The sort of music you dislike

[drogulus]

Embrace the dark side, my friend - comfort yourself with thoughts of their premature deafness

     I'm an American. I aggressively wish people well.

[some guy]

Music I don't like is usually uninteresting rather than dislikeable.
...

Uninteresting ... represents something along the lines of musical damnation. Sometimes active dislike can lose the "dis" as happened with Scriabin a few years back.... Uninteresting OTOH is forever, I guess.

But drogulus, surely "uninteresting" is not a quality of the music. The word itself calls attention to the relationship between you and the sounds. To put all the onus on the music is to miss your role in all this. And to say "uninteresting is forever" is to say that you don't think you can change.

But of course, you can, as your Scriabin anecdote illustrates. It is true that ennui is harder to overcome than antipathy. But that's because the latter is a more dynamic quality. You're more engaged with something you dislike, so it's easier for dis-like to drop the dis-. Ennui, though, I mean, really, who cares?

There are plenty of pieces I've been bored by that no longer do so, though. And it's always been a change in me. (Certainly the music stays the same.) And a change in me means a change in my relationship to the music.

I guess what I'm saying, in short, is don't damn yourself!

[drogulus]

But drogulus, surely "uninteresting" is not a quality of the music.

      What do you mean by the "quality of the music"?

      I start from the premise that there is quality in music that attracts my interest, even if it isn't something that grabs me by the throat and forces me to listen. And yes, music that doesn't interest me at all has no chance of changing me. Something that is provocatively "bad" like Scriabin seemed at one time (Strauss, too, even farther back) is better situated to reverse the verdict.

      On the question of changing to accommodate the music, I do this naturally and as a matter of policy. There must be something, some little spark that attracts my notice or it won't happen. There's too much music and too little time to refilter everything. Also, I need time to ignore all sorts of other uninteresting things, not just music.

[Teresa]

or a piece you try liking-but cant!
1. late Schönberg- i tried!
2. Bergs scoring
3. Pfitzners scoring
4.the way they do Wagner
5. Webern
6. i dont get R. Schumann (is he a fish or a bird?- a piano-chamber- lied- operatic-- or symphonic composer?)

I agree with most of your choices about I don't like early or late Schönberg.  I find his early more tonal works too boring and his later works way too atonal and ugly.  Berg and Webern are also very ugly sounding  to me.  I'm not into Opera so I prefer orchestral excepts for my Wagner.

What I don't like
1 ) The late Renaissance.
2 ) The Classical Era including Mozart and Haydn
3 ) The Avant-garde
4 ) Minimalism
5 ) Solo piano music from any era
6 ) Most chamber music from any era
7 ) Opera from any era
8 ) Composers who do not like musicians to bang things with sticks of mallets.

I was always curious in regards to No. 8 what percussion players do when they are not needed.  For example an orchestra has a battery of percussion players and if they are doing a work with just a single cymbal crash at the end, isn't that rather boring for the percussion player who has to read the entire score as the music is playing so he is ready at the end?  And what of the other percussion players?  And what about programs of music with NO percussion, are they given time off without pay?  It just seems so wrong on so many levels for composers to neglect percussion in so many of their compositions.

[some guy]

Quote from: some guy on Today at 12:36:48 PM

    But drogulus, surely "uninteresting" is not a quality of the music.

      What do you mean by the "quality of the music"?

I mean something intrinsic to the music.

I start from the premise that there is quality in music that attracts my interest, even if it isn't something that grabs me by the throat and forces me to listen. And yes, music that doesn't interest me at all has no chance of changing me.

Yes, there's a quality in the music, but it's not interest or uninterest. That's you. Your interest. So something happens when the music, with its qualities, sounds in your ears, which are hooked up to your mind. That something that happens is what the word "interesting" points to, not to the piece itself. If the piece itself were uninteresting--if that were a quality of the music--then everyone would find it to be so, not just drogolus.

Just look at all the things Teresa reports not liking. Those are all things that lots of other people like. So it's not the music. And of course, music that doesn't interest you now probably won't be the agent of change. But if you do change, just generally and for whatever reason, you may find when (if?) you revisit a piece that bored you, that it no longer does.

And that's a magical moment, or has been many times for me, that's all!

[DavidRoss]

Good luck, some guy.  No one around here yet has had any success in helping Ernie to understand the distinction between his subjective experience (or lack thereof) and objective reality.  But exercises in patience are never wasted. 

[abidoful]

What I don't like
1 ) The late Renaissance.
2 ) The Classical Era including Mozart and Haydn
3 ) The Avant-garde
4 ) Minimalism
5 ) Solo piano music from any era
6 ) Most chamber music from any era
7 ) Opera from any era
8 ) Composers who do not like musicians to bang things with sticks of mallets.

There isnt  much you  like...!

[Teresa]

There isnt  much you  like...!

Enough to keep me very happy.  I have 3,219 compositions by 308 Composers most from the Romantic, Impressionist and Modern eras. 

[Superhorn]

  "Little musical substance" in Wagner's music?  Sheesh !!!!  The mind boggles that any one could describe his music as lacking in substance!
  I can understand people having problems with the librettos and the dramatic structure, but this takes the cake ! 
  I've always felt that Wagner's librettos work on their own terms, and that it would have been inconceivable for any one else to write them.  And his principal characters are not just stock operatic heroes ,heroines and villains, but highly complex and interesting people. 
  The best way to get to know Wagner' operas(or music dramas as he preferred to all those composed after Lohengrin) is to follow them on recordings with the English translations, so you can concentrate on the drama as well as the music.
 

[DavidRoss]

And his principal characters are not just stock operatic heroes ,heroines and villains, but highly complex and interesting people.

For instance? 

The best way to get to know Wagner' operas(or music dramas as he preferred to all those composed after Lohengrin) is to follow them on recordings with the English translations, so you can concentrate on the drama as well as the music.

Huh?  Wouldn't it be better, as Sarge has suggested, to experience live performances in person?  Personally, I think I've gotten more out of watching filmed performances than from just listening with libretto in hand.  But if the last is the only available option, still I wonder why it would not be better to follow the recording with the libretto in German rather than in translation...? 

[drogulus]

If the piece itself were uninteresting--if that were a quality of the music--then everyone would find it to be so, not just drogolus.

     Quite so. Which is why I asked what you meant by quality in music. Once again I don't assume that music lacks quality because I don't like it. That puts me at odds with a number of people here who think that subjectivity must be objective if you believe in it. I reject the idea wherever found that a well believed opinion is a truth. In music I find I can dispense with this idea altogether, except for occasionally reminding miscreants that their likes and dislikes just might not have been ordained by the Prophet Hisself.

     Something in the music resonates with something in you. That's how you explain an interesting fact: Even very confused people acknowledge that there are multiple conflicting models of what makes musical excellence. No single buildplan can account for Bach, Coltrane, Stravinsky and Gershwin. How does the confused mind deal with this realization? Well the simplest solution is to rule out great swaths of musical history as the product of inferior culture/s. But it doesn't work, even within the narrow confines of the classical-only environment, unless you are really ruthless and throw out everything outside the period you take as the ideal. The more restrictive you are the less room for taste in your taste, so instead you have to resort to intrinsic truths which by miraculous intervention align what you like with what the cosmos demands: "Aw shucks, I guess I was just born that way."

      Musical history evolves away from any possible fixed model of what's right, and on top of that composers do it deliberately as well out of sheer cussedness, and occasionally out of a mirror-image doctrine which says not that music must conform to a fixed ideal, but instead that music must violate any such ideals to be true to what art is supposed to be. There you have the trads vs. mods fight in a nutshell. They both think there's a way for them to be right, and I think there isn't.

      My view is that climbing the ladder of taste is a matter of looking for inspiration from people with experience as listeners and critics, as well as artists. That experience can be greater than yours or just different. Parenthetically, that's why I look askance at the attacks on the taste of some critics that make posters here unhappy. I see critics as providing useful alternative ways of hearing music, and it isn't a bad thing that they don't hear things the way I do. It's helpful, really, even if I end up thinking they don't know as much as I once thought. Sooner or later the mask of authority slips a little bit with every great figure, as when you find out that your favorite composer liked music that you think stinks on ice.

      No one has a veto, no one can claim the position of higher authority except to the extent that they provide a means to learn something. You may have to learn something else somewhere else, though, so no individual can provide you with all the ingredients. That's if you want to build a wide-ranging taste. To do that you need a flexible, realistic model of what it means for music to be good.

     

But if you do change, just generally and for whatever reason, you may find when (if?) you revisit a piece that bored you, that it no longer does.

And that's a magical moment, or has been many times for me, that's all!

     I love it when that happens. The "intrinsic quality" that wasn't there now is. Or, something else requiring a more interactive description is going on. Pattern detection is not a purely subjective process, nor does it yield to descriptions that take the pattern as eternally sitting there waiting to be read. So, I'll go with music quality as something that requires a level of interchange, an engagement that has social as well as interpersonal composer/listener meanings. Cultures build musical tastes and individuals replicate it one level down, putting their own spin on it, which then ramifies upwards to make new versions of the 100 Greatest Composers List.

     

[Superhorn]

  Yes, it's great to experience Wagner live, but following with the librettos and translations helps to to understand what the characters are really saying to each other and are interacting. It's also good to attend performances with superttles,or Mettitles at the Met.
   Some great Wagner characters are the Dutchman and Senta, Tannhauser,
  Brunnhilde, Wotan, Tristan,Isolde, Hans Sachs, Walther, Kundry and Parsifal.
   Yes, these are not stock operatic characters, but highly complex flesh and blood people .

[Guido]

or a piece you try liking-but cant!
1. late Schönberg- i tried!
2. Bergs scoring
3. Pfitzners scoring
4.the way they do Wagner
5. Webern
6. i dont get R. Schumann (is he a fish or a bird?- a piano-chamber- lied- operatic-- or symphonic composer?)

Pfitzner's scoring at of the first act prelude in Palestrina is one of the most wonderfully scored things I have ever heard. A thing of staggering beauty

[abidoful]

Pfitzner's scoring at of the first act prelude in Palestrina is one of the most wonderfully scored things I have ever heard. A thing of staggering beauty

Really???Well, thats interesting -i should check it more closely I never thought his scoring especially beautiful- in fact i even found it quite ugly at times, like in his c- sharp minor symphony; all that heavy scoring for brass-instruments...!

[jowcol]

Enough to keep me very happy.  I have 3,219 compositions by 308 Composers most from the Romantic, Impressionist and Modern eras.

Funny thing in how people's ears may be wired differently.  Teresa like the impressionist era, but had solo piano on her dislike list.  For me, the solo piano works in the impressionist camp are the part I like best.  I don't think the orchestral works caught that style as effectively.  (Your mileage may vary...)


One theme I'm noticing in this thread is how likes and dislikes are so tightly wound together.  In eastern philosophy, your likes and dislikes are both manifestations of desire. 

[Ten thumbs]

Composers please note the useful tips arising here:
Do not exploit the capabilities of your instruments.
Avoid giving the music too much substance or it will be taken as having none.
Do not make any loud gestures that may wake up and annoy the listener.

[Teresa]

Funny thing in how people's ears may be wired differently.  Teresa like the impressionist era, but had solo piano on her dislike list.  For me, the solo piano works in the impressionist camp are the part I like best.  I don't think the orchestral works caught that style as effectively.  (Your mileage may vary...)

One theme I'm noticing in this thread is how likes and dislikes are so tightly wound together.  In eastern philosophy, your likes and dislikes are both manifestations of desire.

The problem I have with solo piano is I do not like how a piano sounds by itself.  Piano often sounds good with orchestra and percussion but it all depends on what notes are written.  Piano is not among my favorite instruments. 

I am curious about you preference for Piano with Impressionism.  Do you really like the piano versions of Albeniz's Iberia and Suite Espagnole over the orchestral versions?  How about Leopold Stokowski's wonderful orchestration of Debussy's The Engulfed Cathedral?

Also the tonal colors of the various instruments of the orchestra are IMHO painted the best with most of the Impressionist composers, they really exploit the timbre color and sound of orchestra instruments in a way that is impossible for piano and screams IMPRESSIONISM.  For me Impressionism is Orchestral, the stripped down uncolorful piano reductions are not true impressionism to me. 

I am so thankful for the orchestral arrangements of many piano works by Leopold Stokowski and others so I can enjoy these works.  Of course as you stated YMMV.

[jowcol]

I like Stokowski's  Symphonic synthesis of Boris Gudenov, but on the whole his orchestrations, to me, can overpower and hurt the intimate character of the material he works with. (The swelling strings on the Promenade for his version of Pictures at an Exhibition). 

I'd definite take the piano version of the Engulfed Cathedral.  The two piano versions of Debussy's Nocturnes is also wonderful-- Debussy said the first movement was to be monochromatic-- which fits the piano sound very well.   I'm not sure if Debussy would ever be famous for his orchestration alone.   

I'll admit that in Ravel's case, his orchestration is wonderful-- and the tradeoff is closer.

Orchestrations of Satie's Gymnodpedies  tend to really bum me out.  It's turning a very intimate conversation into a public affair.

What I admire most about the impressionists on solo piano was that, to a large degree, they threw out the previous couple of centuries of "baggage" on the keyboard, and wrote to how the instrument sounded. 

Anyway-- I'd have to say that it would be a much gloomier world if we didn't have both approaches to choose from. 

wjp

[Florestan]

I am curious about you preference for Piano with Impressionism.  Do you really like the piano versions of Albeniz's Iberia and Suite Espagnole over the orchestral versions? 

What we're talking about here are not "piano versions' but original compositions for solo piano. Had Albeniz felt the need for an orchestra, he'd have orchestrated them himself, or wrote them as orchestral pieces from the beginning.

For me Impressionism is Orchestral, the stripped down uncolorful piano reductions are not true impressionism to me. 

Same observation as above. Debussy's Images or Preludes are not "piano reductions" but original compositions on their own.

I'm not trying to convert you to pianism, just to correct your improper use of the terms.

[MDL]

I was always curious in regards to No. 8 what percussion players do when they are not needed.  For example an orchestra has a battery of percussion players and if they are doing a work with just a single cymbal crash at the end, isn't that rather boring for the percussion player who has to read the entire score as the music is playing so he is ready at the end? 

Wasn't there a story (perhaps an urban myth) about a percussionist, possibly in a Broadway show, whose only role each night was to whack a tam-tam once in the grand finale? Each night he would sleep throughout the entire performance, relying on a colleague to nudge him awake at the appropriate cue a few seconds before his big moment, when he would leap up and whack the instrument. This routine worked fine for a few months until somebody nudged him by mistake whereupon he let fly with an almighty crash right in the middle of a tender love duet. That was his last night in the show, obviously.

It could be a load of old bollocks, but I like it.