The Gifted Listener: Composer Aaron Copland on Honing Your Talent for Listening to Music

The poetry of music, Copland intimates, is composed both by the musician, in the creation of music and its interpretation in performance, and by the listener, in the act of listening that is itself the work of reflective interpretation. This makes listening as much a creative act as composition and performance — not a passive receptivity to the object that is music, but an active practice that confers upon the object its meaning: an art to be mastered, a talent to be honed.

  1. ​Music and Imagination​
  2. ​To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees​
  3. ​The core assertion​