Katy Hamilton

This last week, I’ve mostly been plotting. This is for two reasons: the first is that being a freelancer actually requires quite a lot of plotting, I now realise, in order to get your ducks in a row before you start trying to find the time to realise your next big idea. The second reason is that I have been staying in the country and spending a considerable amount of time puppy-sitting, and have thus passed many hours each day incapacitated on the sofa whilst the puppy sleeps on my lap. This, it transpires, is a very good way of forcing one to plot.

So what have I been plotting? Well, for some time now, I’ve had the idea of starting an audio series (and later a video series – but let’s keep it as technologically straightforward as possible to start with, shall we?) about music. Specific pieces of music. Sort of like a speaking programme note. The deal is that in a maximum time of three minutes, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about a piece of music so that you can listen to it and feel like you know something about it. So whether you’re cramming for an essay, about to head to a concert, or caught something on the radio and want to learn more, you’ll be able to do so – in just three minutes. Death-defying or what?

This, of course, begs the question: what exactly to people want to know about a piece of music that can be outlined in three minutes? And so, ever the believer in research, I asked people. I sent word to the great collective mind that is Twitter and Facebook, and I said: well, I said if you could have just 3 minutes’ info about a piece before you heard it, what would you want to know?

It turns out that on Saturdays, quite a few members of the collective mind are off doing the gardening, or on holiday, or not paying due attention to thought-provoking questions on Facebook and Twitter, so my response pool is rather limited. But since it included amateur musicians and music-lovers, professional musicologists, a composer, and a very fine pianist, it’s still made for interesting reading. And actually, it’s not quite what you might expect.

Here’s what I would normally think to include:

• What is it, and when was it written?
• Who wrote it, and what prompted them to do so?
• Does the composer have anything to say about it – or the first performer, or others connected with its composition?
• Is it particularly unusual/important/successful or unsuccessful? i.e. does it mark a particular point in the composer’s output, or the development of a given genre?
• Anything else that’s interesting. Which categorically does NOT include a blow-by-blow account of how it goes. That’s why you’re listening to it, and that’s far more interesting than the musical equivalent of an analytical sports commentary.

One of my survey group said pretty much exactly that, which was very pleasing. And another picked up on a particular element of it: why it was written, why the piece came into being in the first place (as far as can be known). Perhaps my favourite comment was a plea to leave the superlatives at home: we don’t need telling how ‘exhilarating’, ‘triumphant’, ‘incredibly moving’, etc. it is, when such terms are now largely meaningless from overuse and misapplication – see Tom Sutcliffe’s recent piece on all that ‘brilliant’ theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The remaining comments fell into what can broadly be defined as two categories, and they both make specific – and interesting – assumptions about the situation in which people would be listening.

The first group worked on the basis that the listener had never heard the work before, and what you were providing was almost an advertisement to encourage them to stick around until the main event. Why is it amazing and worth your time? How long is it, and is it possible to tell when you’ve nearly made it to the end?  And quite simply: why would you listen to this?

The second group, conversely, worked on the basis that the listener already had a pretty good working knowledge of classical music, and that comments about specific influences (on the piece, and that the piece had on others) and the place of a work within a composer’s oeuvre were most relevant. Big-name compositions should be ‘noted’ to a minimum; composers who were not included within standard music dictionaries should be granted more attention and helped or rehabilitated in some way.

Of course, the great thing about this question is that there’s no one answer, because there’s no such thing as a typical listener. And since I’ll be dealing with an audio track on a website, without association to a specific performance, I have no possible way of knowing why people are listening to it. Are they about to go to a concert? Have they just come back from one? Is it entirely for study purposes? Are they just so struck by the rich and complex tones of my speaking voice that I could be talking about mulberry jam and it wouldn’t matter? (OK, probably not that last one.) But of course, the majority of printed sources about music do have a time and a place, and that time and place gives you more information about what your readers might want. The kind of venue. The sort of concert and the overall programme. If it’s either of those things, they’ve already bought their ticket – you’re not trying to sell the piece literally, just metaphorically. Or perhaps you’re writing a brief text for the back of a CD. In that case, you are there to sell the music. Which is when people tend to reach for the superlatives. And is it a compilation of Mozart for babies, or a survey box set of Ukrainian symphonists? Context is everything. (Just ask Tim Minchin.)

I don’t have the luxury of knowing that my audio tracks ‘belong’ at any given point in the listening process. Or who exactly is going to be listening to them. And you know what? That’s brilliant. It’s brilliant because it means that the material is available to anyone, at any time. And because people can tell me what they think of it, and help me get it right for the listeners who come visiting. Perfect.

One last thing. Despite the different approaches and attitudes of my survey group, there were a few things that almost all comments had in common. People who love music usually want to feel as if they have some understanding of what they’re listening to (even if they can’t read music themselves, or define sonata form) – and also some sense of the person who created it. That might mean the composer being on the stage, just telling them that he or she is here and hopes the audience enjoys it. It might mean providing the most basic of facts about a composer’s life if they are little-known. Or it might mean that the odd fact about favourite ice cream flavours, a love of train-spotting or a particularly fabulous moustache might help to humanise a Great Composer and turn them into a comprehensible human being.

So – watch out for the first fruits of my labours in September. Comment if you can. Tell me what you want to know. In the meantime, I’ve got one more afternoon of puppy-sitting to get through. And I feel an inspiration coming on…