Are you more emotional or analytical in your tastes?

[Symphonic Addict]

How do you react to music the best:

With works more academic, logical and disciplined like, e.g. Bach's fugues, or those pieces that denote austerity (small ensembles, shorter lengths). Or music whose purpose is only that: to be and to express pure music in the most abstract sense of the word, where emotions are often repelled (or a great part of them). Works like Bach Well-Tempered Clavier, Boulez Le Marteau sans maître, Buxtehude's motets, Rihm's string quartets, Frescobaldi keyboard pieces, or whatever akin to, would come to my knowledge.

Or like with, say, late-Romantic symphonies or concertos like those by Rachmaninov or Sibelius. Works that use a larger ensemble, the way and the unashamed intense emotions they convey. Beethovenian symphonies a la Eroica or 5th, Prokofiev epic cantatas, Suk Asrael or so.

The range of expressivity in a great orchestra and the heartrendingly merciless myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, grandeus, etc. I belong to this field. I have to admit it. Analytical is of my most admired interests, unhesitatingly so too! It works like a counterweight.

Haydn is a name that blends both features almost 50-50 in a masterly way.

I would claim in my case that I'm around 70% emotional - 30% analytical.

What about you? This is not about if analytical is better or viceversa. Just your impressions about it. Express as you feel better.

[some guy]

I cannot separate these at all. They're part of a unified system.

As a consequence, I cannot think of any music that lends itself to one or the other type of listening.

Every piece that you mentioned in the "academic, logical and disciplined" category, for instance, seems to me to be just as sensuous as any of the pieces you mentioned in the "late-Romantic" category. And any of those seem to be as disciplined and logical as any in the prior category.

I suppose that if I have a preference, it is for those pieces that are fairly well balanced, though I struggle to match the categories you present with any particular piece. Which brings us full circle, I guess, to how I listen--with emotions and intellect going full bore at the same time, inseparable.

[Maestro267]

Definitely emotional. I'll take the most luscious and lavishly orchestrated works any day. The more colours in a work, the more attractive it is to me. Plus, I really appreciate a good tune.

Idk if it counts, but I also appreciate when a composer does something interesting with structure, breaking the norm.

[Mandryka]

Just to get clear, would this be an example of totally, 100 per cent, sensual music?

https://www.youtube.com/v/kH2J7b9Iyb0

and this an example of 100 per cent intellectual music?

https://www.youtube.com/v/HFZ71bfprQ4&t=32s

[aukhawk]

I don't relate to a phrase like "the heartrendingly merciless myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, grandeus, etc" with respect to music.  Neither do I relate to analytical concepts like structure, sonata form, fugue etc.  Music for me is a stimulant, or a relaxant, or sometimes both at once, and it exists almost entirely in the here-and-now - it has very little past and even less future. 
All of this is the same whether its a favourite instrumental piece by Bach, a favourite symphonic movement by Mahler, or a stream-of-consciousness improvisation by jazz guitarist John McLaughlin.

[vandermolen]

Definitely emotional.

[andolink]

The two modes are not mutually exclusive for me.  I'm emotionally affected while analyzing harmony/counterpoint, recording quality, performance quality, etc. 

[DaveF]

I'm emotionally affected while analyzing harmony/counterpoint...

Well said, sir!  I read down through this thread trying to clarify my own tastes, and found that you had managed to encapsulate them perfectly in just a few words.  I think in my teens, when I was just beginning to appreciate music, I would have been 100% "emotional" - played the big moments over and over just for the sheer uplift they gave me (last couple of minutes of the first movement of Dvořák 7, for example), whereas now the sort of things that reduce me unfailingly to tears, so can't be listened to when driving, are more and more those where I feel a musical mind working at the very limits of its technical ability - so the first part of Bach's Singet dem Herrn, the Lauda Jerusalem from the Monteverdi Vespers, Byrd's Quadran Pavan & Galliard, Sibelius 7, Birtwistle's Secret Theatre...  None of them, I imagine, often thought of as pieces overbrimming with emotion, but they sure do it for me.

[Marc]

I cannot separate these at all. They're part of a unified system.
[...]

Same here.
And I really can get inwardly emotional whilst listening to those 'academic' Bach fugues.

Listening live in concert to fugues like those of BWV 538 ('Dorian' Toccata), 544 or the 6-part Ricercar of Das musikalische Opfer... heard them on organ, played by some awesome musicians, sending me right up to the higher dimensions.

[André]

Very emotional in my choice of works/genres, although I sometimes shut that drawer and listen to resolutely analytical music. 90/10, I'd say.

But then, when I listen to an interpretation, it goes in the other direction: very analytical.

[Florestan]

The range of expressivity in a great orchestra and the heartrendingly merciless myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, grandeus, etc. I belong to this field.

Me too but I have to strongly disagree that the "heartrendingly merciless myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, grandeus, etc" belongs exclusively to large orchestral music, and that "small ensembles, shorter lengths" denotes austerity. In my experience chamber music and solo piano music can and usually do display myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, etc. Actually, I prefer chamber music and solo piano music to orchestral music but I am definitely emotional in my taste. Analyzing the formal structure of a work or doing A/B comparisons of dozens of performances of the same work is not my thing. I live for the moment: whatever performance I am hearing of a work is the one I enjoy (or not, but this is rarely the case.)

Boccherini once said: Music without passion and feelings is useless. Amen!

[Mandryka]

Is it possible to listen to this sort of music for the emotional content? I'm not sure. I mention it just because I was listening to it when I saw this thread, I enjoy it, I'm certainly not doing anything which feels analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/v/Z1jMWfCstm0


Basically I suspect that the emotional/analytical duality isn't a good way of making sense of the phenomenology of musical experience.

[Symphonic Addict]

Every piece that you mentioned in the "academic, logical and disciplined" category, for instance, seems to me to be just as sensuous as any of the pieces you mentioned in the "late-Romantic" category. And any of those seem to be as disciplined and logical as any in the prior category.

That is interesting to know. It allows me to understand that some people feel moved by works that I, maybe, don't find that emotional.

[Symphonic Addict]

Definitely emotional. I'll take the most luscious and lavishly orchestrated works any day. The more colours in a work, the more attractive it is to me. Plus, I really appreciate a good tune.

You and I share those elements regarding orchestral music.

[Symphonic Addict]

Just to get clear, would this be an example of totally, 100 per cent, sensual music?

https://www.youtube.com/v/kH2J7b9Iyb0

and this an example of 100 per cent intellectual music?

https://www.youtube.com/v/HFZ71bfprQ4&t=32s

Well, the Feldman, for my ears, doesn't sound sensuous at all. It's rather disquieting in a good way. The another work seems practically inaudible, like a huge Cage's 4'33'', so saying it's intellectual, it could be. All in my opinion, of course. Others may feel other things.

[Symphonic Addict]

It was my mistake to mix many features into what I was initially meaning. Sorry about that. My real purpose is something like this:

let's say

Schonberg's String Quartet No. 3 vs. Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2

or

Böhm's any harpsichord suite vs. Schumann's Kreisleriana

Do you feel more empathy with works like the Schonberg/Böhm or the Shostakovich/Schumann? In a general way.

As for the first example, the Schonberg is the kind of music that, for me, sounds 'academic' 'cerebral' 'disciplined' and many people enjoy it and consider it a masterpiece. That's fine. As for me, I prefer works like the Shostakovich by far, hence I feel there is more emotion and expressivity on it. What I want to know is how different one listener can be with respect to another and what your impressions are about it.

[Symphonic Addict]

Me too but I have to strongly disagree that the "heartrendingly merciless myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, grandeus, etc" belongs exclusively to large orchestral music, and that "small ensembles, shorter lengths" denotes austerity. In my experience chamber music and solo piano music can and usually do display myriad of emotions, sentiments, feelings, depictions, moods, etc. Actually, I prefer chamber music and solo piano music to orchestral music but I am definitely emotional in my taste. Analyzing the formal structure of a work or doing A/B comparisons of dozens of performances of the same work is not my thing. I live for the moment: whatever performance I am hearing of a work is the one I enjoy (or not, but this is rarely the case.)

Boccherini once said: Music without passion and feelings is useless. Amen!

You're right. I did a mess about it. Sorry, Andrei.

[Mirror Image]

I'm probably about 80% analytical and 20% emotional. I can certainly understand this sentiment from Alban Berg when he said, "Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection." I also think that for anyone to think that solo piano or chamber music is not capable of capturing a plethora of emotions, nuances, texture, color, etc. is sadly mistaken and don't really have an understanding that every genre can offer a listener an entire world of possibilities, but this is especially true for solo piano and chamber music given the intimacy and impact it can produce.

Edit:

Now that I've really given this some more thought --- I'm probably more like 90% analytical and 10% emotional. There are many works that I don't respond to emotionally right off the bat. Sometimes it's when I return to a work after given it much thought and reading a lot about it that I begin to piece together the puzzle. And it's at this point, where something can become emotional for me. A lot of times for me the emotion is written 'between the lines' if that makes any sense. It's after a particular musical phrase has ended and there's a breath of air that I weigh what exactly just happened and why I connected with it on a deeper level at that moment in time.

[Florestan]

It was my mistake to mix many features into what I was initially meaning. Sorry about that. My real purpose is something like this:

let's say

Schonberg's String Quartet No. 3 vs. Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2

or

Böhm's any harpsichord suite vs. Schumann's Kreisleriana

Do you feel more empathy with works like the Schonberg/Böhm or the Shostakovich/Schumann? In a general way.

As for the first example, the Schonberg is the kind of music that, for me, sounds 'academic' 'cerebral' 'disciplined' and many people enjoy it and consider it a masterpiece. That's fine. As for me, I prefer works like the Shostakovich by far, hence I feel there is more emotion and expressivity on it. What I want to know is how different one listener can be with respect to another and what your impressions are about it.

Definitely Shostakovich/Schumann. In a general way, if a work doesn't touch me emotionally at first listen then I have no desire to, or interest in, listening to it for a second time, let alone multiple times. Also, I have no use for works which are not even moderately tuneful.

[Mandryka]

hence

Ah, now I see what you mean, the emotional ones are just the ones you like.