Playing vs. listening

The other night, I felt an urge to take up the guitar again. I haven't owned a guitar, let alone played one, in years, and thought I was done for good. I was never dedicated enough to sound good even to myself, much less to others, so giving up was the responsible thing to do. The other night, though, I was reading an essay by Edward Rothstein, included in Joan Peyser's The Orchestra: Origins and Transformations, on the evolution of the music fan through the centuries, and he pointed out that while in the XIX century, people who were into music almost always played instruments, today they almost never do.

The invention of recording bears most of the responsibility for this – before recordings became widespread, there were two ways to hear music: go to a concert, or play it yourself. Today, in addition to those two, you can also put on a record. Concerts are still well-attended (surprisingly so, some might say), but of the other two, which requires less effort? You guessed it. What Rothstein points out, though, is that musicians and non-musicians listen differently, and pay attention to different aspects of a performance. A musician must pay attention to the physical experience of manipulating an instrument, dynamics, relationships between multiple voices, etc. A non-musician needs to do nothing more than register the main melody and overall mood of a work. I'm not going to reproduce Rothstein's entire argument here, but among other things, he traces the very concept of a “catchy tune” to a civilization of non-playing music fans.

This is understandable, but a little sad, I think. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a live performance or even a good recording of a great piece of music as a passive listener. It can be transformative, in fact. But I am probably missing out a bit. A greater awareness of what it means to play music would affect the way I digest a work when I listen. Rothstein says that it definitely would, and in profound ways. Learning an entirely new instrument at my age would be too steep a mountain to climb, but perhaps if I went back to an instrument I have had at least some contact with in the past would reduce the price of admission somewhat. A playable nylon-string guitar can be had for as little as $100 these days – no excuse not to make a fool of myself all over again, right?