Performance and the uniqueness of music
Each time a piece of music is performed, it is played with a specific emotionality and, even if it follows the sheet music, there is always a small part for improvisation. Music is always played in the presence of someone. Improvisation intensifies the uniqueness of a musical performance, for example when the only stable element in it is one scale, sometimes chosen between hundreds of scales as it is the case for example in oriental music. Each musical scale has, for musicians, a singular emotional quality. Feeling the inherent depth that is built into a scale, the performer can develop a high level of sensitivity to music.
Outside of that framework, musical sensitivity may deteriorate. And it may happen that today, a certain standardisation, in live performance or during a recording, denies listeners access to a great variety of interpretations. Listening to ancient recordings, musicologists found various recordings of the same performer playing the same piece of music, the results having each one their own specificity. For performers, it is often about finding a way to perform in a free way, taking the teaching they have received into account, but performing the music according to their own sensitivity to music, also taking into account the present moment, the place when they are playing in the case of a live setting, and, when it is possible, the specificity of the audience.
Finding spaces of freedom
Of course, both for music performers and listeners, it is very useful to listen to recorded music, in order to discover fixed elements like harmony or melodies. However, the singularity of each performance may be taken into account if the listener is really attentive to music. Then music listening is really alive. The music may be performed and heard in such a way that it can renew the self totally. It must be interesting to know the way Mozart or Beethoven perceived their own music, but as soon as performers play a piece of music, it becomes their music and it is the same for the listeners.
To get a more internal access to music, listeners do not need permission. However, they must break the mold into which music has been cast these last decades, which is reducing it to a commodity, some hit which is an accompaniment when people are doing the shopping or eating in a restaurant: there is no need to show off about the music one really loves. On the contrary, music is much more than notes written on a manuscript, and letting the sound arise may help trained music listeners to find new spaces of freedom. Also listeners who listen to music with all their senses may feel that music is there or music is not there: there is not more or less music.