Hearing typology

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Hearing typology , or listener typology , is a musicological type theory with which the attempt is made to divide and classify the different ways of musical hearing into types. Based on western-ancient type theories and the type theories of psychology at the end of the 19th century, various hearing typologies were established, especially in western musicology of the 20th century.

Hearing typologies

Friedrich Rochlitz (1799)

One of the first hearing typologies is considered to be that of the music writer Friedrich Rochlitz , who described four types in 1799: music listeners out of vanity and fashion , those who only hear with their ears , those who only hear with their intellect and those who hear with their whole soul .

Heinrich Besseler (1925)

The musicologist Heinrich Besseler combined the reception of music from different epochs of music history with different listening styles. For example, he called the way of listening to music of the Renaissance “listening hearing” and that of baroque music “connecting hearing”. He called the listening style of classical music “active listening” and “passive listening” that of romantic music .

Richard Müller-Freienfels (1936)

The philosopher and psychologist Richard Müller-Freienfels distinguished u. a. between the sensory type , who is strongly related to the sound, the motor type, the imaginative type, who has images and fantasies about music, the reflective type and the emotional type, who experiences the music in a concentrated manner .

Albert Wellek (1939)

The psychologist and founder of music psychology Albert Wellek differentiated between a linear-analytical (intellectual), a polar-cyclical (emotional) and a creative type on the basis of general psychological criteria . With hearing tests he examined the characteristics of the interval assessment of these groups, further differentiated according to people with absolute or relative hearing .

He found that the linear type judges intervals according to their distance and therefore tends to confuse neighboring tones, while the polar type judges them according to their degree of consonance and therefore tends to confuse the intervals octave , fifth and fourth . The creative type combines the two forms of assessment. Wellek also connects the linear-analytical type with the more polyphonic musical forms, the polar type with cantable melos and harmonious music.

The amalgamation of this typogical compilation with the National Socialist racial thinking is shown in the empirically not further investigated assignment of the two types to the North Germans (linear) and the South Germans, respectively. Austrians (polar).

Theodor W. Adorno (1962)

The best-known hearing typology was established by the sociologist and music philosopher Theodor W. Adorno under the name types of musical behavior . In his opinion, the type of reception is based on the weighting between knowledge of music theory , familiarity with certain types of music and peculiarities of perception . Adorno emphasizes that his typology, in contrast to empirical work that only examined the likes, dislikes, and habits of music listeners, is based on the appropriateness and inappropriateness of hearing in relation to what is heard. His typology therefore paints a picture from the type of “full adequacy” of hearing to “complete incomprehension”.

expert

This type, which is rarely encountered, is most likely to be found among professional musicians . His ability lies in drawing conclusions about the future from what is already past in the piece of music, so that he already knows what is coming next. He understood and heard the compositional technique at the same time and was able to follow the composer's thoughts.

Good listeners

The good listener has the same skills as the expert, only that he is not familiar with the composition techniques. He can characterize and interpret or judge the music and hear the style, but he does not understand the technology. This is comparable to a person who has a good command of a language and can say that something sounds wrong, but cannot justify this due to the lack of knowledge of grammar. Adorno sees this type represented primarily in the aristocratic art lover of the 19th century.

Education consumer

This type hears a lot and is well informed about what he hears. He is the bourgeois successor of the second type, takes an active part in musical life and often has a correspondingly large record collection. But he could not really follow the musical structures. His interest is often centered on externalities such as musical personalities, biographies, brilliance in the performance. There is something fetishistic about his relationship to music .

Emotional listener

In the emotional listener, the music triggers strong emotions and enables repressed feelings to be expressed that would otherwise be subject to rational control. The structure of the music takes a back seat and Adorno takes the view that this type can easily manipulate it, e.g. B. from the musical entertainment industry, which produces clichéd music.

Resentment listeners

The resentment listener is a supporter of special styles of music, identifies with it and is contemptuous of the current culture industry. Above all, he hears the music of bygone times in a performance practice that tries to be faithful to the work. Adorno sees this type associated with a reactionary worldview. (Adorno is alluding to the historical performance practice movement that began at that time.)

Jazz expert

As a subtype of the resentment listener, the jazz expert also distinguishes himself through listening to a special musical direction and rejects the official musical culture. He created an outlet for himself through music and persisted in the resentment of a music that was falling behind the development of new music .

Conversation listeners

The conversation listener sees music as a source of stimulus like alcohol and cigarettes. He wants to distract himself, switch off and get away from everyday life. This type is the most common and most important for the music industry.

Indifferent, unmusical, anti-musical

These are rather rare. The reasons are mostly in the early childhood education in combination with special technical talents. The listeners belonging to the type are realistic.

Hermann Rauhe (1975)

The musicologist Hermann Rauhe established a listening typology for young pop music listeners . He distinguished between a scattered reception , for example of background music, a motor-reflective reception , an associative-emotional reception , an empathic reception in which the listeners also hear emotionally, but consciously select certain music, a structural or structural-synthetic listening style , a subject-oriented listening style in which the listener seeks the reflection of one's own subject in the music, and integrative listening , which combines various of the aforementioned listening styles.

Klaus-Ernst Behne (1986)

In the 1980s, the musicologist and music pedagogue Klaus-Ernst Behne examined the music preferences of children and adolescents in a sample of over 1200 schoolchildren. The data were evaluated by means of a cluster analysis and combined into typologies of verbal and sounding preferences.

Peter Schneider (2006)

The physicist and church musician Peter Schneider examined whether people tend to perceive the fundamental tone or the overtone spectrum in relation to sound and found that this type of orientation correlates with the choice of certain instruments. So are Grundtonhbörer more likely to find the players of drums, guitar, piano, trumpet, flute or fiddle while Obertonhörer exercised usually musical instruments such as deep brush, brass or woodwinds, organ and vocals. Schneider was unable to establish a correlation with musicality .

Criticism and continuation

In particular, Adorno's typology has been criticized more often due to its highly judgmental arrangement and individual negative assessments, such as the devaluation of jazz and the performance practice of early music, or used as a reason for disputes about Adorno's obvious contempt for jazz and pop music.

Since the 1970s, the research area of ​​hearing typology has increasingly shifted into the mostly empirically investigated questions of musical preferences . The research interest continued in the context of listener typologies in the commercial field when it came to constituting radio programs for certain types of listeners. However, the question of musical preference and its usability is in the foreground.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bruhn, Herbert; Oerter, Ralf, Rösing, Helmut: Music Psychology, a manual. Reinbek near Hamburg, 1993, pp. 130-135.
  2. ^ Heinrich Besseler: Basic questions of musical hearing. in: Yearbook of the Music Library. Peters 32, Jg. 1925 (1926), pp. 35-52.
  3. ^ Richard Müller-Freienfels: Psychology of Music. Vieweg and Teubner Verlag, Berlin-Lichterfelde 1936 (Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden).
  4. Albert Wellek: Typology of musical talent in the German people: Foundation of a psychological theory of music and music history. Munich: CH Beck, 1939 (2nd, complete and supplementary edition. With an addendum: Contemporary problems in music psychology and aesthetics. Munich: CH Beck, 1970).
  5. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Types of musical behavior. in: Introduction to the sociology of music. Paperback science, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1975, pp. 14-34.
  6. Hermann Rauhe in Rauhe, Hermann; Reinecke, Hans-Peter; Ribke, Wilfried: hearing and understanding. Theory and practice of action-oriented music lessons. Kösel, Munich 1997, pp. 138-141.
  7. ^ Klaus-Ernst Behne: Listener typologies. On the psychology of adolescent musical tastes. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg 1986.
  8. Peter Schneider: Music in the headIndividual differences in sound perception and the cerebral symphony orchestra. DOI 10.1055 / s-2006-957218 German Med Wochenschr 2006; 131: 2895-2897 · © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York · ISSN 0012-0472.
  9. Maria Hörl: A listener typology of different kind new music newspaper 2/2011 - 60th vintage. online . Retrieved February 23, 2020.
  10. Markus Fahlbusch: Adorno and the music. The image of reconciliation appears in fragility. In: Research Frankfurt. 3-4. 2003. pp. 37-43.
  11. ^ Tobias Plebuch: Listening to music according to Adorno. A recovery report. In: Mercury. German magazine for European thinking. 56/8. 2002. pp. 675-687.
  12. Dietrich Diederichsen: Pop is a crash. Taz, March 11, 2003. Retrieved February 23, 2009.
  13. ^ Werner Klüppelholz: Music lesson with Werner Klüppelholz. The Pope of Music. Theodor W. Adornos. Size and limits SWR dated August 7, 2009. Accessed February 23, 2020.
  14. Andreas C. Lehmann: Habitual and situational modes of reception when listening to music: An attitude-theoretical investigation (= writings on music psychology and music aesthetics, volume 6). P. 129f.