Comment: A Year of Blogging

I've been maintaining this listening diary now for just over a year. It has certainly been an experience that has revolutionised my listening habits. I almost can't imagine anymore how I used to listen before I started to document my listening trajectory.

One of the very obvious benefits has been a considerable expansion of repertoire. I have discovered so many new things over the past year that I feel rejuvenated as a music lover. And I can see vast unexploited tracks of repertoire stretching out in front of me. Also I feel I have gained a much better, more differentiated view of 20th century music history, particularly of this important 1920-1960 time bracket during which so much was going on.

Another good thing has been the slowing down and the concomitant increase in quality of listening. Background listening has almost completely disappeared (I can remember the time when, blasphemously, I had music on in my office whilst working!). Listening, reflecting, looking things up and writing things down has become almost a meditative discipline. In addition it's just a matter of respect for the meaning and quality of the music making. I want to hang onto that.

A potential risk, I found, is an inclination to compartmentalise the musical experience too much. If I'm not careful I have the tendency to overplan and overrationalise. That is counterproductive. So I need to find a way to mix rigour and spontaneity (almost in a Debussyan way). I think I can do that. The whole Bartok chapter emerged almost accidentally from my unsuspecting approach to Kodaly. The Debussy trace I'm following now emerged simply from a De Falla piece that spilled over into a Debussy sonata. I think that these spontaneously emerging attractors are a good thing. Each of these create new lines which I can follow as long as I like. So now I have Bartok, string quartets, Spanish/Iberian music and Debussy as main listening tracks. New ones will be added and after a while some will whither.

What the listening diary has not done is to bring me closer to understanding the enigma of music. I agree it is very naive to think that we can 'solve' this riddle. But I am inclined to believe we can at least make some progress towards doing so. But the diary has rather produced the contrary: at no time music has appeared more bafflingly mysterious to me than it does today.