Part 2: Music's Second Universal Constant

Listening is the great constant in music. No matter what kind of music you are hearing, you can approach it through the lens of listening.

Rewind to 150 years ago, and there was another great constant in music: performers. Maybe it sounds obvious, but without performers there was no music. This also meant that the closer proximity you had to a trained musician, the higher quality and quantity of music you had access to. This is why the Esterhazy family were patrons to Joseph Haydn and the orchestra under him. This is why stories about music in fiction and nonfiction have so much effect. (For example, in The Way of Kings, The Name of the Wind, The Lord of the Rings, etc.) Without a performer, music simply wasn’t available. 

For millennia this was a musical constant, until Thomas Edison expanded the introductory work done by Édouard-Léon Scott De Martinville to produce the phonograph in 1877. Over the 20th century sound technology evolved at an increasing pace–from the phonograph all the way to MP3 players before the turn of the century. The 21st century has taken those evolutions and enhanced them to bring us the most convenient access to music imaginable, where we simply search for the song or piece we want and have instant, low-cost access to it. 

But there is a cost to everything, and one of the most obvious costs to music’s convenience is a decrease in intentional listening. 

As a child I remember pilfering my older brother’s CD’s to listen to tunes that I could only hear when my brothers were at school. It was easy to thoroughly appreciate the music I had when I had such limited access to it, which meant I found my listening to be more intentional. It’s hard to simulate that experience when choosing from the millions of titles on Spotify or YouTube.

When a rare element becomes common, the value decreases. We can’t allow ourselves to treat art like we would a physical element. Nietzsche famously said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.” With more access to music than ever, I believe our listening is what’s compromised when we fail to gain a similar conviction from the opportunity to hear music. 

This article is part two of a series on listening theory. Stayed tuned for part three next week!