A few days ago, I practiced for a couple of hours in a hall here in Madrid. As I walked out of the hall and headed for the subway station to go home, I was lost in my thoughts about the music I had been working on. Humming under my breath, I revisited a phrase from the Chopin B minor sonata in my head and walked rather obliviously toward the station. It wasn’t until I got home later that evening, that I saw on the news that I had walked right past a rather large and vocal protest. I vaguely recalled seeing some police officers and people on the street, but the scene, and more importantly, the sounds from that very loud protest had simply not registered as I walked past. I have previously posted on this blog my thoughts on the differences between hearing and listening. As I thought about how I perceive sounds in different ways depending upon the situation, I wanted to revisit this issue.

During my practice sessions, I become so absorbed in what I’m doing that I will not hear the phone ring or realize when someone is speaking to me. When I was younger, this was the cause of a lot of laughter in my family. My mother would actually have to touch me before I would lift my eyes away from the piano, look at her, and then realize that she’s actually saying something to me. My brother’s favorite past time was to come up behind me while I was practicing and scare the living daylights out of me. Of course, it’s not that I don’t actually hear the sound - rather, it’s more like my active “listening” is so focused on what I’m working on that any other extraneous sound from my surroundings simply does not register in my head, or enter my sphere of attention. The sounds around me are filtered through the “hearing” part of my brain and doesn’t get processed in the “listening” section.

The exact opposite situation happens when I perform. As I sit at the piano on stage, every sound from the hall or audience - the rustle of a skirt, the turning of a page in the program, the sound of someone whispering to their neighbor, a raspy cough, the crinkling of a candy wrapper or cough drop - becomes unbelievably magnified, and I feel as though a megaphone is directly attached to my ear and is amplifying every sound from my surroundings. In this case, my listening becomes so active and sensitive to the acoustics, vibe, and subtle nuances of the space within which I am about to produce music, that every other sound also gets caught in my “listening net” and feels like an incredible intrusion or interference. It is the same when I rehearse in a hall prior to a performance - if someone enters the hall or walks nearby, I feel the energy of the space drastically shift. This is the reason why I usually request that my rehearsals be closed so that I have the needed “alone” time on the day of a performance to absorb the space of the hall.

This difference also permeates into the periods after I make music. After I practice, rehearse, or perform, it takes me at least an hour to come down from the music-induced listening (the reason for my experience on the street the other day). I remain in a rather spacey state in which I’m still occupied with listening to music (even if it’s just in my head), and everything else immediately goes into the section of my brain reserved for background noise. After about an hour or so, my sound perceptions start to shift back to its normal equilibrium.

I am fascinated with how music, or any type of endeavor that requires one to reach internally for a higher degree of awareness , can cause a shift by bringing some elements to the foreground while pushing others to the back. This holds true whether I am the one making music or the one experiencing it. For example, I cannot listen to a wonderful recording while I do small tasks or errands around the house. A powerful recording will demand my attention, push itself to the front, and will not settle into the fuzzy realm of “background noise.” I cannot continue to wash dishes or cook - I have to actually sit down, listen, and absorb what is being said.

Whether it’s the composition or interpretation of a musician, the speech of an orator, the words of a writer, or the visual world of a painter, choreographer, or director, art places demands on both the creator and his audience. It insists that we shift our perceptions from passive to active, that we listen rather than simply hear, and that we search rather than accept.