through December 15th 2012
“A great shift culminated in the era of Bach. Before the Baroque, perception was sequence-dominated (i.e. contrapuntal lines), and afterward, perception focused on simultaneity (chords). We can and do commonly perceive both of these dimensions at once, but not always with equal focus. In addition, the dimension of orchestration has been awesomely expanded from Bach's time to our own. To meaningfully ingest all of these perspectives, we may switch between these sonic views as though rotating a cube to see it from each side in turn, focusing attention on lines here, harmonic progressions there, and large scale transitions of amplitude or timbre at other times. We flit between multiple perceptual modes, but our minds will also tend to merge and group the sounds, perceiving a totality on some single central inner hearing ear. This Cyclopean (Julesz 1971) ear is the central single "ear" in which we hear with the most profound feeling.
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