Why do you like your favorite composers?

[Jo498]

I suspect that before I pass away, I will teach myself some of these fundamentals. At this point though, I am curious--how much does my lack of knowledge impede my listening experience?  Philosophically, I could make the argument that it should not in the slightest--after all, harmonic and other forms were not developed for their own sake, but to produce certain sensual effects that should require no knowledge of them in order to be effective.

Sure. Music is first of all supposed to be listened to, not analyzed. As for the question if and how your listening experience changes, this is impossible to answer from the outside.

Although I could in principle remember how the experience changed for me during more than 25 years, this is also very difficult, because I only very dimly remember those experiences as a teenager and any new listening of, say the Eroica or Brahms' 4th, will be with today's ears, knowledge and listening experience. I am also sure that the listening experience will often change simply by getting to know pieces better through "mere" listening, maybe even more so than by acquiring some theoretical knowledge.

After the premiere (although it might have been the pre-premiere on 4handed piano) of the 4th symphony one of Brahms' circle said that during the first mvmt he had felt like being beaten up by two very learned people. While this is very probably not the aesthetic experience intended by Brahms I think if familiarity and 120 years historical distance lead to experiencing this movement "only" as a "romantic sound cloud" without any hint of the extraordinary amount of motivic development and connections, counterpoint etc. one is also missing something. Although even an experienced and informed listener will still miss quite a bit in any case, I assume.

Taking the last movement of this symphony, as a beginner I had a hard time to believe that there really is a scheme of 8 measures repeated 30 times. Of course I would recognize the more obvious reprises of the beginning but not much more. Again, I think, one point of this movement is to create a continuous flow *despite* repeating a harmony/bass pattern 30 times in a row, so I seriously doubt that the main focus for the listener should be to count along or only listen for the bass notes or sth. like that. But if one is completely unaware of this structure and cannot even hear the more obvious appearances of the pattern, there is something missed.
Although the comparison is problematic, for me this is somewhat similar to looking at a painting and not realizing that it is a Nativity scene or a judgement or Paris or whatever.

[Madiel]

Hmm. My use of the term "rules" seems to have put people in mind of something external to the piece of music, an existing convention, when part of what I was trying to say is that I want a piece of music to follow its own path, not necessarily the conventional path of other pieces of music.  My notion is about the internal coherency of a piece, not its adherence to conventions.

What I'm trying to convey is sort of related to the sonata form ideas of exposition followed by development, in that a musical work will introduce a group of ideas - be they themes or rhythms or harmonies - and then work with them. What I don't want is a piece of music that just introduces an idea, then another idea, then another completely different idea, then another idea, and never takes any of them further.

Seeing we're talking about Sibelius, as good an example as any is that Sibelius' 4th symphony uses the tritone. A lot. The sense of unease and instability and clashes in the symphony frequently derives from a tritone. It's a kind of organising principle through the whole work, and it's there from the very opening theme.  But I don't think you need to know a lot of academic stuff or what a "tritone" is to hear that there's a particular soundworld created through the whole symphony, and nothing comes later that feels like it's somehow denying what was established to begin with.

And to pick an example from the pop world of what I don't like, there's an album called Daybreaker by Beth Orton that I struggle with hugely. To me, the first 4 songs set up a specific sound palette (one that I rather like), a balance of acoustic instruments with tinges of electronic. To me, that's the "rules" that the album has introduced me to and set up. And then the 5th song just doesn't seem like it's come from the same soundworld, and the 6th veers somewhere else again, and it takes until towards the end of the album to return back to the stylistic "rules" I felt were orignally established.

[Ken B]

Hmm. My use of the term "rules" seems to have put people in mind of something external to the piece of music, an existing convention, when part of what I was trying to say is that I want a piece of music to follow its own path, not necessarily the conventional path of other pieces of music.  My notion is about the internal coherency of a piece, not its adherence to conventions.

What I'm trying to convey is sort of related to the sonata form ideas of exposition followed by development, in that a musical work will introduce a group of ideas - be they themes or rhythms or harmonies - and then work with them. What I don't want is a piece of music that just introduces an idea, then another idea, then another completely different idea, then another idea, and never takes any of them further.

Seeing we're talking about Sibelius, as good an example as any is that Sibelius' 4th symphony uses the tritone. A lot. The sense of unease and instability and clashes in the symphony frequently derives from a tritone. It's a kind of organising principle through the whole work, and it's there from the very opening theme.  But I don't think you need to know a lot of academic stuff or what a "tritone" is to hear that there's a particular soundworld created through the whole symphony, and nothing comes later that feels like it's somehow denying what was established to begin with.

And to pick an example from the pop world of what I don't like, there's an album called Daybreaker by Beth Orton that I struggle with hugely. To me, the first 4 songs set up a specific sound palette (one that I rather like), a balance of acoustic instruments with tinges of electronic. To me, that's the "rules" that the album has introduced me to and set up. And then the 5th song just doesn't seem like it's come from the same soundworld, and the 6th veers somewhere else again, and it takes until towards the end of the album to return back to the stylistic "rules" I felt were orignally established.

I know what you mean. It's why for instance I am not a big fan of Milhaud's symphonies. One damn idea after another.    but nothing is done with them.

[starrynight]

I think it's possible to like a lot of different things, but to love something (which I think the thread is more about) it's more about immersing yourself within something so you enjoy the details and subtleties eventually.  Then that can be rationalised as most expressive, beautiful, challenging music or whatever....but it's just a love through immersion, followed normally by some personal identification with it too, perhaps to justify the obsession I don't know lol.