British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 47, No. 4, October 2007 © British Society of Aesthetics; all rights reserved.

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doi:10.1093/aesthj/aym023

MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART

OF ENGAGEMENT
Charles Morrison

When we listen to music, what do we listen to and for? How do we listen? How
well do we listen and how do we listen well? This paper suggests that ‘modes of
engagement’ are the active, operational means by which listeners experience
music and that listening experiences more often than not involve multiple inter-
acting modes rather than a fixed mode throughout. Modes of engagement may
be voluntarily employed or involuntarily adopted; they may be technical or de-
scriptive; they may involve explicitly musical details and relationships, or they
may seem more peripheral to the music. In the end, though, successive, simulta-
neous, and interacting modes of engagement are said to define unique and mean-
ingful trajectories through music as heard.

i. the listening session

I sit with the CD-player cued to the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Octet
for Strings, Op. 20, ready to offer this music my rapt attention. I know the
piece quite well and so from its opening measures I am ‘right there’ with the
performers, poised, as it were, on the ‘leading edge’ of the musical present,
which continually renews itself through lyrical, melodic gestures, decisive har-
monic progressions, and Mendelssohn’s signature rhythmic vitality.
At first I maintain this trajectory, holding fast on the immediacy of the unfold-
ing music as if navigating the surf. But it does not take long before my memory
and sense of anticipation kick in and I find myself not only registering the music
as it unfolds but also reconstructing broader lines of continuity (involving both
past and future events), noticing thematic and motivic relationships, and antici-
pating future passages triggered in the present by details that I know will acquire
significance later in the piece. In a number of passages approaching important
formal junctures, I am struck by the way my attention is so naturally drawn up-
ward by and with the melodic ‘reaching’ and sequential repetition of motivic pat-
terns, captivated as I am by the sheer quality of explicit linear directedness itself.


This particular recording is one made in 1978 by the Academy Chamber Ensemble, Phillips
420 400-2.

© British Society of Aesthetics 2007 401

402 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

Whether in the transition between main themes, in connecting passages

within themes, in this sonata form’s development section, or in closing material
(that which establishes stability at musical-formal boundaries), I am constantly
impressed with how ‘economical’ Mendelssohn is with his thematic material.
Or, am I simply realizing how ‘clever’ he is in casting previously used materials
in a new light? I tune into the underlying pulsating pattern that Mendelssohn
uses to create momentum towards the beginning of the movement’s second
main theme; with my familiarity with this piece, I find myself smiling at its sub-
tle appearance here, knowing full well the role that rhythmic element will play
in bringing the entire movement to an impossibly energetic close.
Near the end of the first main section of the sonata-form movement, called
the ‘exposition’, there are four dramatically pronounced cadential chords.
They usher in a closing section that I perceive as full of energy and drive on
the one hand, yet somehow tinged with an element of restraint on the other.
‘How does he do that?’ I ask. I notice that there are ever-so-slight pauses just
before the articulation of each of the cadential chords, especially the last one;
it is as if the performers in this recording are reminding us that ‘this whole sec-
tion will be repeated before continuing into the development section so we
can’t let the music take off too soon’. On this particular recording, one can
hear the short, reflexive breaths taken by some of the musicians immediately
before each sharply punctuated chord, enhancing the musicians’ sense of pres-
ence and, consequently, my feeling of ‘breathing the music’ with them.
By now, I am anxiously awaiting the soaring first violin line that concludes
the exposition and takes us to the opening of its repetition. When the passage
in question arrives, it is so dynamically charged, so intensely pure in sound as
it hovers above the other parts, that I feel my head literally twitching with the
articulation of each higher note that the first violin reaches. The last note,
which overlaps the opening measures of the repeat of the exposition, is almost
a whistle. The intensity, momentum, and energy of this literal and figurative
‘high point’ contribute to another manifestation of palpable directedness, con-
fidently and purposely leading the ear upward, but the passage is also charac-
terized by the immediacy and ‘depth’ of its sonorous beauty.
I notice a dramatic change in the repeat of the exposition towards its closing sec-
tion: there is a decided absence of restraint in the aforementioned cadential-chord
passage and in the soaring violin line that follows. The first time around Mendelssohn
managed a very effective balance between bringing the exposition to a rhythmi-
cally intense close while maintaining an element of restraint into the repeat of the
exposition. Here, however, there is absolutely no restraint: I feel carried along
with the music and sense that the closing passage is forging ahead like a freight-
train without the least bit of hesitation into the central development section.
At times throughout the piece, Mendelssohn’s respect for the great
contrapuntalist J. S. Bach shines through, as he skilfully employs stretto and
 CHARLES MORRISON 403

imitation: motives enter sequentially in succession, each beginning before the

previous one has finished. The dense imitative texture gives me the impres-
sion of a rather animated conversation among several people, each vying for
attention, each hoping their pronouncement will capture the others’ atten-
tion. When the stretto entries somehow coalesce, there emerges a unified
voice, a single mission.
Development sections in nineteenth-century sonata forms do strange things.
This one is no exception, for the intensity with which it begins continues to
mount with each forceful, successive, tonally wandering motivic statement.
But it is the diffusion of this momentum that one witnesses in the middle of
the development section that really captures my attention: the repeated mo-
tive is truncated, the dynamic level drops to nearly a whisper, the register is
much more subdued. I feel that this tactic, while perhaps diffusing energy, has
not really resolved the tension built up by the complex and dissonant devel-
opment section to this point; thus, I am left anxious about the prospects for a
pending resolution of that tension.
Knowing the piece, I am only really ‘pretending’ to feel anxiety over such
a resolution, for I am keenly aware that the beginning of the end of the cen-
tral development section—the beginning of the passage that will help diffuse
that tension—is about to enter. And before I become too smug about my ‘in-
sider knowledge’, it happens: quietly but determinately the syncopated rhyth-
mic pattern begins in the low strings and builds to the point where all eight
instruments are at a rolling boil, in a sweeping unison- and octave-doubled
gesture that drives to the beginning of the recapitulation in such a way that I
am always left on the edge of my seat. This drive to the recapitulation is
matched only by the approach to and articulation of the final cadence of the
movement, the sum total of which I experience as the pure essence of energy,
unity, resolution: I am not quite sure which.
Now, many more details emerged during my listening experience of
Mendelssohn’s Octet, some of which will surface later in the paper. But the
foregoing description of at least some of the salient features of this particular
listening experience is sufficient to prompt me to ask: What just happened?
What was I listening to and for? How was I listening? How did I end up with
such a satisfying and unified fourteen-minute experience, as opposed to four-
teen minutes’ worth of separate experiences? And how is it that the next time
I listen to this piece I may well have a comparably meaningful experience that
would yield a very different description? This paper defines ‘modes of engage-
ment’ as the active, operational means by which listeners experience music and
suggests why listening experiences more often than not involve multiple inter-
acting modes rather than a fixed mode throughout. Whether voluntarily em-
ployed or involuntarily adopted, technical or descriptive, involving explicitly
musical details and relationships or what are termed extra-musical elements, in
404 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

the end, successive, simultaneous, and interacting modes of engagement are

said to define unique and meaningful trajectories through music as heard.

ii. distinct modes of engagement

On one level, ‘modes of engagement’ can be thought of as the various realms
within which we (i) aurally and cognitively construct patterns, lines of con-
tinuity, formal relationships; (ii) accord significance in other realms such as
the emotional, associational, religious, even therapeutic; and (iii) recognize,
even construct from musical raw materials or attribute to the aforemen-
tioned patterns and formal elements, aesthetic properties such as balance,
symmetry, elegance, harmony, unity, variety, simplicity, beauty, profundity,
and so on. That is, modes of engagement define the various parameters
within which significance can be established, the various parameters within
which listeners find music to be meaningful. But on another level, the modes
must also be considered as active processes on the part of the listener, as the
verbs ‘construct’, ‘accord’, ‘recognize’, ‘attribute’ from the foregoing
explanation suggest. Insofar as a particular mode of engagement is an active
process undertaken by the listener, it is itself also an aspect of the broader
musical experience: to construct, accord, recognize, and attribute are to en-
gage; to engage is to experience.
Jerrold Levinson’s theory of ‘concatenationism’, after the nineteenth-century
psychologist and musician Edmund Gurney, and its related concept of ‘quasi-
listening’ define what I believe to be an accurate account of one particular
mode of engagement. The two concepts taken in tandem are allegedly suffi-
cient for the acquisition of a basic understanding of even quite lengthy and
complex pieces. In summary, concatenationism holds that ‘music essentially
presents itself for understanding as a chain of overlapping and mutually involv-
ing parts of small extent’. And ‘quasi-hearing’ is defined as ‘a process in which
conscious attention is carried to a small stretch of music surrounding the
present moment, and which involves synthesizing the events of such a stretch
into a coherent flow, insofar as possible’. Now, those attending to music via
quasi-listening are really only on the hook for the most immediate segment of
music at any given time, with allowance for small spans flanking each ‘present’;
when quasi-listening is combined with concatenationism, listeners can, ac-
cording to the terminology defined in this paper, be said to have adopted a
single mode of engagement throughout. And while I do not doubt that this is
a mode of engagement probably undertaken by many listeners much of the


Jerrold Levinson, Music in the Moment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1997), p. 13.

Ibid., p. 18.
 CHARLES MORRISON 405

time, it is only one particular mode, it is a mode whose level of engagement

(constantly focused as it is on only the immediate present) is rather limited in
scope, and it is one that, though not insignificant, nonetheless is more of a
‘default’ mode, one that runs to some extent through all active listening expe-
riences, but which also interacts with other modes of attention and active en-
gagement that may occur in tandem for particular stretches of music, or may
temporarily replace the quasi-listening mode altogether.
How does Levinson’s quasi-listening figure into my listening experience of
Mendelssohn’s Octet? How did it function as a mode of engagement during
my listening session? When I noted that from the very start of the music I was
‘“right there” with the performers, poised, as it were, on the “leading edge”
of the musical present’ and that at first I was ‘holding fast on the immediacy of
the unfolding music as if navigating the surf’, these were, in effect, other ways
of saying that I was engaged in a quasi-listening mode. I was attending to the
immediate present, following the music as it unfolded; that was my default
mode of engagement right from the start: it was voluntary, it was directly per-
ceptual, and it was immediate. But as I pointed out, it did not take long for
my mind to wander into other territory, voluntarily adopting other modes of
engagement, and sometimes accepting a mode of engagement that had en-
tered involuntarily. In short, as my listening experience unfolded, it became a
more complex web of multiple interacting modes of attention and engagement,
with a form of quasi-listening continuing throughout as the underlying default
mode, the one I reflexively adopted when not in the grip of another more
technical, conceptual, or extra-musical mode.


By ‘limited in scope’, I do not wish to suggest that Levinson’s sole approach to musical lis-
tening is limited or restricted to the ‘quasi-listening’ mode outlined here. Levinson has writ-
ten extensively on many different modes of listening, including modes that consider
emotional content (both positive and negative), those dealing with associations, those focus-
ing on purely aesthetic dimensions, and those dealing with more structural designs. The
quasi-listening mode outlined here was offered by Levinson as an explanation of how listen-
ers need only a moment-to-moment awareness of the music in order to acquire basic under-
standing. It is limited in this sense only but, interestingly, forms an important underlying
mode of engagement alongside other more parameter-focused modes, some of which would
be precisely those that Levinson has dealt with elsewhere.

I have introduced both attention and engagement as separate kinds of modes. A more de-
tailed explanation of the two is given later in the paper. Suffice it to say at this point that
while the word ‘attention’ does indeed suggest a degree of intentionality on the listener’s
side, there is still an element of passivity about it: one attending to the music can be simply
listening without much involvement. ‘Engagement’, on the other hand suggests a more ac-
tive and deliberate ‘involvement’ in the musical process, a kind of ‘taking part’. Levinson’s
quasi-listening is considered here to be a mode of engagement, though as noted it is closer
to the ‘attention’ end of the spectrum than to the fully engaged end, as it involves following
the immediate present but nothing much more in the way of broader conceptualization. In
what follows, I use both terms, applying them as appropriate to the level of interactivity
implied on the part of the listener and explaining their differentiation in context.
406 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

While it would be impossible to list every imaginable mode of engagement

(beyond the quasi-listening mode defined by Levinson) that might be entered
into during the process of music listening, let me describe in moderate detail
three that factored into my own audition of the Mendelssohn Octet and that
would appear to be quite common, given the kinds of things people report
when describing their listening experiences. The three modes that engaged me,
beyond the default quasi-listening mode, might be termed ‘music-theoretical’,
‘aesthetic’, and ‘associational’.

iii. a music-theoretical mode of engagement

A ‘music-theoretical’ mode of engagement would most likely be adopted by a
listener with some degree of musical training. However, although this form of
engagement generally requires a conceptual awareness of, and ability to per-
ceive, theoretical constructs such as different forms of cadences, formal designs,
tonal consonance and dissonance, and so on, sophisticated listeners who have
little or no formal, technical training in music can often make quite sophisti-
cated judgements within these parameters. (They simply use less technical lan-
guage and may not be completely aware of the broader formal or structural
context in which their observations fit.) A music-theoretical mode of engage-
ment might entail attention to the music’s melodic-harmonic structure, noting
patterns of tension and repose, resolution and deception, and particular rhyth-
mic patterns articulated in the realms of melody and harmony. This mode may
also involve recognition of formal relationships, identification of the structural
elements defining small- and large-scale symmetry and asymmetry, and aware-
ness of thematic definition, development, unity, and contrast. Aural identifica-
tion of salient melodic and rhythmic motives and the ability to recognize their
return in a variety of manipulated configurations certainly belongs to the
music-theoretic mode. To enter into a music-theoretical mode of engage-
ment, then, is to construct through perception and cognition various formal,
melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns from the musical raw materials in
musical time (as opposed to the atemporal realm of score analysis).
At least three features that surfaced in my audition of the Mendelssohn
Octet did so as a result of my adopting a music-theoretical mode of engage-
ment. First, the explicit reuse of the principal theme’s arpeggiated pattern in
the transition to the subordinate theme is a fairly common device, serving as
a reminder of where we have come from thematically, and I detected that this
was the case in the Octet. But Mendelssohn’s reuse of that earlier motivic
material within the subordinate theme itself is more significant. The latter is
structured as a succession of large arch patterns, each featuring predominantly
stepwise motion; inserting brief references to the principal theme’s arpeggi-
ated pattern between its own motivic statements provides internal thematic
 CHARLES MORRISON 407

contrast with the subordinate theme’s stepwise motion, but more importantly
provides a sense of larger-scale unity and integration across main thematic ele-
ments. While these observations would easily, in fact more easily, surface
through analysis of the work via the score, it is the awareness of these relation-
ships and the interaction of this particular mode of engagement with others as
the music unfolds during a listening session that is critical for our purposes.
A second feature that surfaced while I was engaged in the theoretical realm
concerns the rhythmic pulsation heard in the transition towards the subordi-
nate theme. As noted in my description of the listening experience, I was en-
gaged rhythmically during its initial appearance insofar as I sensed both
momentum towards and anticipation of the soon-to-arrive theme. But I was
also engaged in a formal-temporal way, as I was mindful of the significance of
that pulsing pattern later in the movement, when it would carry us towards
the final cadence. I was hearing it in the present and in the context of its
present thematic role, but was simultaneously relishing in anticipation of its
appearance and function at the end of the movement.
And third, my music-theoretic engagement yielded a similar kind of simul-
taneous formal-temporal engagement, this time in the present and in the past,
in terms of the cadential chordal pattern at the end of the exposition, as al-
ready discussed. My engagement took the form of recognition of the chordal
pattern as cadential and then as a form-defining device, signalling the end of
the exposition proper and the beginning of the coda and retransition to the
start of the exposition’s repeat. And it was in the exposition’s repeat that the
temporal part of this particular mode of engagement occurred: as described
above, there was a comparison across the temporal spectrum of the piece
heard until that point, comparing the cadential pattern in the past (that is, dur-
ing the first statement of the exposition) with that in the present (its repeat) to
detect changes in perceived momentum. This kind of comparison of tempo-
rally separated formal components and musical details clearly involved en-
gagement of a focused nature, engagement both in the perceptual realm and
the conceptual realm.
While I made many other theoretical observations during the listening ex-
perience, some regarding significant elements, others regarding more subtle
details, clearly my participation in a music-theoretic mode of engagement was
not uninterrupted, for other modes of engagement were adopted at various


That is, I am not arguing that these kinds of observations are not possible through analysis of
a musical score, whether the music is ever actually listened to or not; rather, my intention
here is to say that these kinds of things also surface while listening and, consequently, in real
musical time. Moreover, as will become clear, I am particularly interested in the interaction
of those observations-as-heard with others that are defined by different modes of engage-
ment. Thus it is the temporally-constructed tapestry of observations yielded by intersecting
modes of engagement while listening that is the focus here.
408 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

times throughout. Moreover, not only was a music-theoretic mode, or any

other single mode for that matter, not in effect uninterruptedly for the entire
experience, but there were times when several modes of engagement (or a
mode of attention and one of engagement, as will be explained) were adopted
simultaneously. This concept of simultaneous modal involvement will be-
come clear in connection with the other two modes of engagement adopted
in my audition of the Octet. And, again, it is this element of interactivity and
intersection of various threads of continuity as heard in musical time that is the
focus here.

iv. an aesthetic mode of engagement

The second mode to be considered is that of aesthetic engagement. An aes-
thetic mode of engagement is one which typically focuses on—that is, appre-
ciates or accords significance to—aesthetic properties, though that is not as
straightforward as it sounds. While there may be some question as to whether
aesthetic properties exist objectively in the artwork or are granted aesthetic
significance by the observer (in music’s case, the listener), it is widely ac-
knowledged that aesthetic properties are not objectively fixed in the object. A
recent pronouncement to this effect comes from David Fenner, who asserts
that ‘The set of aesthetic properties [associated with an aesthetic object] is,
formally, a matter of the relationship between the object and the subject:
the subject is able to bring out the aesthetic properties from the objective
base properties.’ Another comes from Noël Carroll, who also stresses the
‘respondent-dependent’ nature of aesthetic properties, describing them as
properties that the object ‘discloses only in relation to the possibility of expe-
riencers like us’. The fact that music-aesthetic properties are accorded their
status by listeners means that there is an element of subjectivity in the process:
what is deemed appropriate for aesthetic consideration, much less whether or
not it is aesthetically significant, to one listener may not be considered such for
another. But this only causes problems if we are bent on specifying an exhaustive
list of solely aesthetic qualities that are present in each and every case of an
alleged aesthetic experience. If our goals with respect to the aesthetic dimension
are more modest, if, that is, we can accept that certain properties arising in a
particular situation are indisputably aesthetic, even though there would be
many others that might fall into that category, then we can move ahead and
explore their manner of engagement and interaction with other modes.


David E.W. Fenner, The Aesthetic Attitude (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996),
p. 105.

Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 158.
 CHARLES MORRISON 409

David Fenner suggests generally that ‘there are properties of objects that
seem obviously aesthetic or, better said, obviously contribute, through atten-
tion to them, to the richness of the aesthetic experience’, but he also offers
more specific examples of aesthetic properties. He terms things like balance,
symmetry, elegance, harmony, grace, unity, variety, complexity, and simplic-
ity as ‘first-order aesthetic properties’, properties which emerge from or su-
pervene on ‘base properties’ such as colour, brilliance, shape, line, and so on,
but which precede aesthetic judgements embodied by ‘second-order aesthetic
properties’ such as beauty, sublimity, and aesthetic goodness. Carroll offers
similar suggestions as to what might be included in a list of generally agreed-
upon aesthetic properties and, like Fenner, he contends that these properties
are dependent on human perception.
Aesthetic properties such as balance, symmetry, unity, and so on might be
said to strike the ear (in the case of music) in a direct, unmediated way. But if
one drills down into the nature of those properties and probes the source of
perceived balance, symmetry, or unity, for example, one invariably finds that
these properties supervene on particular musical details within specific musical
parameters. For instance, something specific in the music must be ‘balanced’
if we are to perceive that quality; the sense of ‘symmetry’ we allegedly hear
must occur in a particular domain (that is, something—some thing—must be
symmetrical or not); we must hear the piece as ‘unified’ with respect to certain
specific parameters, not just in some general way. Even, or especially, higher-
level aesthetic properties such as beauty and profundity would appear to be
qualities that are ineffable, striking the ear in direct, unmediated ways; but
they too must have their basis in or supervene on more particular properties
in particular musical realms. A purely aesthetic mode of engagement would be
responsible for our feeling that a particular piece of music seems to be nicely
symmetrical for example, that is, it just ‘feels’ appropriately balanced and pro-
portioned. But if we explore the nature of that balance, symmetry, unity, and
so on, invariably we enter other modes of engagement, and this interaction
across modes accounts for much of the richness of our musical listening
experiences.
In my experience of the Mendelssohn Octet, for example, I reacted aesthet-
ically to the beauty of the rising line at the end of the exposition, the beauti-
fully sonorous (and sonorously beautiful?) ‘singing’ quality of the first violin in
its valiant reaching for increasingly higher notes, until it peaked at the begin-
ning of the exposition’s repeat. I was fully engaged aesthetically at that point.


Fenner, Aesthetic Attitude, p. 105.

Ibid., p. 14.

Carroll, Philosophy of Art, p. 157.
410 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

But this reaching, this beautiful ascent, was rendered all the more potent by
the underlying infusion of increasing tension due to the particular tonal scale
degrees played by the violin as it climbed higher and higher whilst becoming
more intensely beautiful (and beautifully intense?) at the same time. When my
theoretical mode of engagement kicked in, I instinctively realized that the line
was moving towards the tonic, each step increasing the tension and anticipa-
tion of the resolution that ultimately and simultaneously ended the exposition
and began its repetition. The tonic note at the summit of the violin’s rising
line was at once an ending and a beginning, its dual function rendering it as
significant structurally as it was beautiful aesthetically.
A second example of interaction between the aesthetic and theoretic modes
of engagement concerns an observation not recorded in my initial description
of the listening experience, an observation about the aesthetic property of
‘balance’. One of the truly striking features of the Octet’s first movement is
the extraordinarily long transition between its two main themes. As noted
above, that transition has a number of important features that captured my at-
tention, the reuse of motives from the principal theme and the use of an un-
derlying pulsating rhythm as a momentum-building device towards the second
theme being two such features. Both of these elements contribute to the sense
of anticipation we feel in waiting for the arrival of the second main theme.
And yet, in the recapitulation of this sonata-form movement, that extended
transition is significantly foreshortened. Transitions typically undergo modifi-
cation in the recapitulation (because of the different tonal relationships in that
section relative to the exposition); in this case, modification involves the vir-
tual elimination of a very large part of the transition, not just a compositional
and tonal ‘adjustment’. In short, literally and figuratively, the subordinate
theme is upon us before we know it. My aesthetic reaction was that this felt
unbalanced, that I had been robbed of a good part of the intricate and gradu-
ally intensifying journey to the subordinate theme that I so relished during the
exposition.
In spite of Mendelssohn’s brief experience at composing sonata forms at this
point in his life—he was only sixteen when he wrote the Octet(!)—he already
had the compositional savvy to rebalance that earlier formal quirk and he did
so in the Coda, where, after the previously discussed cadential pattern, much
of the missing material from the transition between themes is reused. In fact,
Mendelssohn folds that missing material in with the more subdued passage
from the development section that led to the syncopated return to the reca-
pitulation, a detail that restores overall balance while infusing the movement
with additional formal-thematic integration. At the close of the movement
the off-beat syncopated pattern shifts to an on-the-beat pulsating pattern,
reminiscent of the closing section of the exposition, bringing the entire move-
ment to a vibrant and spirited close. On an aesthetic level, my perceptual
 CHARLES MORRISON 411

reaction to the recapitulation was that it was initially imbalanced and finally
rebalanced. That is, proportionately it simply felt too short until the coda was
extended to make up for it, the ultimate effect being one of balance. On a
theoretical level, I was engaged with thoughts of the specific transition mate-
rial that was missing and then thoughts of the ingenuity of reusing that missing
material later in a different formal and functional context. That is, I was par-
ticipating in two interacting and mutually enhancing modes of engagement
simultaneously.

v. an associational mode of engagement

A very different form of engagement would be one which we might call an
‘associational’ mode, wherein a particular piece or passage of music triggers in
a listener an association of something beyond the music. For example, a lis-
tener may ‘associate’ a particular passage in a piece of music with something in
nature. The pastoral images evoked by Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony and the
images of the sea often imagined when listening to Debussy’s La Mer would
be two such examples. A more common form of the associational mode of en-
gagement would be one in which a piece or passage of music triggers in the
listener a personal association. For example, a listener may hear in a piece of
music a struggle for the dominance of one particular theme over another and
superimpose over that musical structure the parallel processing of a friend’s
struggle with a debilitating medical condition. Or a listener may routinely as-
sociate a particular piece with a friend or family member: ‘I always think of my
uncle when I hear this piece’ someone might claim. In these examples of as-
sociational engagement, the association itself—be it a scene or activity beyond
the music, someone or something personal—while potentially triggered by
particular musical properties (and this is not always the case), appears to leave
the particulars of the music behind once that association surfaces, as the listen-
er’s focus appears to have shifted to the details of the subject of the association.
This, of course, is why theories of association are so provocative, for they ap-
pear to be about everything but the music. The issue of an association’s musical
(as opposed to personal) relevance really hinges on the degree to which listen-
ers engaged in an associational mode of engagement do in fact abandon the
music to the association as opposed to ‘paralleling’ the music in a manner such
that it continues to reinforce the association. That is, where a mode of asso-
ciational engagement continues to attend to features and details of the unfold-
ing music, where it does so out of necessity to maintain its own significance,
it would seem that the associational mode is not abandoning the music at all
but, rather, embracing it for its associational and musical significance.
My associational mode of engagement in the Octet could be said to have
generated two experiential details, both of which have already been alluded
412 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

to. As mentioned above, I associated the dense imitative texture that emerged
after the subordinate theme as conversational: ‘The dense imitative texture
gives me the impression of a rather animated conversation among several peo-
ple, each vying for attention, each hoping their pronouncement will capture
the others’ attention. When the stretto entries somehow coalesce, there
emerges a unified voice, a single mission.’ And while the overall impression of
that texture was associational, reminding me of a conversation, there were
theoretical elements to that impression as well: I was, for example, mindful of
the source of the motivic material being tossed about, and was drawn into the
rhythmic profile created by the various entries of the motive. The interactive,
multimodal nature of musical engagement and experience was clearly a part of
my particular listening experience, though it need not have been; on another
listening occasion, I might well simply languish in the pure conversational ef-
fect without being drawn into a level of engagement that probes the source of
the material in question.
The other instance of associational engagement concerns the sense of confu-
sion and struggle giving way to strength and resolution witnessed in the jour-
ney from the central development section to the triumphant beginning of the
recapitulation. While I personally did not feel confused by the developmental
complexities or strengthened by the systematic and sweeping drive to the re-
capitulation, I did associate the music in those formal sections with those kinds
of qualities. And rather than abandoning the music during the surfacing of
those associations, I was constantly engaged with the music, for it was the spe-
cific details of the latter that initially generated and then continued to support
those associations. Moreover, my experience within the associational mode of
engagement was enhanced by the simultaneous and reflexive theoretical assess-
ment of how those associational effects were created, an assessment of theoret-
ical details such as tempo, dynamics, motivic truncation, rhythmic dissonance,
tonal resolution, and so on. In the end, the interactions between modes yielded
a unified and rich listening experience. But allocating experiential observations
to particular modes of engagement simply gave me a way to describe the in-
teractions of musical and non-musical perceptions and conceptions that made
up my rich and finely nuanced listening experience of the Octet.

vi. interacting modes of engagement

My particular listening experience of Mendelssohn’s Octet involved four
modes of engagement: an underlying, default, quasi-listening mode of en-
gagement (in the manner of that outlined by Levinson), a theoretical mode,
an aesthetic one, and an associational one. Each mode of engagement teased
out its own properties from the music as heard, on a particular occasion and
in connection with a particular recorded performance, and by doing so granted
 CHARLES MORRISON 413

those properties specific kinds and various degrees of significance. Depending

on the particular performance one is listening to, as well as the skills of the lis-
tener and his or her familiarity with the piece in question, one might employ
different modes of engagement, gravitating to a very different set of nuances,
relationships, and observations in the music. This may, in part at least, account
for our interest in listening to multiple recorded performances of a particular
work and indeed our fascination with hearing live performances, each of
which will necessarily present a different performance interpretation, but also
lead to the assemblage or construction of a different configuration of interact-
ing and intersecting modes of engagement by the listener. Related to this is
the fact that how well we listen is a function of how we listen well. That is,
the details a listener teases out of a particular performance while assembling a
meaningful interpretation and experience of a piece of music must be accurate
and relevant. Not every perceived detail will assist in constructing a meaning-
ful whole out of the temporally delivered music; nor will every perceived re-
lationship necessarily be correct. Incorrect identification of musical elements
or passages of emotional reverie that take the listener too far afield from the
music itself cannot rightly be part of a musical listening experience. As multi-
faceted as a particular listening session is bound to be, the success of that ses-
sion is in part dependent on the accuracy of its observations.
Moreover, while certain details could easily have been pulled out of the
score without actually hearing the music (motivic relationships for example),
the focus here has been how those elements surface and attract attention in the
listener’s musical-time processing of the music as heard. That is, some details
will necessarily be present in any and every correct performance of the music
and identifiable without actually hearing a performance; these may be consid-
ered details of the ‘work’ itself, even though they may also emerge in the
‘music’ as heard. Other details may only be identified by hearing a particular
performance, details that might more appropriately be associated with the
‘music’—and, moreover, a specific performance of the music—rather than the
‘work’ per se. Again, the focus here is on features of the work and those of par-
ticular performances as perceived in conjunction with the assembly of a
particular listening interpretation.
As suggested above, details experienced while participating in one mode of
engagement invariably interact with and potentially influence and enhance
those experienced while actively involved with another mode. Additionally,
while some modes of engagement are truly voluntarily and intentionally un-
dertaken, where we consciously set out to listen in this or that way, for this or
that effect, and so on, other modes surface involuntarily, beg for our attention
as it were, and we choose to ignore them or voluntarily (but in midstream as
it were) adopt them. Finally, it is possible to advance an even more nuanced
theory of listening modes by differentiating between modes of ‘attention’ on
414 MUSICAL LISTENING AND THE FINE ART OF ENGAGEMENT

the one hand and modes of ‘engagement’ on the other. In situations where
more than one mode is in operation, a mode of attention might be thought of
as a more peripheral ‘background’ mode over which a particular mode of en-
gagement might be considered a ‘foreground’ mode by virtue of the heightened
focus it boasts. A number of distinctions of this kind could be made in refer-
ence to my experience of the Octet: whenever I became focused on the de-
tails within a theoretical, aesthetic, or associational mode of engagement, the
quasi-listening mode automatically ‘faded’ into a more peripheral role. In ef-
fect, it shifted from a mode of engagement to a mode of attention, over which
a more specific detail-oriented mode of engagement (theoretical, aesthetic, or
associational) came into focus. Thus, it may frequently be the case that various
modes of engagement move in and out of focus overtop of a default quasi-lis-
tening mode, which itself shifts function from one of engagement to attention
depending on the emergence of other modes. Just as there are ‘areas of inde-
terminateness’ in those musical scores, which are filled in, completed, or ren-
dered determinate by a performers’ particular interpretations in performance,
so too are there areas of indeterminateness in performances, which are ren-
dered determinate and given precise shape and definition by listeners as they
make successive and deliberate choices about which modes to participate in
and which details to attend to within those multiple modes.
This paper has argued that the musical listening experience is a variegated
one, involving the interaction of several, at times even many, contrasting and
complementary ‘modes of engagement’. These modes have been defined as
the various realms within which listeners construct patterns; accord theoreti-
cal, formal, aesthetic, and other kinds of significance; and generally make sense
of the music unfolding before them. Modes vary depending on factors such as
the style and complexity of the music as well as the musical sophistication and
degree of musical training of the particular listener. Modes may be voluntarily
entered into, but other modes may surface involuntarily, as it were, and in
these cases we may or may not elect to follow those promptings; if we do, we
either abandon the mode we were engaged in at the time, or we may simply
relegate that mode to a more peripheral role, in which case it lingers as a
‘mode of attention’ rather than one of full engagement.
The whole point of a theory of listening based on multiple modes of en-
gagement and attention, is to offer some explanatory detail to the fact—and it
surely is a fact—that our listening experiences vary considerably from one au-
dition to the next, from one person to the next, but in the end are for the most
part extremely rich in detail and effect. I have used a listening session of my
own to illustrate, however provisionally, what quasi-listening, music-theoretic,


Roman Ingarden, The Work of Music and the Problem of its Identity, trans. Adam Czerniawski,
ed. Jean G. Harrell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 116–117.
 CHARLES MORRISON 415

aesthetic, and associational modes of engagement might involve and how they
might be understood to interact and mutually affect and enhance each other.
Certainly, many other modes of attention and engagement might be prof-
fered, but that is beyond the scope of this paper. Rather, what is outlined here
is meant to be a way of thinking about our listening experiences, a way to ar-
ticulate the various kinds of engagement we employ in our listening experi-
ences, a way to discover the makeup of our perceptual and conceptual
trajectories through the music we care about. In the end, the richness of our
listening experience is surely in large part due to the fact that the choices
made, patterns constructed, and understanding gleaned within any particular
mode of engagement during a fully engaged listening session are magnified
exponentially when we consider the navigational strategies employed in our
listening to music through multiple modes of engagement.

Charles Morrison, Faculty of Music, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario,

Canada N2L 3C5. Email: cdmorrison@wlu.ca