The success of music performance depends on what I call the Musical Trinity--the composer, the performer and the listener. All the three are equally important. The three units apparently act independently, but each must certainly be keeping the other in mind. The composer expects his structure to stand like a building, yet his music must be capable of being performed well and understood when heard. The performer creates his own world of sound. Yet, it is the outcome of the Composer's work and is judged by the effect on the listener. The listener's experience depends on his own musical capacity and tendencies of association, yet they are brought into play only by the powers of the performer and by the way the composition is interpreted.

All three activities are at once autonomous and overlapping, and in many successful performances, one often cannot decide which contributed the major share : beautifully constructed music, penetrating interpretation, or perceptive listening. Under such circumstances, differences of opinion can easily arise over the roles, the three members are to play and the credit each is to receive. The composer can claim that, without his inspired edifice of music, performance and listening are impossible. The performer can maintain that without him the composition must remain unknown. The listener can hold that, without his participation however passively, the work of the composer and performer would be fruitless. Or each may shift the blame for a fiasco on the other e.g. the music was poorly written or badly played, or the listeners were uneducated. These attitudes are typical, and there was probably no epoch in the history of music when composers did not consider impossible demands were made upon them and when listeners were not castigated for poor taste and fickleness.

However, the present situation is unprecedented. For those who still wish to live and work in the present, the problems have been aggravated. Amidst the furore and arguments over the future of music, children must still be introduced to their musical heritage, music students must learn to sing and play, so as to make listeners derive pleasure and profit from their music. A musical generation cannot be brought up in terms of what music may not become. If they are to lead their musical lives, it is necessary to disentangle the confusing strands and clarify what, up to now, have been the functions and methods of the composer, the performer and the listener. The composer however inspired his mood, yet, directs his efforts much more to the listeners than has ordinarily been thought of and much less to the performer; he considers the performer akin to himself, as being at the transmitting rather than the receiving end of the process. On the other hand, prima facie musical form and continuity owe their impact much more to the state and level of comprehensions at the listening stage than to abstract principles of construction of the piece.

The real way to enjoy music meaningfully is to learn to sing and play it. Then one will learn to discriminate between good music and bad. Correct listening to the music of a raga is as difficult and demanding a skill as learning to play or sing it. Listeners or audiences can be classified under three groups. (1) Having three- fold perception - intellectual, emotional and purely physical - all developed to equal proportions, so that he is able to experience the performance at every level of human being. (2) Uses only his emotions and understands the performance only as an entertainment to be pleased and to be amused or distracted by it. (3) Is the poorest type of audience. Resembles at least superficially a modern social scientist in his approach to life. He weighs and analyses, collects statistics, makes only cold empirical judgements that perhaps have no value for either the composer or the performer, as the approach is unaesthetic and unemotional. There are of course no absolute or pure types. Most of us are varying mixtures of one or more of these types.

It is possible by training and effort to effect a fundamental change in our listening capacity. In order to bring about such a change, it is not enough to know more about music, gather more facts about raga and tala or other specialised knowledge about the qualities of raga and bhava. In fact, for too long a time, excessive factual interest in music has come in the way of improved listening. The mind then has a habit of running off on its own, hurrying to form an opinion of what it is hearing. True listening is best cultivated by acquiring a balance between musical knowledge as such and artistic understanding of what is performed. The latter amounts to sensible participation in the creative process of music itself. As the great western musician Schoenberg said to a music lover - You are one of the extremely rare kind of people who are of such importance to musical culture. It is not the professional musician who lives by his art, who is needed to keep musical culture going. It is the amateur, who has really promoted and encouraged Art.
In conclusion, let me quote form Kalidasa's Malavikagnimitra - Not all is good that bears an ancient name, nor need we every modern poem blame. Wise men approve the good, new or old; the foolish critic follows where he is told.
(This Article was published in 'SHANMUKHA', Bombay). (About the author: Dr. T.T. Srinivasan is Professor and H.O.D, Physics department MES College Bangalore. He is a renowned Violin Vidwan. He is son and disciple of Violin Virtuso, Sri T.S. Tatachar, Bangalore).

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