Have You Ever Experienced Radical Changes in Your Musical Taste?

[Florestan]

Self-explanatory question.

In my teens, my favorite composers were Beethoven and Mahler, with the former's Seventh and the latter's Third my absolute favorite symphonies. Today, ie more than 30 years later, they are not among my top 10 composers, the Romantic synphony is my least favorite genre and the only Beethoven symphonies I still care for are 1,2,6 and 8. The Seventh I can't stand, everytime I happen to overhear it on car radio I change the station; as for Mahler, while I still enjoy his music in live concerts, I can't remember the last time I felt the need to listen to it at home. I noticed that, as I grew older, my taste for Romantic symphonic music has greatly diminished, to the point that I now consider Romantic, especially Late Romantic, symphonies to be a completely different genre than the Classical ones, and I favor the latter by a wide margin.

In short, my taste now is radically different from my taste 30 years ago. Have you guys experienced any such radical change in your taste?

[Spotted Horses]

My musical taste has expanded radically, but I cannot think of anything I used to enjoy that I now don't enjoy.

[vers la flamme]

Yes, definitely. When I was in my teens and early 20s I listened to a lot of hip hop, electronic music, reggae, metal, alternative rock etc. Ever since I was 24ish my tastes have been dominated by classical music and jazz. (I still have love for all those other genres I mentioned but don't listen to them nearly as much.)

Within classical music, my tastes started out catholic and have remained catholic. I'll spend more time with composer x than composer y for a given time but overall I wouldn't say my tastes have changed all that much.

[Ganondorf]

Mozart used to be my second favorite composer, nowadays there are only few works of his that I return to.

[Florestan]

My musical taste has expanded radically,

So has mine and the most important factor in that expansion was GMG.

but I can think of anything I used to enjoy that I now don't enjoy.

I assume you actually mean I can't --- well, I wish I could say the same thing but I can't (pun). Save very few instances, I don't enjoy Beethoven's music even half as much as I did back then, and there are works of his that I positively can't stand listening to anymore, like the aforementioned Seventh symphony, but also the Third, the Fifth and the Ninth.

[relm1]

I don't think so.  But some I wasn't that interested in, grew on me when I performed them or did a deep dive into them, I still love all the music I was introduced to as a kid.  I might not be as obsessed with those as I used to be, but still cherish them.  Sometimes it feels like the work has given up all its secrets so you can go years before wanting to hear it again, but a new interpretation reminds you of what it was like when you were first discovering them.  I love that phase of when the lightbulb goes off in your head after you've discovered a piece where you realize it is brilliant and it's hard to recapture that sense of discovery if you are too familiar with the piece.  But I wouldn't characterize any of this as a radical reappraisal.  Just gradual evolution. 

[Spotted Horses]

I assume you actually mean I can't --- well, I wish I could say the same thing but I can't (pun). Save very few instances, I don't enjoy Beethoven's music even half as much as I did back then, and there are works of his that I positively can't stand listening to anymore, like the aforementioned Seventh symphony, but also the Third, the Fifth and the Ninth.

Correct, I mean't can't.

I wouldn't say my relative preferences hasn't changed with some works eclipsed by works that I previously didn't get. Beethoven's 7th had been my favorite and I used to think of the 8th as a misfire, but at this point I probably think of the 8th as my favorite. But I by no means dislike the 7th, particularly in an unfamiliar recording that might bring out something unfamiliar in it.

[AnotherSpin]

Our musical tastes are imposed by outside influences. As what is outside changes, so do the tastes we mistakenly think are ours.

[Florestan]

Mozart used to be my second favorite composer, nowadays there are only few works of his that I return to.

Twenty-five years ago I liked Mozart just as I liked many others, ie no more nor less, and certainly less than my favorite Beethoven. Today Mozart is my number one hands down while Beethoven has sunk into virtual irrelevance.

Which of course says a lot about me and nothing at all about Beethoven.

[Florestan]

at this point I probably think of the 8th as my favorite.

That makes two of us. 

[vers la flamme]

Re: Beethoven, I used to like the Pastoral a lot more than I do now; it was my favorite for a long time. Now it's probably a three-way tie between 3, 8 and 9.

[71 dB]

When I started getting into classical music I had to start somewhere and that somewhere contained composers such as Sibelius and Rachmaninov among others. A few years later I had discovered a lot of my "real" favorite composers and I started to develop some kind of mild dislike for the music of these composers.

In the World of non-classical music I used to be into Paul Simon in the 80's and early 90's, but nowadays I find his music a bit boring and dull. Nowadays I am into Carly Simon instead! 

Most of the time my taste broadens. I learn to appreciate stuff I didn't appreciate previously without losing taste for anything. Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Paul Simon are rather rare examples of music I used to like a lot more in the past than I do today.

[71 dB]

I don't enjoy Beethoven's music even half as much as I did back then, and there are works of his that I positively can't stand listening to anymore, like the aforementioned Seventh symphony, but also the Third, the Fifth and the Ninth.

For some reason I have always struggled with Beethoven's music. For a person who has been into classical music for 25+ years I have listened to the music of Beethoven quite limitedly. Beethoven's music isn't really "overplayed" for me. Recently I listened to the symphonies 3-8 and the seventh symphony impressed me. Maybe I am in the process of getting into it while others are already fed up with it? 

[Florestan]

When I started getting into classical music I had to start somewhere and that somewhere contained composers such as Sibelius and Rachmaninov among others. A few years later I had discovered a lot of my "real" favorite composers and I started to develop some kind of mild dislike for the music of these composers.

In the World of non-classical music I used to be into Paul Simon in the 80's and early 90's, but nowadays I find his music a bit boring and dull. Nowadays I am into Carly Simon instead! 

Most of the time my taste broadens. I learn to appreciate stuff I didn't appreciate previously without losing taste for anything. Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Paul Simon are rather rare examples of music I used to like a lot more in the past than I do today.

Rachmaninoff was love at first sight hearing and has stayed in my Top 5 ever since. Sibelius is not among my favorites but I enjoy his music more than Beethoven's or Mahler's. I'm ashamed to confess that absolutely nothing comes to my mind when thinking about Paul or Carly Simon, although I am sure I must have heard some of their pieces. Paul Anka's My Way and Abbey Simon's complete Rachmaninoff's PCs are the first and only things that spring to my mind in this respect. 

EDIT: Simon & Garfunkel's El Condor Pasa.

[Florestan]

For some reason I have always struggled with Beethoven's music. For a person who has been into classical music for 25+ years I have listened to the music of Beethoven quite limitedly. Beethoven's music isn't really "overplayed" for me. Recently I listened to the symphonies 3-8 and the seventh symphony impressed me. Maybe I am in the process of getting into it while others are already fed up with it? 

That's quite possible, and not at all a bad thing.

There's a time for everything --- and it's different from person to person, especially with respect to music, or indeed art in general.

[71 dB]

I'm ashamed to confess that absolutely nothing comes to my mind when thinking about Paul or Carly Simon, although I am sure I must have heard some of their pieces. Paul Anka's My Way and Abbey Simon's complete Rachmaninoff's PCs are the first and only things that spring to my mind in this respect. 

10 minutes crash course on Paul Simon and Carly Simon:

If you know these two songs you can call yourself a man with common knowledge. 

[DavidW]

I think the only radical change would be when I got into classical music in the first place back in high school.  My focus of course meanders across time, but I would say by the time I finished grad school I also finished nearly all of the canon and then my tastes were set.

[71 dB]

That's quite possible, and not at all a bad thing.

There's a time for everything --- and it's different from person to person, especially with respect to music, or indeed art in general.

Yeah. Most people start their classical music journey with Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th, but I started with the Symphonies of Edward Elgar and Carl Nielsen, crazy and excentric as I am. 

The first works that attracted me to Beethoven pretty early on were his String Quartets. Then the Violin Sonatas and other chamber works. The solo piano works and orchestral music has been harder to get into but I have done slow progress.

[71 dB]

I think the only radical change would be when I got into classical music in the first place back in high school.  My focus of course meanders across time, but I would say by the time I finished grad school I also finished nearly all of the canon and then my tastes were set.

I got into MUSIC back in high school and it certainly wasn't classical music! Back then I thought classical music is too old for modern ears and people who are into it are stuck mentally in the previous centuries and should get their heads checked. In the university my best friend hyped Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and I got slowly interested of classical music understanding my thoughts about it had been quite moronic (yes, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is wonderful!). My excuse for my stupid opinions is I had near zero music education in my childhood. Nobody ever taught me anything about classical music. My father taught me how to pick mushrooms in the forest and how butterflies and moths are captured and prepared for collections. The music knowledge he taught was about jazz. Even in the school my music teachers were the worst teachers I ever had. They didn't know how to motivate. I wasn't interested and I learned nothing. Much later I got interested and I have educated myself.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I don't think my tastes ever changed radically, but they've expanded and gone in some unexpected directions.

I started out as a fan of standard composers like Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, (orchestral) Wagner and the like. I still like them, but don't listen to them as much anymore. Among LvB symphonies the ones I listen to most are 3, 4 and 8. I used to listen to 5, 7 and 9 a lot, but now hardly ever. If I listen to LvB and WAM nowadays, it's usually chamber music, a genre I once totally avoided.

I got into serious exploration of modern music in the late 1990s, and message boards starting with Classical Insites (I think that's what it was called) were an important catalyst. If you can remember the ubiquitous phrase "atonal crap" you'll know what I'm talking about.

The strangest thing that happened was that in middle age I developed a serious liking for rock music, which I had previously mostly ignored (generally classic, folk and prog of the 1965-75 period). This is odd because the typical thing is to be into rock when you're young and get into classical when you're older, but it was the opposite in my case. And I can't really attribute this to nostalgia, because I was a bit too young for this stuff to be the "soundtrack of my life" or anything like that.