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earsense is devoted to cultivating a rich and meaningful musical existence. It's chief aim is to highlight musical masterpieces in the tradition and history of Western Art music, music that is enduring, alive, multi-dimensional, worthy of your attention to enrich your mind, your heart, your spirit and your soul. earsense is focused on music that is absolutely "classic". If nothing else, earsense offers pointers to music that you can discover or revisit, simply to spend more time with it. Great music requires nothing more than that you know about it, and that you listen to it, and, that you endeavor to really hear it. The music will reward you richly. The fundamental goal of earsense is to extend to you the opportunity of adding some of this music to your life, to assist you in developing a personal and ongoing relationship with some of the finest musical experiences human culture has to offer.
earsense is devoted to a very specific sort of music: Classical music. Classical music within the intimacy, accessibility, passion and profoundity of the small ensemble: Chamber music. Music largely of the historical and cultural tradition of Western Europe of the last three centuries. Music from the minds and hearts of such composers as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Shostakovich. (Others will follow in time). This is music with very special characteristics.
But first, consider this: while this music comprises many of the most profoundly fulfilling musical experiences our eduring culture offers (and that you might imagine), it is, on the whole, the least widely known and certainly the least frequently heard. Depending on your own experience, most likely it is entirely foreign to you. Most popular media is otherwise preoccupied; you simply don't encounter it. Perhaps you have never heard or heard of it. Even so, to fully experience it, you must give your more or less undivided attention to it for stretches of time that are vast within the context of our rapid, sound-byte oriented society. May you haven't had the time. When you do encounter it, you may confront a quick flurry of associations and judgements that disuade you. Classical music? Chamber music? It's old. It's boring. It's complex. It doesn't goove. It's so conservative. It is too overwhelming. At best, it is an unexplored black box. earsense is commited to the simple fact that you will love it if you give it a chance.
The majority of Chamber of music is for a group of two to eight players with a specific emphasis on the stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello and occasionally bass) and the piano. The core of the genre is music for the string quartet (two violins, viola and cello). Already, as far as popular music goes, this is a rarefied category of music. That it is relatively distant from popular music in its fundamental makeup is clear when you consider the following: it has no singer, no words, no drums, requires no electricity, is not dance music, and, for any given piece, generally lasts at least six times as long as a typical pop song. Practically inconceivable. Certainly diametrically opposed to the popular genres. If you are a Jazz fan, you might be puzzled by the lack of the rhythm section, but not the other qualities. But now consider that most Chamber music is composed. Not only does it not generally permit improvisation, which is essential to Jazz, but its chief artistic concern is the coherently integrated and balanced ensemble texture with little emphasis on the solo itself, even if it were written out. It is worth pointing out that the music is not complicated by the popular cult of personality, media overexposure or product marketing and it is rarely exploited for alterior commercial or cultural purposes. Chamber music is very pure.
But now the best part. Within these constraints, great artists, composer and performer alike, have created some of the greatest music you could ever desire. It is music with a myriad of moods, grooves, styles and compelling narratives. As drama, it has agony and ecstacy and a million more subtle combinations in between. As entertainment, it is full of ingenious complexity, brillant structures, dazzling creativity, wit and play and fun. Chamber music is music which deeply moves the mind and heart, and can move the internalized, spiritualized body with all the force and energy of the most potent popular beat. And it has challenged the greatest minds to produce some of their greatest works. Chamber music offers you some of the greatest listening experiences available. Even if you are not yet familiar with them.
earsense is devoted to music of the string quartet as well as some important music intimately related to its texture as a multi-part ensemble, and as towering, essential masterpiece it its own right: the fugue and the art of counterpoint.
At present, there are 144 individual pieces of music represented at earsense (counting a movement in a multi-movement string quartet as one). Each selection has its own multi-dimensional presentation, a "hearing aid", and each is further linked into a variety of relationships with others. Not the music itself, but something about the music.
The music featured at earsense is easily obtainable; it is not provided, in its entirety, on earsense. We are fortunate to live in an age where affordable, high quality recordings abound and the equipment to play them everywhere in our envrionment. Perhaps the central difficulty is finding the time and the appropriate frame of mind to give music the proper attention it demands. But music of all kinds emerges out of a context, a set of conventions, expectations, a musical vocabulary, a style, a relationship to music that came before it and even a retrospective meaning from the music that came after it. Within the music itself, however, lies the complete meaning, the complete experience, the question, the answer, the overview, the detail, the thing in itself. These things are not so easily obtainable. There is the music, but what about something useful about the music? earsense is a collection of presentions about music; it is not music per se, but meta-music.
There is a wide variety of extant resources about music: CD booklets, program notes, books, websites, educational programs and multi-media productions. But too often, they seem to fall on incomplete opposites of the spectrum. One the one hand, you can find out all about a composer life, the historical context, the generalized impact on musical history in broad sweeps, even the social ramifications. But what about the details of the music itself? Where many resources delve into the structure, form and mechanics of the music, it is arcane, written for others with a quick and thorough grasp of a daunting body of knowledge. Here the materials be simply be impervious. earsense aims toward the middle: to primarily approach the materials of the music itself in terms and forms that, with a just bit of study and repeated exposure, are accessible, useable, ideally essential.
Yet another frustrating aspect of much music commentary is its specific focus on the piece, composer or genre at hand. Useful, compelling, but very specific. Often, there are fleeting references to other things not discussed: other works by the composer, historical precedents, comparisions and contrasts that, again, assume or beg a more comprehensive exposure particularly though the connection of relationship. A link. A crucial aspect of the meta-music at earsense is a growing set of relationships that connect individual pieces in a variety of meaningful ways. Ideally, you can encounter a reference, a comparison, a meaningful linkage in the presentation and actually pursue it to its source (or its destination). You can experience the connection more vivdly and also draw your own conclusions.
The presentations at earsense try to speak to the diverse capacities, learning styles, and to the basic principle that multiple modes of perception combine into a rich understanding. Each meta-music presentation is multi-model offering you something to hear (sound), to read (words), to see (images), [what about music notation] and finally, something else to compare it with (relationships or associations). You can pick a particular style that best suits you, or, better, use multiple approaches to gain a multi-faceted, composite understanding.
Assuming that music and things about the music are two different things, you might say that music is for the heart and meta-music is for the mind. And let's assume, at least for the moment, that you are interested in finding out more about the music; you would like to engage your mind. earsense is a good place for you. But the music is always self-sufficient. Great music that is. The music featured at earsense is classic music because, in addition to its breathtaking effect on the heart, it offers vast riches for the mind. The principles that structure a musical form, the patterns of recurrent themes, transformations, complex movement and nuanced narrative, these compell and dumbfound the mind in a superb game that is the essense of the classic masterpiece. It is the quest of earsense to present these aspects clearly, creatively, accessibly. But it is a further mark of the profound music experience that these two apparent pole combine in ecstatic union: how the music makes you feel as well as how the music makes you think. music and meta-music. Repeated, attentive listening gives you both so much so that they become inseparable. They enhance and inform one another. They, are the two fundamental sides to your being. They, are your mind and your heart, your heart and your mind. That, and the music that you are playing. If you spend time listening, and also cultivating your abilities to think about the music, you will sharpen all your senses (heart and mind) so that, the next time you listen, you will experience a greater and more profound unity. Try it some time. In end, you, your heart, your mind and the music itself, combine into an even greater unity: the infinitely deep now. Time is best when the boundaries dissolve and everything is vivid, and it is always new and unique. Great music has the complexity and the power of engagment to be fresh and unique everytime. It is a deep well you can return to again and again.
"Music is indivisible. The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels with the brain." - Geroge Szell.
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Time is the most difficult thing. Where is the time to read, to listen, to think, to feel. So many books, movies, friends, responsibilities, unforseen interruptions. Finitude. The very magic, art and meaning of music is its ability to structure, motivate and aesthetize time. Real time. Many philiosophers have posited the meaning of art as a response to our need for coherent, meaningful and complete time. While this is the fundamental power of music in a nutshell, it is also its greatest demand. The most meaningful relationship to music, indeed, the only possible meaningful relationship to music is for you to literally be with the music in time. Real time. Full time. Quality time. This is a daunting challenge. But such a beautiful one. Relate it to spending more time with your lover, your child, your pet, or yourself. Think of spending more time dancing, cooking, meditating, painting. Musicians need training, discipline, exposure, practice. And the more time spent, the more time rewards: your experience evolves and deepens into places that are inaccessible to inattentive. And these places are sublime. Do you spend enough time? It is not a critcism. It is a compelling dream. As for music, it may have charm, power and the meaning for you personally to become a regular, essential focus for some amount of your time.
earsense is a large, comprehensive and richly interrelated network of presentations about music. earsense is a tool to enable you to be more mindful of music, its fascinations, it mechanics, its very character and nature. Use it as a carrot to spend more time with the music itself.
earsense is devoted to the cultivation of a rich musical existence. Music is fundamental to human existence. It is a nearly mystical manifestation of what is uniquely human in the most profound, complex and holistic sense. The ear is the portal to an inner life of multiple dimensions: the intellect, the emotions, memory, kinesthetics, and the basic visceral sensation of being alive within the contiumum of subjective time. All of these dimensions combine into a startlingly intuitive and richly communicative sense that is at once surface and unfathomably deep. earsense aims to be a multi-dimensonal map for richly exploring our musical sense in a variety of creative ways, hopfully, for a never-ending ongoing journey.