Listening Practice

Ecomusicology

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THE ISO’S JACOB JOYCE MAKES CLASSICAL MUSIC ACCESSIBLE.

Words by Elizabeth Frickey

Anahid Khassabian opens his book Ubiquituous Listeningwith a simple statement: “Whether we notice or not: our days are filled with listening.” Humans are naturally predisposed to gather information about our environments through sound. But classical music? Many people would insist that they are NOT predisposed to this kind of listening. If classical music is in some ways a “language,” it might feel foreign at best.

Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (ISO) Jacob Joyce considers music to be almost a native language. “Music as a native language means that I don’t have to go through a translation process,” Joyce says. “Certain musical ideas just have a natural meaning [for me].” When Joyce isn’t busy preparing for his next ISO concert, he is also the host of the Attention to Detail podcast, a project dedicated to helping people build their listening practice for classical music. He even created a two-week program designed to prepare classical music newcomers for a real trip to a live concert. Joyce’s two-week program draws on four main listening strategies: attentive listening, noting ideas, grouping and mapping. Attentive listening requires participants to apply aspects of mindfulness to their focused listening. In noting their ideas, listeners can learn to reflect on exactly what they are hearing in their own words. Grouping and mapping are slightly more directed in their instruction, asking listeners to group

musical ideas or even connect them as “musical landmarks” on a larger landscape. This technique of mapping can be especially helpful when listening to longer stretches of music. It can be much easier, even for beginners, to imagine a sort of environment within a piece of music. This kind of visualization might come more naturally for some pieces than others, however. As Joyce notes, “the more music uses sounds that are reminiscent from sounds of everyday life, the more accessible it might feel.” In fact, some works might get composed with a particular image or narrative in mind — what we would call programmatic music. Not all programmatic music is created equal. We might even imagine a sort of “spectrum” of programmatic elements from the highly evocative nature of Richard Strauss’s tone poems to the more “absolute music” of J.S. Bach. However, Joyce often encourages beginning listeners to seek out more overtly programmatic music precisely Jacob Joyce because it calls forth such strong visual imagery, such as the falling snow of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or the Nordic landscape in Jean Sibelius’s En Saga. If learning to listen differently seems a bit intimidating, Joyce reassures us that “there are no wrong answers!” This program emphasizes that there is not just one way to listen to a piece of music and not just one message you should be getting. Joyce insists, “it is always better to get something, even hatred, out of a piece of music than to completely write it off without having a reason why.” But this practice of listening is about more than just enjoying classical music in the short term — it’s also about becoming a more attentive and mindful person in the long run. ■

Check out more of Jacob Joyce’s work on his website, https://www.jacobjoyceconductor.com/ and listen to Attention to Detail wherever you get your podcasts. Ecomusicology

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