Translation of the article “Adequate Modes of Listening” by Ola Stockfelt

Abstract

This article is a translation of the English version of the final chapter of Ola Stockfelt’s Musik som Iyssnandets konst (Music as an Art of Listening) (1988), which was published in Popular Music, Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. Edited by Simon Frith. Volume I, Music and Society. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. We are grateful to the author for permission to publish this version for the Brazilian public. This translation was carried out by Caio Marco Espímpolo, Isabela Casalli de Sousa – editors who are fellows of the 2024-2025 call for proposals from the Agency for Libraries and Digital Collections (ABCD) of the University of São Paulo – and Marcos Câmara de Castro – managing editor of Revista da Tulha. In an email dated December 7, of 2024, 09:31, sent to Revista da Tulha, the author says: “The article consists of the beginning of the book and almost the entire seventh chapter, so you will have to decipher it. (After the article was published, I received the suggestion from Philip Tagg, who had discussed it at length with Linn Grenier, that the word "disharken" could be replaced by "unhear", and I think he was right, not only because it is a much easier word to say, but also and mainly because it places a somewhat stronger emphasis on the creative activity of the listeners)”. (“The article consists of the beginning of the book and almost the entire seventh chapter, so you’ll have to figure it out. (After the article was published, I received the suggestion from Philip Tagg, who discussed it at length with Linn Grenier, that the word “disharken” might be replaced by “unhear,” and I think he was right, not only because it’s a much easier word to say, but also and especially because it places a somewhat stronger emphasis on the listener’s creative activity.”) In the work as a whole, he analyzes Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K. 550) in a variety of aspects, arrangements, and contexts over its 200-year history, arguing that the listening that underlies the academic study of music—autonomous, reflective, concert-hall listening—leaves out the features of the music that are most important for analysis. Music as an Art of Listening presents detailed studies of performance and reception in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, in Central Europe in four periods from 1798 to 1800, and in the United States in four periods from 1800 to 1810. 1848, in parlors and bourgeois homes, in public places such as restaurants at the turn of the twentieth century, in arrangements for phonograph recording, and in arrangements intended as background music in public places. Analyzing the changes and alterations in the work in each of these contexts, Stockfelt argues that music is composed, arranged, and performed in relation to specific contexts and listening activities, that different modes of listening create or recreate the sound patterns of different pieces of music, and that different productions and consumptions are more or less demanding or adequate to each other.