The Art of Creative Listening

I’m well into my 98th year, but through some genetic grace enjoying physical and mental fitness and alertness.

I was a student of the great Leo Weiner in chamber music, (in the same class as Sir Georg Solti), and although a strictly amateur cellist, I was able to - and I did - perform with professional musicians in most of the late Beethoven string quartets up to a few months ago.

Unhappily, severe arthritic deformation in my fingers put an end to my cello-playing and, after some 90 years of virtually daily practice, this has left a big black hole in my life.

Although for almost three years now I have been a music critic, accredited to the superb Festspielhaus in Baden Baden (one of Europe’s largest opera and concert halls), writing for MusicalCriticism.com, I had to look for compensation for my virtually daily cello-playing. (My articles and reviews can be seen here.)

I spend many hours listening to my classical CDs and DVDs and having also played in my student days under most of the great maestros of the twenties and thirties, I was always familiar with, and fascinated by, the technique of conducting.

I have now started “CO-CONDUCTING” opera performances, symphony concerts, and even chamber music, solo works and lieder, and I believe that I have discovered an entirely new “ART OF CREATIVE LISTENING”.

Age old taboos force a concert or opera audience to sit rigidly throughout even the longest performances and the tightness of the seating accommodation imposes further restraints. It is only when allowed to applaud that this unnatural physical and mental posture can be relieved.

Like Pavlovian dogs, we are tuned to respect this taboo, even when we are listening to music in privacy.

In a live performance we rely on the body language of the performer to interpret for us what we are prevented by our taboos bodily to express ourselves. We are compelled to watch and concentrate motionlessly and passively.

I found that, when liberated from the constraints imposed on me in a concert hall, in my privacy I can give passionate bodily expression, at least similar to the performer’s or conductor’s interpretation, through “co-conducting”, and this with a baton.

I happen to be familiar with conducting techniques, but any music lover could express these genetically imprinted urges to respond to music with bodily reactions to its rhythm, logic, emotional and intellectual content, without having to handle a baton with professional competence.

A baton seems to defy even gravity, and has its own sensitive life, responding to the most subtle and subconscious pressures, like a water-diviner’s two-pronged dousing device. The baton, almost acting on its own, determines the pulse and separates the bars, throwing a clear light on the structure of the composition. You are almost forcibly identified with the performer, and, curiously, even with eyes closed, one can virtually visualise the entire orchestra to the extent of being able to give spacially correct cues to sections or soloists.

This intense identification with the performers and the feeling that one is really in charge of the performance is perhaps the most striking feature of this experience

I “did” recently the Ring transmitted from Bayreuth, two Meistersingers, Il Trovatore, Tales of Hoffmann, Rigoletto, Don Carlo, Ernani and most of the superb BBC Prom concerts, with, amongst many other works, Mahler 1, 3, 4 and 5, Brahms 1, 3 and 4 and an unforgettable Mahler 9th under Abbado, and it was not only an exercise idly waving my arms...

With a baton in hand I came to rely on this inner sensitivity to revive a truly enormous richness of memories that now enables me to give to myself parallel performances, as it were, of an almost unlimited repertory, always assisted by superb interpretations, which I replicate, almost performing myself. I have also found that I can cope with “co-conducting” works that are new to me, just relying on the powerful inner logic imparted by the use of a baton.

“Co-conducting” is an emotional and intellectual challenge, and, importantly, a major physical effort, possibly no less powerful in intensity than real live performances.

Elementary “co-conducting” may offer a significant assistance to therapeutical measures treating Alzheimer and Dementia sufferers. Recent research shows that musical memories are the ones that best resist the ravages inflicted by the dying of brain cells. I imagine that “co-conducting” for patients in group therapy would be an enjoyable pastime that also could increase the remnants of self respect and confidence.

If you get yourself a baton, you may be persuaded that I have opened a new window on “creative listening”. Presenters introducing recorded music or transmitting live performances may suggest to listeners to try this form of “creative listening”. Acquiring a baton is the first step in this experience.