The Musical Experience
...s, only a couple are handed out to songwriters or composers; the rest go to the performer. The reasons for this are actually quite valid, though. Listeners no longer see the notes performed as in the days of Beethoven and Bach; the simply hear the music. More importantly, though, recent music has had a resurgence of singer-songwriters. Just like in the time of piano concertos, musicians perform the music that they themselves write. This fact alone has moved the musical scene from a simple form of entertainment to an art form. Sessions goes on to say that music is not merely one message sent to the people. He says that “…a given piece of music conveys one thing to one man, another thing to another. (pg. 23)” He reasons that a song can have many different meanings depending on the interpreter. Sessions states that the human ear is so keen that it can pick up every nuance of a song that a composer may throw in. “Actually the auditory functions possessed by the musician, even the musical genius, are possessed by the human race as a whole.” (pg. 30) If the listener has the same keen ear for detail that the creator has, the cultural line between performer, composer, and listener fades into near non-existence. Over the next three chapters, Sessions breaks down the mind of the listener, the composer, and the performer. He starts by speaking of the composer. The composer was and still is the heart of music. Before there could be music, there had to be a composer. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to pinpoint the place in history that the first song was composed, for it was long before notation that man was creating music. Cavemen would do tribal dances and “song” sessions that involved banging on the ground. It is for this reason that the history of music is a blurry one. With any other facet of society, a clear history can be derived. With a branch so powerful as music, though, such a history is shrouded in controversy. Sessions tries to prove that composers think more of their music then just notes set to a beat. He says that the “…mature composer will find himself inevitably, and as the natural result of his experiences, both forming general ideas and acquiring the ability to conceive his musical ideas in almost abstract terms.” (pg. 61) The performer of music, however, acts as a middle man. Sessions says that his work comes after the composer. “He conceives a coherent and meaningful pattern of tones and rhythms, but he translates the music he has thus conceived into symbols which enable the performer to bring it into an actual being.” (pg. 68) It seems that Sessions believes that the performer has a more difficult task than the composer, in that he must interpret what the composer has written in a meaningful and symbolic manner. Often, this can prove a daunting task, due simply to the fact that a composer can not express his own thoughts through the notes on the sheet, so the performer must put himself into the mind frame of the composer at the time of writing in an attempt to further understand the meaning. Seemingly, the listener has the easiest, ...