I'm content to repeat it: It's a mistake to believe there is a "the" meaning
of 'understand', and certainly when "appreciating" "art". The notion that
being able to sing the tune is a good guide to when to use the phrase
'understanding the music' strikes me as ludicrous. I don't know who that
speaking
aesthetician was, but she sounds dismally uninformed, or, more likely,
irremediably
stupid.
One of the running giggles in my family -- including giggles from my wife --
was the way she has never been able to sing a note or hold a tune or repeat a
tune -- but no one was more appreciatively seized by Pavarotti at his best.
If the aeshetician had ever been in a hall and experienced the moments when,
at the last note of one of Pavarotti's good arias, 99% of the audience would
spring exultantly to their feet, levitated and throbbing with what his voice
had
just done to them. It had noting to do with THEIR being ble to hum the
"tune". In truth, the word 'understanding' would never have come to my mind to
describe my feelings at those times. It's not a word that I would expect to
stir in
someone else's mind anything like what was in mine, but such stirring is what
using words aims at.
I WOULD -- and did -- use the word to convey my sense of what was in
Pavarotti's mind (and I found that the other music professionals around him
agreed):
Luciano "understood" "where the music is" in a given passage. I sat in on some
of his one-on-one teaching sessions as he led students to where the "music"
was. His accompanist once said this to me of Luciano, who was mediocre at
reading scores: "'Musicianship'? -- not so much. But musical, musical,
musical!" The
accompanist and I were, so to speak, "talking about the same thing", and we
both knew we were, and yet it wouldn't occur to him to use the word "
understands". That 's not because there is any right or wrong about the usage.
Where I
might say Luciano "understood" where the "music" is, the accompanist would say,
"Luciano SEES where it is, he HEARS it!"
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