Modern classical music, especially, is really hard.  What the hell are you listening too, this endlessly winding dissonant stuff without much melody?

The only way to get this kind of music in your ear is to listen to it over and over, which is what I have been doing with the first movement, “Prelude,” of the Maw Violin Concerto the last couple of days.  It doesn’t matter whether I want to hear it again or not:  I just play it again when it’s done.

When I cycle a piece of thorny orchestral music this way the fog slowly lifts, the picture clears, figure and ground separate.  Past pieces I’ve placed on endless loop have included Ligeti’s Melodien, Birtwistle’s The Triumph of Time, Lieberson’s Piano Concerto, and Schuller’s Of Reminiscences and Reflections. Initially they were all daunting listens but now they are old friends.  In every case I have learned to understand the composer’s acerbic language much better, so that new experiences with their other pieces aren’t as hard.

That’s Ethan Iverson who, in addition to being the piano player for the frontier jazz trio The Bad Plus, writes an outstanding blog, Do The Math.  This post clarified a lot for me.  Iverson is a broad, open-minded, and gifted musician and even he approaches contemporary classical music the same way my PhD students approach the Revenue Equivalence Thereom.  I have tried exactly what he describes here for Ligeti, etc.  and I have yet to turn that corner.