My Friend Aaron Copland
Being a music major at Michigan State means that I have a deeper understanding of music than most of my non-music major colleagues. However, my colleagues also possess certain musical qualities that I most likely lack, something that is very common in our world. After reading an article written by the great American composer, Aaron Copland, I find that I now have a better understand of how I listen to music, as well as how many other people listen to music.
The article I read was written by Copland in 1930 titled, "How We Listen To Music". In this article, Copland explains his view on how people listen to music; he describes that we all "listen to music on three separate planes" (Copland,1930). Copland describes the first plane as the sensuous plane, which is when we (a person) listens to music for the "sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself" (Copland,1930). He goes on to say that this is a plane where we listen to music without thinking, without considereing the music in anyway.Copland says that sometimes when we listen to music just to listen to it, we can become reliant on the music to take us to a different place, we want to lose ourselves in the music, "use the music as a consolation or an escape" (Copland,1930), which can become dangerous because then we miss the other aspects of music.
Further in the article, Copland describes the second plane as the expressive one. This is where music expresses a meaning, however it doesn't always describes a specific meaning. Many composer have trouble describing what their music "means" because most composer view their music as an object or a thing; they don't want their music to contain one meaning because after a while that meaning can become dull and boring. Composers want their music to contain a new meaning everytime the audiences listens to the music, thus giving the music a longer life-span.
The last plane Copland discusses in his article is the "sheerly musical plane", where the music exists in therms of the nots themselves and the of their maniplution. What Copland is saying is that when a person is aware of this third plane, they are aware of what is going on in the music, as far as notation and rhythm is concerned. In this plane, a listener is also aware of the harmonic functions that are taking place, as well as the tonal color that music expresses. Professional musicians typically focus on this third plane most because it is what they need to know well in order to give the audience and understanding of all third planes.
By the end of the article, Copland claims that every listener is aware of all three levels when he/she listens to music. However, because every listener is at a different musical comptency, every listener experiences each level in a different manner; some levels stand out more than others. Overall, I found this article provided a new way for me to look at music as well as give me a new way to describe music to people who do not practice it for a living.