The other
night, Seneca fell asleep listening to Palestrina’s “Motets for Five Voices.” This piece is part of this term’s Composer
Study and was the selection for the week.
I don’t think Seneca fell asleep because she was bored with it. We often have this perception of people
falling asleep at concerts (read: classical music concert) because they are
bored. That may be the case in some
instances. But I wonder if sometimes the people who do fall asleep at concerts or
fall asleep to classical music at night do so because they are put into a
meditative state almost a trance. When I
was listening to Motets for Five Voices along with Seneca and I closed my eyes,
it was as if the music had entered and surrounded my brain. All of the other white noise in my brain
seemed to stop. This particular piece of
music has so much going on as alluded to by its title “Five Voices.”
On the night she fell asleep listening, I
had actually offered to turn off the music after the first break at the eight
minute and thirty second mark. I had
actually started to turn it off and she simply said, “More.” When I first played the piece for her, she
was not as enthusiastic. She listened
for about 5 – 8 minutes each day as we made our way through the piece for the
week. Slowly, it began to resonate with
her. I guess that is the truth with so
many things. Sometimes we need repeated
exposure, but gentle repetition. My new “problem”
is that she now likes “Motets for Five Voices” so much that Palestrina’s other
works can’t compare and she only wants to listen to “Five Voices” during
Composer Study.
No comments:
Post a Comment