Have You Ever Experienced Radical Changes in Your Musical Taste?

[Florestan]

Oh balderdash as far as "recent decades" is concerned. It's the same old tiresome fear of young people heralding the end of civilisation by having different tastes.

Which Plato was not immune to. I've had the trick of having someone read out a passage about what's wrong with "kids today" that turns out to be from one of the Ancient Greek philosophers. Every generation frets about this, and different generations have in their time pointed to the music of Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy and Stravinsky as evidence of how musical tastes are going wrong and young people are being corrupted. I've got absolutely zero time for the tendency in this forum to claim that modern pop music is the same kind of evidence, and Andre Rieu is no more degenerate than any 19th century showman.

Over and over people make the mistake of thinking the past had better taste because most of the bad taste has been lost to history.

I agree with each and every sentence in this post.

[Florestan]

Right, because if someone spends even a couple of hours listening to something light and fluffy, this is positive proof that their entire life is dedicated to avoiding being elevated.

I think there's something inherently wrong with making this kind of assumption. And with the correlated view that one has to be looking to be intellectually or spiritually elevated the WHOLE DAMN TIME and can't ever switch off.

And with each and every sentence in this post too.

[Florestan]

Here's something from Marcel Proust, whom I trust nobody will accuse of being a lover of kitsch or a fan of Andre Rieu.

In Praise of Bad Music

Detest bad music but do not make light of it. Since it is played, or rather sung, far more frequently, far more passionately than good music, it has gradually and far more thoroughly absorbed human dreams and tears. That should make it venerable for you. Its place, nonexistent in the history of art, is immense in the history of the emotions of societies. Not only is the respect – I am not saying love – for bad music a form of what might be called the charity of good taste, or its skepticism, it is also the awareness of the important social role played by music. How many ditties, though worthless in an artist's eye, are among the confidants chosen by the throng of romantic and amorous adolescents. How many songs like "Gold Ring" or "Ah, slumber, slumber long and deep," whose pages are turned every evening by trembling and justly famous hands, are soaked with tears from the most beautiful eyes in the world: and the purest maestro would envy this melancholy and voluptuous homage of tears, the ingenious and inspired confidants that ennoble sorrow, exalt dreams, and, in exchange for the ardent secret that is confided in them, supply the intoxicating illusion of beauty.

Since the common folk, the middle class, the army, the aristocracy have the same mailmen – bearers of grief that strikes them or happiness the overwhelms them – they have the same invisible messengers of love, the same beloved confessors. These are the bad composers. The same annoying jingle, to which every well-born, well-bred ear instantly refuses to listen, has received the treasure of thousands of souls and guards the secret of thousdands of lives: it has been their living inspiration, their consolation, which is always ready, always half-open on the music stand of the piano – and it has been their dreamy grace and their ideal. Certain arpeggios, certain reentries of motifs have made the souls of more than one lover or dreamer vibrate with the harmonies of paradise or the very voice of the beloved herself. A collection of bad love songs, tattered from overuse, has to touch us like a cemetery or a village. So what if the houses have no style, if the graves are vanishing under tasteless ornaments and inscriptions? Before an imagination sympathetic and respectful enough to conceal momentarily its aesthetic disdain, that dust may release a flock of souls, their breaks holding the still verdant dream that gave them an inkling of the next world and let them rejoice or weep in this world.

[Madiel]

Beyoncé's self-titled album is pretty fantastic.

Not a fan of her latest though. It turns out I liked the stylistic left turn that lasted for 2 albums, and that might be it.

[Florestan]

Music can be a tool to enlighten or corrupt people. The second is clearly evident in recent decades. Or in Germany after the First World War. Read Plato.

Yeah, right.

...

[Opus131]

Beyoncé

Just reading her name makes my head hurt.

[Madiel]

Just reading her name makes my head hurt.

And yet, you managed to get past another post that had her name in it without commenting before deciding to show the delicacy of your constitution by commenting on mine.

Show me where the black woman hurt you.

EDIT: For someone who claims to be in search of being elevated, that is a long long way from being an elevated response.

[Opus131]

Which Plato was not immune to. I've had the trick of having someone read out a passage about what's wrong with "kids today" that turns out to be from one of the Ancient Greek philosophers. Every generation frets about this

And every single one was correct. 

[Madiel]

And every single one was correct. 

Well, given that you're alive now, that means that by historical standards you're in very poor shape.

[Opus131]

Show me where the black woman hurt you.

Her music.

[Florestan]

And every single one was correct. 

You must then necessarily agree with the second part of Madiel's sentence as well, namely that Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy and Stravinsky were evidence of how musical tastes were going wrong and young people were being corrupted.

[Opus131]

Well, given that you're alive now, that means that by historical standards you're in very poor shape.

It's more that everything is ciclical in our reality. Everything that exists rises, blooms and eventually withers and dies, and cultures are no different. Those voices you guys are citing were all likely correct within their respective times.

[Opus131]

You must then necessarily agree with the second part of Madiel's sentence as well, namely that Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy and Stravinsky were evidence of how musical tastes were going wrong and young people were being corrupted.

Not really no.

I think all of those composers were a product of an ongoing cultural and spiritual disintegration that started ever since Europe threw off the mantle of Christianity to embrace a kind neopaganism and then humanism and secularism during the Renaissance.

There's something "illegitimate" about the music of each single one of those composers, including Beethoven. It's not all bad though and in an age of decadence sometimes beggars can't be choosers.

The only art form i consider to be incorrupt is sacred art.

Ironically, sacred art has a way to be appealing to the learned as well as the unitiated. For instance, traditional Orthodox iconography, which i would consider to be a form of high art, is very popular even with the average and unlearned believer. 

I think the weft between the elite and the popolous in art is a result of cultural imbalance, and that each side of the coin presents certain drawbacks, the art of the "learned" being too rife with complications to be accepted by the average person and the art of the popolous being too bereft of any serious or uplifting quality, which is what we are discussing here. 

[Florestan]

There's something "illegitimate" about the music of each single one of those composers, including Beethoven.

Namely what?

[Madiel]

The only art form i consider to be incorrupt is sacred art.

That reads like you're one of those CCM fans discussed earlier. The rest of your post also seems to confuse the question of "corruption" with the question of artistic merit.

Honestly, this proposition strikes me as spectacularly blind to church history.

[Madiel]

Her music.

You said her name.

What music have you heard?

[Florestan]

Ironically, sacred art has a way to be appealing to the learned as well as the unitiated. For instance, traditional Orthodox iconography, which i would consider to be a form of high art, is very popular even with the average and unlearned believer.

The primary and essential function and purpose of the icons are religious, not aesthetic, and very practically religious at that, since they are auxiliaries for prayer and devotion. It's only the learned, especially the atheist/agnostic/not very religious, who appreciate primarily, if not exclusively, their aesthetic worth. They are popular with the average and unlearned believer not because they (the believers, that is) contemplate the high art in them but because they use them for praying to Jesus Christ, or to the Virgin Mary, or to the saint(s) therein pictured --- and so does the learned believer as well, for whom the clumsiest icon painted by a child has exactly the same spiritual value as Andrei Rubliov's masterpieces. Trust me, I know exactly what I'm talking about, I am an Orthodox Christian born and living in an Orthodox Christian country.

[71 dB]

For me it is not so much about taste changing as it is figuring out what my taste actually is. What? Isn't it very easy to tell if I like something or not? No, it is not that simple. There are obstacles appreciating things and what people think is changing musical taste, may actually be obstacle removal.

As I have told many times, I believed even in my early 20s classical music is simply obsolete music, too old for "modern" ears. I didn't even try to like/enjoy classical music, because I thought it is waste of time. Why would anyone listen to 200 years old music by Haydn when they can listen to Charles B's Acid House track "Lack of Love"? Back then for me this was just as valid question as why would anyone use a Nokia 1011 phone from 1992 in 2023 instead of a modern smartphone? This was one big obstacle for me in figuring out my taste/expanding my taste, but luckily I was able to remove it in my mid/late 20's and I got into classical music.

Another obstacle for me has been sonics of older recordings. As an acoustic engineer I pay tons of attention to sound quality. I have come to accept less than perfect sound quality, but I am still picky. Since my dad is into jazz, I heard mostly jazz music recorded in the 50's and 60's (the jazz era my father likes). Well, those recordings are not always that great sonically. Later I have learned that classical music recordings from late 50's and 60's, if done by skilled people and with state-of-the-art equipment, can sound quite good and enjoyable. Mono sound is still difficult for me, especially if I try to listen to it with headphone. The total lack of left-right spatial cues makes the sound on headphones disturbingly dead. I have developed methods of processing mono sound to have just a little bit of fake/random left-right spatial cues which makes the sound "alive" on headphones. A similar thing happens when you listen to mono recordings with speakers in a room: The room generates spatical cues and the sound in left and right ears are different even if heavily correlated.

One obstacle for me has been using reason/rationale rather than feelings/instinct with music. I have learned to use feelings/instinct and it has proven to be very successful. The rational side of me (and I am quite rational) tries to tell me I can't like this and that because of this or that reason, but feelings/instinct tell me the truth. I like it or I don't like it and that's that! Just recently I got into the music of The Carpenters. The rational side of me has been telling me all my life that music is too old, simple, too popular, too stupid, too emotional and what not, but when I let my feelings/instinct decide, the answer is I need that music in my life because of my struggles and how dark the World has become lately. Who cares if the music is old, simple, popular, stupid and emotional if it gives me what I need?

Then there is the problem of selective exposure. Passive listeners will be exposed to a limited portion of music whether is is "canon" in classical music or hit songs in popular music, but that's perhaps only 1 % of all music out there. My music taste is different from the masses. It means hit songs may not appeal to me the way they appeal to the masses. For masses the hit songs on an album of an artist might be the highlights while for me that might be much more interesting "fillers" that masses don't care about. Masses may think Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" is her best song by far, but for me it is boring compared to a lot of her other songs. When I got into Carly Simon in 2011, I was surprise by this, how much more interesting songs she has got compared to "You're So Vain." That's how popular music works. The hit songs need to please everyone and that makes them a bit shallow. Filler songs can be deeper and in Carly Simon's case, a super-talented perfectionist as she is, they certainly are!

In the late 80's/early 90's I got interesting of Jean-Michel Jarre after seeing his mega-concert in Paris on TV (the lasers and pictures projected on the walls of the buildings blow me away). On the Christmas of 1991 I got the best of compilation CD "Images" as a present. It killed my interest for 25 years! Only in 2016 I got into Jean-Michel Jarre again and I realised how utterly bad the "best of" CD is. When I bought the albums, the music started to work on another level. It wasn't my taste, it was exposure.

I knew about Tangerine Dream in early 90's because many techno artists I listened to mentioned them as an influence. My father's friend (who has broader music taste beyond jazz than my father) happened to have a couple of CDs by Tangerine Dream and I borrowed them. The music was quite interesting, but I had the "old music is obsolete" mindset that prevented me to get properly interested. Retropectively I can say this experience caused me cognitive dissonance. Also, I thought TD has made music only in the 70's and 80's and have maybe 10 releases in all like a typical band operating 15-20 years would. Back in the early 90's there was no internet to Google these things. Back then you just didn't know! Little did I know how massive Tangerine Dream really is, because in Finland hardly anyone cares about them. In the country of rock/metal this kind of electronic/synth music is not popular at all. It is interesting how the music I had heard from TD stood in my mind (my feelings/instincts kept telling me it is interesting music) for years until in December 2007 (when I started to believe some 70's music might be actually good) I started to explore them and realised how great/massive they are. My feelings/instinct were right all along! It was my rationale of "old music is obsolete/they must be irrelevant since nobody talks about them and their music is never played on radio or elsewhere" preventing me to really get into them. Turns out I had actually heard one of their tracks on radio and even recorded it on C-Cassette in late 80's, the track "Optical Race". I just didn't know whose track it is. The track I had been exposed to on radio was a track quite atypical to the group and nowhere near my favourites by them. The obstacles were working together to keep me from getting into their music for years.

By now I have learned to tackle these obstacles. I know them and how they work. I have learned how discovering new favourite music is about learning about yourself. You have to be very open-minded and clear your mind of silly rationales. I have learned to trust my feelings and instincts. In the past I was scared to do so, but they have never let me down while being "rational" has been often an obstacle for sure. It's all about having the skills to navigate in the landscape shaped by my own mental limitations and the oddities of the World around me.

[Jo498]

Oh balderdash as far as "recent decades" is concerned. It's the same old tiresome fear of young people heralding the end of civilisation by having different tastes.

Which Plato was not immune to. I've had the trick of having someone read out a passage about what's wrong with "kids today" that turns out to be from one of the Ancient Greek philosophers. Every

In that particular issue (discussion of music/poetry in the "Republic") this was not really Plato's point. He doesn't fret about the corrupt youth but fantasizes about an ideal state that is quite openly totalitarian, including restricting poetry and music lest it weakens the warrior's resolve. This makes it of course even more unpleasant than mere fretting.

While I dislike most of the current (popular) culture I think the real problem today is not some poor art/music. It's that anything is turned into entertainment compatible with modern mass media, and the electronic media led to minuscule attention spans that makes older art/music very hard to access for people (not their own fault because by now the 3rd generation has been growing up with TV etc).

[Madiel]

The technology does tend to encourage short attention spans, yes.

Which means there's artistic skill in working out how to rapidly gain attention. Not so different to how Haydn in his op.71 and op.74 string quartets worked out how to get the attention of a concert audience, when these are basically the first quartets in history designed for a concert.

This is part of art. Working out how to cater for tastes and trends. Though there have been periods where certain artists have tried to say "I can ignore what people respond to and just follow my personal muse", and that conception of art seems to be very popular with some people, there are plenty of periods where such an attitude would be mystifying. Being an artist is a job. If you want to eat, you need to pay at least some attention to what will get you paid.

Some very, very major pop artists do still take a stand about making albums rather than everything being about a 3 minute song (a form that existed in classical music too of course).