From Loving Music to Understanding It
Is Loving Music Enough?
How Does Music Work, and Why Is It Important to Know?
Why Should Someone Who Writes About Music Read About Music?
Of course, I am not a musician, nor am I a musicologist.
But saying “I love music” feels inadequate compared with what music actually means to me. I listen to music — music from different countries, in different genres.
I have been doing this for as long as I can remember, like many others.
And…
For years, I have been writing, for myself, about singers, music itself, songs, bands, and composers.
From time to time, I share some of these pieces I write for myself on my blog and on Facebook as well. I do so rarely. Not because such pieces attract few readers where we live. Of course, they do. But that is not why I rarely share them. More about that another time.
Sometimes people like the pieces I share and leave kind comments.
At other times, they object by writing, “What a long and pointless piece.”
As I said, I write about music. I love doing it. I try to write something every day. Even when I write nothing at all, I still have to jot down at least one or two notes in the notes app on my phone.
A long time ago — a very long time ago — on one of those days when I was once again writing about music, I suddenly thought: writing down my own thoughts and impressions is wonderful. But surely I also need to read about music, to study it. Surely one ought to have a broad understanding of music, that gift of God to humanity.
Until then, I had tried to read whatever I could get my hands on about music — articles, essays, pieces of writing of every kind — and to watch programs and films about music. But I had not read any books.
No — may his soul rest in peace — I had read only the great Uzeyir Bey’s The Foundations of Azerbaijani Folk Music.
At the time, finding books about music was extremely difficult for me. Most of them were in Turkish and Russian, languages I knew only poorly, and, of course, in English, which I did not know at all. Nor did I come across books on the subject translated into our language. My only option was to read them in the languages I knew imperfectly.
I would come across interesting books. Imagine: even in languages I barely knew, I enjoyed reading those books and tried to learn from them.
Around that time, David Byrne’s How Music Works, which I managed to find and read with great difficulty, made a very strong impression on me. These lines from the introduction drew me into the book from the very first page:
“All my adult life I have been involved with music. I did not plan it that way, and at first it was not even a serious ambition, but that is how things turned out. If you ask me, it was a very happy accident. Music cannot be touched; it exists only at the moment it is perceived. And yet it can fundamentally change the way we see the world and our place within it. Music can help us through difficult periods in our lives, changing not only how we feel about ourselves but also how we relate to everything beyond ourselves.
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It is a powerful thing.”
The author, David Byrne, is one of the most unconventional intellectual musicians of twentieth-century music. A co-founder and lead vocalist of the 1970s band Talking Heads, Byrne gave his book the title How Music Works, a title that is slightly misleading. You might think the book is about music theory, notation, or harmony. But it is not.
Rather than focusing on music itself, Byrne tries to understand where it comes from and why it takes the particular forms it does, and he tries to convey that understanding to the reader as well. As you turn the pages, the book becomes increasingly unusual, because by then it is no longer only about music.
Of course, there were many passages in the book with which I disagreed. Some of them I did not accept then, and I still do not accept them now. But this book taught me a great deal about music.
After reading this book, I began to look at music a little differently. One of the main ideas I took from Byrne’s book was that music is not created in a vacuum. Its form is not determined solely by the talent of the composer or performer.
According to Byrne, music is also shaped by space, technology, the audience, recording possibilities, economic relations, and even the social environment in which it is presented.
To me, this is a debatable approach, but what is interesting is why Byrne sees it this way, and he supports his argument with very serious analysis.
And once you begin to look at music in this way, it is no longer enough simply to say, “This song is beautiful” or “I love this music.” Questions arise: why does this music sound exactly the way it does? What kind of environment gave birth to it? And by what means does it create this particular effect on the listener? I think serious writing about music begins precisely with questions like these.
After reading this book, I began to look at music a little more through this lens as well.
Someday, I would like to study abroad at a high level for at least two years in the field of art studies or art history.
Most of all, I would like to study at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, or at the Courtauld Institute of Art in England.
Because loving art alone is not enough if you want to write about it. You also need to learn how to listen, how to look, how to compare, how to see context, and how to substantiate your own judgments.
If one day I manage to turn this into reality, I will be able to produce more serious work about both my country and world art.
To bring the world to Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan to the world.
By the way, I think the title Night Conversations is excellent. I liked it myself. Whenever sleep eludes me — which happens quite often — I will occasionally write and share pieces under this title.
I will write about music, books, cinema, art — whatever comes to mind, whatever occurs to me that night.
Precisely Night Conversations….
