Difficult to sum up,this ,but prompted by the post in the Berlioz Requem thread which said the second time round it didn't sound like  the same piece.

I've had this experience several times and I wonder  if others have too,and what causes it.

An example: when I was in my teens,with very uncultivated musical tastes (e.g. even some Elgar sounded confusingly 'modern' and I thought 'Peter Grimes' was atonal)  I heard the first performance of Max' 'Worldes Blis'. Many  of the auduence walked out or booed at the end. The  music sounded to me like just one long homogenous noise. When  I heard it again some years later it sounded like a completely different  piece,with varied texture and identifiable melodic lies,etc. I thought it had been revised or rewritten but I am assured this was not so.

Maybe I just wasn't listening very hard .the first time. I think it may be linked to the feeling I have the second (and subsequent times)I visit a certain place, when it seems  arranged or oriented a different way round than the first time. Does anyone have THAT experience too? 

Oh yes, Smits. The same happens with journeys whether by train or driving, too: perhaps because the first time you're not only taking in the sights/events and the dynamics of the jouney, but also discovering their temporal relationship to each other; perhaps when you repeat the experience the temporal relationship, 'the lie of the land', so to speak, is less of an issue, and the events/sights themselves can command more of the attention. Although you take more in the second time, the actual duration seems to be shorter.

(Does that make sense to anybody else?)

That is so true that one might be forgiven for assuming that it didn't even need saying; however, it certainly DOES need saying, so thank you for saying it!

Best,

Alistair

My alter-ego (Mad Frank Einstein) has the affrontery to claim that his Uncle Albert reckoned that all experiences are new ones and that repetition is impossible due to some strange four dimensional space-time thingy or something ..... (yawn).

 

In the High Court yesterday, Mr Justice Cocklecarrot presiding, the defendant Mr Albert Heraclitus (72) was charged with breaking the terms of his ASBO by repeatedly skinny-dipping in the Thames near his home in Pangbourne, Berkshire. Defending, Mr Albert Haddock QC argued that his client could not possibly have committed repeat offences since the ASBO referred to 'the River Thames' and, on each of the occasions his client has sought to refresh and invigorate himself with healthy unfettered aquatic exercise, the river was a different one. He submitted that there was therefore no case to answer and that his client should be discharged without blot.

The case continues.

That's interesting,Tiny.Would you care to go on to say just how the two processes are different?

I beleive studies have been done which reveal how human memory  of an event can become unreliable after 48 hours.  This sounds obvious, except for the common feature where witnesses insist that their erroneous memory is correct. An example  was the accident in which TE Lawrence was killed. Witneses at the inquest had widely differing accounts which they each insisted were accurate. 

So sorry, I meant 'Tony' not 'Tiny'.

Barrister's speeches can be terribly amusing can't they? I love the one of the prosecution in the Chatterley case(was it Merlyn Rees,or some such name?) where he asked the jury if this was a book they would allow their wife or their servants to read. This was as recent as the 1960s.

I've recently enjoyed the second series of 'Rumpole ,QC' on DVD.The third is reissued next month.