Five Questions About a Concert
Music 85
4/10/07
Someone once said it's usually better to ask a question than to answer
one. Asking rather than answering can lead to a greater understanding
We will, for the sake of this class, assume that all the concerts
we hear are wonderful, fascinating, important, and fertile ground for
extended study, repeated listening and contemplation. Let's also agree,
again for the duration of the term, that it's
our job to get to the bottom of things, not for the music to
necessarily show us that "bottom.".
In other words,
the onus is on us to be interested, not on the music to interest us. To
paraphrase the composer Herbert Brün, we'll be "interested in the
music we do not yet like."
So the goal of this set of assignments is this: to ask interesting,
informed,
insightful, deep, and discussion-provoking questions about the concerts
you attend.
These questions should:
- show that you were at the concert (!)
and be:
- intelligently and articulately written
- open-minded
- curious
- intended to promote the idea of learning more, understanding
more,
- thought-provoking
- as deep as you can craft them to be
- not necessarily have simple answers (in other words, the best of
them might lead to more interesting questions)
I encourage you to read the program notes, ask questions to anyone you
like, and do any additional research you care to, but I would like the
questions, ultimately, to emanate from your own ears, intellect, and
curiousity.
They should not:
- be thinly veiled reviews
- answer themselves
- be about your personal experience, arbitrary connotations with
the music, what you had for dinner, ...
- be based on unexamined assumptions, or unstated predispositions
We'll talk a lot more about this in class, and use your assignments
themselves as bases for discussion.
"Trial" questions about ron nagorcka and tim eriksen talks
Questions about other
concerts and speakers