or setting.


I was reminded of how this works yesterday as I recalled my shock on first hearing live a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, a piece which I had heard hundreds of time on a mono recording back in the 1950’s. I had furnished the bass sonorities out of my own musical brain: they were simply not present on that recording. But live!!! I will never forget that impact, which continues to inform my ear.

0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

I remember as a kid being intrigued by the song "Oh, my darlin' Clementine." Sure sounds like a sad story. Can't be! But it is fun to sing it exaggerating its tragic surface. There is a young boy wh

Every time I cross 109th St. on my way up or downtown I cast a glance at the apartment building on the corner of 109 and Riverside Drive, the former residence of Hannah Arendt. Her essays in The New Y

Funny, how we take for granted that someone is listening when we talk to them. Do you recall ever talking to someone who wasn't paying the slightest attention to you and/or to what you were saying? T

bottom of page