I'm sure there are as many ways to listen constructively as there are constructive listeners (Ed: There goes t_i_n heading for Pseuds' Corner again), but just a couple of brief thoughts:

I think the danger you have to watch out for if you're setting out to 'get to know something' quickly (rather than just, ooh, you know, listen and enjoy it, that kind of thing ...) is that a lot of the strategies you're likely to come up with are liable to fix the piece in your short-term memory rather than your long-term memory.

For the latter, associations that link your hearing of the piece with the other four senses do help, I tend to find. Getting your hands on the score, either to follow while listening or to bash through on a piano, is one way: not so much because 'you have to see the score to really understand a piece' but more because it relates the temporally rather elusive experience of listening with your faculty of memory of a rather more fixed, visual object.

Someone once said to me something that seemed surprisingly profound about how you remember music much better if you've listened to it on a journey - I think there's something in that too ...

A related thread...

http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=554.0

On Thursdays I tend to drive into work doing the first broadcast of In Our Time and drive back (different route) during the repeat (if I can be bothered to listen again). It's strange how Melv's dulcet tones are linked with this corner, that junction, those traffic lights...

I have had the odd experience of experiencing a long drive eg M6, M5, M4 like the movements of some particularly monotonous symphony - and occasionally a listening experience feels like a particularly monotonous journey...

I find it more and more difficult just to listen, without distraction, mind-wandering, just having a quick click on R3OK to see if anyone's posted anything interesting, all that sort of thing. I find myself more than ever needing the score just to focus. At the same time there's a certain kind of listening which the score hinders - when I was discovering them for the first time I couldn't find my way into Bruckner or Wagner until I managed to get my head out of the score. I confess I'm not entirely pleased with the way I listen nowadays - I'm not moaning about the distractions of modern life or any of that, just that I find focussing harder and harder to do. Ah, excuse me, an SMS has just come in, must attend to it.

One reason for composing is that there's music you want to hear which doesn't (yet) exist, right? - and if you, as a listening person, want to hear it then there's a good chance that other listening people will too.

Apart from which:

CD, you have a very small child, if I'm not mistaken; therefore you can't really extrapolate your present powers of concentration into a more generalised phenomenon. And Ollie, you do spend a significant proportion of your time working on music you aren't that interested in, which might indicate that when you aren't your ears might need a rest (and your brain might need the light but refreshing exercise afforded by interaction with your r3ok friends).

My new disks go straight onto the MP3-player, and I carry them around and listen to them both complete and by movement.  I am not sure scores are really essential to concentrated listening - in fact they can often become a distraction from the music (rather than just the dots)?   If there are some sleevenotes by the composer, or the conductor, these can often be revealing too, and worth a read.  I often try - on the 3rd or 4th hearing - to jot-down some of the most important motivic material, the stuff that makes it all tick?  This can prompt you into making decisions about what seems to be primary, secondary, etc in the piece, and leads on into active listening...

I took an eight year break from music.  It was the best decision I ever made.  I came back to it with an entirely different attitude, and I am now grateful and appreciative of everything I hear.