Music & Photography
Jan 22nd, 2007 by John Setzler
This semester in school, I’m taking a Music Appreciation course to fulfill a humanities requirement in my curriculum. Today’s lesson was “What type of listener are you?”In the course text, listeners are divided into four general categories: Casual, referential, critical, and perceptive. The casual listener is one who enjoys having music in the background to fill the environment with sound. The referential listener is one who listens to music and is reminded of something or forms mental images and scenarios stimulated by the sounds. The critical listener is one who listens to the performance to find fault. The perceptive listener is one who combines two or more of the other types into his or her experience with the sounds.
In photography, or art in general, which category defines your interest in the art? Since most who read this will be photographers, I would assume that the perceptive category would be a dominant choice. We all like to look at art from a few different perspectives. We like to be surrounded by it, our choices from our own collections, and those of others, are probably based on referential reasons, and we are critical of what we see simply because we understand the process of making it. Being critical at that level is a completely natural phenomenon. Sometimes we want to see something the way we would have done it rather than the way it is presented by another artist.
Our assignment in this lesson is to choose any selection of music that we have studied up to this point and write a few paragraphs describing the piece from the referential perspective. I found this exercise to be a completely wonderful experience. I chose Frédéric Chopin’s Etude, Op. 10, No. 12 - “Revolutionary” for my writing. I wasn’t completely familiar with that piece, but I had heard it before. Writing about how the music made me feel and the imagery it created in my mind’s eye was beneficial in several ways. Obviously, I wrote about how the sound interacted with my mind’s eye, but I think this little experiment can carry over into visual arts quite easily. Relating it to visual arts, what you see in most non-abstract art will create some amount of bias in forming your referential opinion. If you see a child in a swimming pool, you will be directed to think about summer weather and events associated with it. Additional thoughts may come from personal experiences below the surface. In music, you won’t get a visual cue, but the title of the selection, or any background information you read about it may bias your referential opinions. A referential perception will often determine whether or not you may connect with a piece of art. If it creates negative perceptions, you may not like it as much as if it helped you recall a happy or fond memory.
Challenge yourself to look at several photographs and connect with them on a referential level. The photo itself may not posses specific qualities that you admire in photography, but you may find them on a different level if you take the time to look.
