Recommended length: 5 pages minimum of double spaced, Times New Roman font, size 12, etc. No research outside of the sources given is necessary or expected—this is a LISTENING REPORT, not a research paper.
Follow These Steps:
[IMPORTANT NOTE: These steps should be completed over multiple days; you will get better results—i.e., a better grade—if you spread these steps out.]
Preliminary Survey: Listen to all of the music in the links below. Listen closely and choose a piece that sounds interesting to you—not something you like, necessarily, but something you’d like to learn more about through multiple listenings—this will be your chosen piece for the report.
“Blind” Listening(s):
Listen (again) to your chosen piece without doing any background research. I recommend listening to your piece all the way through to experience the whole, and then listening again in order to take notes of interesting things you hear. (Many of these works are long, so focus on only the first five minutes or so.) There is no limit to how often you listen to your piece, but I’d say as much as you feel is necessary to get “inside” the work.
Once you’ve collected a number of thoughts about it, organize your thoughts and notes and WRITE a few paragraphs: give an overview of your experience, trying to be as specific as possible. You must try to use as much of the appropriate terminology you learned throughout this course. (This will be your first impression of the piece, which will deepen and change as you go through the following steps and continue your experience.)
Historical-Stylistic Context of the Composer:
Next, do some research on the composer and his/her background. Read the composer’s entry in the Oxford Music Online Encyclopedia. The Guardian also has excellent composer profiles of each of the composers listed (and many others)—find your composer and read their article.
Once you’ve assembled your information, WRITE a few paragraphs that summarize the composer’s artistic interests, methods, philosophy, and/or work as a whole. Do not write a biography—write about what makes their music interesting, important, and unique, or what would potentially help the listener understand the music’s significance.
Stylistic Context of the Music (Separate Listening): This is connected to the previous task, but instead requires “listening research.” Listen to other works by the same composer to get a broader sense of the kind of music they write. Start by listening to the second link included on the list, but also pull up at least one additional work of importance on Youtube (perhaps one mentioned in your research). This step will give you more insight into the composer’s “sound world,” and it will help you hear your chosen work in a different light. The more pieces you explore, the clearer this sound world will appear to you.
Second Listening(s):
Listen to your chosen piece again, once or a number of times. Take notes again. Now having done some research and listened to other pieces, are you understanding this work differently? Do you hear more? Pay careful attention to how your thoughts and observations have changed since your “blind” listening now that you have more knowledge of and experience with the music.
WRITE about your new observations and new thoughts in a paragraph or two. AS BEFORE, USE APPROPRIATE MUSICAL TERMINOLOGY.
Description of the Piece: Your previous notes and observations should be of a general nature. Now, try to describe what “happens” in the piece (within the first five minutes or so). You’ll have to listen to it a bunch of times. The purpose of this exercise is to get a general picture of the overall shape of the work, which is important because we can often get lost in the moment-to-moment details. Your “description” can be schematic and incomplete, also non-technical, and as detailed as you feel is necessary to “capture” what happens. Try your best to explain how the piece moves and changes over time. WRITE your description using proper terminology.
Final Listening(s): Listen to the piece again, all the way through, without taking notes, without doing anything. Just listen to it closely and take it all in one final time. Do this with “fresh ears”—after some time away from it (maybe the next day?). I’ll bet you are pretty familiar with it at this point—do you find yourself listening more deeply, hearing more intelligently?
Take-Away(s) and Final Thoughts: Lastly, WRITE a couple paragraphs about the work and your experience doing this listening project. What are the important take-aways about your piece, about the composer, about the style in general, about the kind of “world” the piece inhabits? What makes this piece interesting, or important, or unique? If you had to tell someone about this composer, or about this specific work, what would you want them to know before listening? Try to be as specific as possible. Finally, write about your experience as a listener. Talk about how your initial impressions of the work changed after spending time doing careful listening, thinking, reading, and writing about it. What did you learn about this music, about yourself as a listener, about what music “is” or “can be” in general? Read everything you’ve written over again, then share your final thoughts.
Good luck and happy listening!
