Why Do You Listen To Music?

[Florestan]

I was prompted to start this thread by a discussion in another one.

Here is the post that triggered me.

That's on you (and Mandryka, etc) though. At least in music kitsch serves an important purpose: to delight and bewitch the ear, to be a balm for the tired soul, to soothe the savage beast etc. The idea that music can't be valuable unless it somehow reveals the sublime or transcendent, that it has to serve a higher purpose than calming and diverting the listener, misses the mark on the reasons people listen to music: sometimes I'm feeling depressed or insomniac and need a Pleyel quartet or a Shostakovich ballet suite to distract myself. Similarly I think most people enjoy eating sweets, pies, chocolates, ice creams etc, especially when feeling a bit down, although one wouldn't necessarily be satisfied eating only those things.

So, why do you listen to music?

[Biffo]

Enjoyment.

The music can be sublime or frivolous and the enjoyment of a different nature for each but it is still enjoyment.

[PerfectWagnerite]

What else am i going to do on my hr drive to work?

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

I listen to music because I know my ability to appreciate depressing doom and gloom makes me superior. 

Satisfied? 

[ritter]

I get the feeling that it's as if, in the realm of painting, our dear Florestan were asking us to always look at this:



...and never at this:

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

I get the feeling that it's as if, in the realm of painting, our dear Florestan were asking us to always look at this:

...or maybe this

[ritter]

...or maybe this

That's the beauty of GMG! You always get to know new things...I had never even heard of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light ^TM. To think I've been missing him all these years....

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

That's the beauty of GMG! You always get to know new things...I had never even heard of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light ^TM. To think I've been missing him all these years....

I think this is the epitome of "kitch."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[PerfectWagnerite]

That's the beauty of GMG! You always get to know new things...I had never even heard of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light ^TM. To think I've been missing him all these years....

???Really???
If you ever get on a cruise here in the U.S. they will try to sell you overprice paintings by him and the like.

[ritter]

I think this is the epitome of "kitch."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And there was me thinking we Spaniards had set the international standard for kitsch:

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

And there was me thinking we Spaniards had set the international standard for kitsch:

Well, in Kindade hadn't killed himself with drink, he could have added that character standing outside of his cottages.

[Florestan]

And there was me thinking we Spaniards had set the international standard for kitsch:

Kitsch was invented in Meissen, actually.



But seriously now, why do you listen to music?

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

But seriously now, why do you listen to music?

I listen for pleasure of different kinds, sometimes for relaxing or diverting the mind, sometimes as a sort of meditation, sometimes for the pleasure of appreciating the unfolding of a complex musical structure.

[ritter]

But seriously now, why do you listen to music?

Because it's there? 

You've got mail, btw.

[Brian]

I listen for pleasure of different kinds, sometimes for relaxing of diverting the mind, sometimes as a sort of meditation, sometimes for the pleasure of appreciating the unfolding of a complex musical structure.

Yeah, I can think of so many different reasons for listening to music! Sometimes I just want to have fun, or have my eardrums get blasted out. Sometimes I need to concentrate and think. Sometimes I want to get taken on a journey. Lots of things.

I think if we set up a spectrum like this

Florestan                                                           Mirror Image
<----------------------X-------------------------------------------->

Where the far left was kitsch and the far right was all super depressing, my cumulative average listening would be about where the X is 

[Florestan]

I listen for pleasure of different kinds, sometimes for relaxing of diverting the mind, sometimes as a sort of meditation, sometimes for the pleasure of appreciating the unfolding of a complex musical structure.

I liked your first answer better. but thanks, anyway.   

[Florestan]

Because it's there? 

So is ktsch but I suppose you won't hang any Kinkade in your living room. 

You've got mail, btw.

I know but my reply will come tomorrow.

[Florestan]

Yeah, I can think of so many different reasons for listening to music! Sometimes I just want to have fun, or have my eardrums get blasted out. Sometimes I need to concentrate and think. Sometimes I want to get taken on a journey. Lots of things.

I think if we set up a spectrum like this

Florestan                                                           Mirror Image
<----------------------X-------------------------------------------->

Where the far left was kitsch and the far right was all super depressing, my cumulative average listening would be about where the X is 

Two comments.

1. I reject any association with the far left. 

2. My top 3 composers are Mozart, Schubert and Chopin. I never knew their music was kitsch. 

EDIT: typo corrected.

[Mandryka]

When I was a kid I had a formative experience listening to Schubert's unfinished symphony. I was really excited, viscerally excited, by the second movement, I remember thinking to myself that I didn't didn't believe that music could be like that.

I'm constantly in quest of that feeling of new horizons and uncharted territories.

(Same in literature, same motivation and rewards for me.)

[Jo498]

I think kitsch is used in too broad a sense often in such discussions. It requires an element of pretentiousness (while falling flat of the lofty goal, if one sets a lofty tone and succeeds because the style is in line with the sujet etc., it's not kitsch), not merely an indulging in the idyllic or pleasantries. I am not quite sure about the 18th century porcelain figures (because their successors seem the epitome of kitsch) but generally the pastoral style of the 18th century mostly lacked that pretentiousness. Music was either so clearly "functional" or comparably unpretentious that I don't think kitsch can be applied to anything before the early 19th century.
Even then, the folksy tone of e.g. the "Jungfernkranz" by Weber (that was mocked mercilessly by Heine although I am not sure if the mockery was mostly turned towards the ubiquity that song had reached only a year or so after the opera's premiere) was usually genuine and "naive".