Music that took years to appreciate

[vandermolen]

Brahms symphonies

Much chamber music

[Bunny]

George Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children

It took me years and years to finish listening to this, but then one day it all came together.

[Sergeant Rock]

Basically the entire classical period. I liked Beethoven's Fifth and a few piano pieces (Moonlight, Pathétique, Für Elise) but not much else; I didn't appreciate Haydn or Mozart either. As I said on another thread recently, Charles Rosen's book The Classical Style opened my ears.

Bruckner too was a hard sell. It wasn't an adolescent lack of patience (I took to Wagner and Mahler immediately) but something in the music just didn't appeal to my teenage self. But I came to love Bruckner far quicker than the music of the classical period.

Sarge

[Gurn Blanston]

Well, if I ever do come to appreciate it, no telling yet, then the symphonies of Mahler will have taken years to reach that point. Strangely, in reading over the previous posts, Bruckner was not nearly a problem for me, at least 3-9. But with Mahler, I'm lost by the 8th bar...



----------------
Listening to:
Haydn Baryton Octett 2 - Ricercar Consort - FJH Octet #4 in G for Baryton, Winds & Strings H10:4 1st mvmt

[drogulus]

I do love the Te Deum.

     It sounds like a rock opera to me. 

     Maybe that's why I took to it immediately.

[Guido]

Classical period music for me (not Beethoven). There are very very few pieces that I can listen to all the way through from the classical period. (I still don't appreciate it really then...)

[DavidRoss]

Sibelius & RVW.  I came of age in the '60s.  Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, all fit right in with Jimmy, the Velvets, and Moby Grape.  I had to grow up, satiate the thrill-seeking ego, and rediscover the quiet spiritual center within before I could really hear Sibelius,RVW, and others who pursued their own timeless muses instead of following the herd desperately seeking status among the self-anointed avant garde.

I've only begun to appreciate Bruckner over the past couple of years.  I do have to be in a particularly patient frame of mind, however, and cannot be even a little bit sleepy.

I'm still working on Wagner, trying to hear what a significant (though far from universal) opinion regards as musical greatness.  I hear moments of brilliance, dashed to mediocrity by inteminably boring and pompous self-indulgence.

[Bonehelm]

Shostakovich's orchestral music (except his 5th and maybe 10th). It's so chaotic, maybe 100 times more so than Mahler, I don't know what the hell is going on, and more importantly WHY there is so much action!

[Christo]

Sibelius & RVW.  I came of age in the '60s.  Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, all fit right in with Jimmy, the Velvets, and Moby Grape.  I had to grow up, satiate the thrill-seeking ego, and rediscover the quiet spiritual center within before I could really hear Sibelius, RVW, and others who pursued their own timeless muses instead of following the herd desperately seeking status among the self-anointed avant garde.

Interestingly, for me it's exactly the other way around. I grew up, musically speaking, in the late 1970s, on a strict diet of mostly British and Scandinavian music, from RVW to Nielsen. For many years, the likes of Holst, Berkeley, Tippett, Englund, Madetoja or Tubin meant much more to me than Brahms or Mahler, or any of the other leading members of the dominant Central European school. So, only after more than 20 years of musical discoveries did I really try to apprehend e.g. Brucker, or Mahler, or indeed Schubert or Brahms. And I was only led in that direction via a rather late re-appraisal of Shostakovich. So, the nut of the Teutonic romantic and post-romantic mainstream was one of the hardest to crack for me - much more so than much modernist music from elsewhere.

[(poco) Sforzando]

     It sounds like a rock opera to me. 

     Maybe that's why I took to it immediately.

The only more humorous descriptions of Bruckner I know are when a poster on another forum once referred to the scherzo of #7 as a sea shanty (this from a composer with lived his whole life in landlocked Austria) and when a writer who se name I can't recall described the scherzo of #8 as "the mountains dancing" (which is a positively brilliant metaphor).

[Sean]

Sfozando, yes nice metaphor.

I feel I'm such a genius I got it right with almost everything I ever heard (or ever heard repeatedly). If I can admit to one mistake many years ago it was with Pelleas et Melisande, which I played and played but didn't really connect with. I then went to a very fine production, was properly dragged into the music I'd got to know and realized what an amazing thing it is.

It's good to return to music you've persevered with at a later time ie not just say 5-6 times in a week and then nothing: I find that there's perhaps 3500-4000 hours of thoroughly worthwhile works (I know about 3300)...

[c#minor]

Mahler, still don't get it at all. It took awhile for Bruckner to get to me but when i got it, it was like a revelation. It might just take a miracle for me to get Mahler.

[marvinbrown]

I'm still working on Wagner, trying to hear what a significant (though far from universal) opinion regards as musical greatness.  I hear moments of brilliance, dashed to mediocrity by inteminably boring and pompous self-indulgence.

DavidRoss Wagner is an opera composer and even more so. He is a music drama theater composer. To truly appreciate Wagner's genius and he's got it in spades you have to get into the story, the characters, the whole drama of his works.  It was never Wagner's intention to write "pretty" melodies, arias and ensembles a la Mozart nor was it his intention to appeal to the first time listener with infectious melodies you can hum on first hearing like Bizet's Carmen or Verdi's Rigoletto. Lord knows he is more than capable of doing that just listen to the Prize song from Die Meistersinger.  The best way to appreciate Wagner's artwork is through DVD recordings.  It won't be easy at first I grant you that but after repeated listening and viewing you might come to the conclusion I came to: That Wagner and mediocrity do NOT go hand in hand!

  PS:  but then again it is perfectly acceptably and understandable not to like Wagner, just ask Karl he'll tell you all about it  .

  marvin

[DavidRoss]

DavidRoss Wagner is an opera composer and even more so. He is a music drama theater composer. To truly appreciate Wagner's genius and he's got it in spades you have to get into the story, the characters, the whole drama of his works.  It was never Wagner's intention to write "pretty" melodies, arias and ensembles a la Mozart nor was it his intention to appeal to the first time listener with infectious melodies you can hum on first hearing like Bizet's Carmen or Verdi's Rigoletto. Lord knows he is more than capable of doing that just listen to the Prize song from Die Meistersinger.  The best way to appreciate Wagner's artwork is through DVD recordings.  It won't be easy at first I grant you that but after repeated listening and viewing you might come to the conclusion I came to: That Wagner and mediocrity do NOT go hand in hand!

My primary issue with Wagner's "music dramas" is that they fail on both counts.  Musically, I find them tediously repetitive and self-indulgent--though, as I said earlier, with moments of brilliance.  Dramatically, they're utter disasters, the dramatic effect sabotaged by absurd self-importance and a complete failure to understand the nature of dramatic action or to create characters who are anything more than one-dimensional archetypes.

Rather than via DVD, I should think it better to experience these works in the theatre, in which quasi-sacred space the audience is far more ready to suspend disbelief and enter into a compact with the performance.  Certainly Wagner himself recognized the mystico-religious nature of his works and the importance of the correct atmosphere in seducing would-be converts to the personality cult he created.  That, I think, is where his true genius lay, as evidenced by the number of acolytes who still worship at his altar.  He was like the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of his place and time. 

All that said, I am still willing to have lightning strike one day and to grovel on the road to Damascus (or Bayreuth).  It hasn't happened yet, but I keep trying. 

[marvinbrown]

My primary issue with Wagner's "music dramas" is that they fail on both counts.  Musically, I find them tediously repetitive and self-indulgent--though, as I said earlier, with moments of brilliance.  Dramatically, they're utter disasters, the dramatic effect sabotaged by absurd self-importance and a complete failure to understand the nature of dramatic action or to create characters who are anything more than one-dimensional archetypes.

  Oh dear you find Wotan, King of Gods who goes from a power hungry deity to a lustfull Wanderer and ends up in the deepest abyss of despair waiting for his end to come a one dimensional archetype?? Or action where Siegfried, the fool born from an incestuous love affair between a brother and sister, defeats a monstrous dragon, falls in love with a fallen Valkyrie then gets murdered by a gang of hooligans lacking in dramatic effect??

The conductor Solti once said of Wagner's Ring that it is a very violent piece in Solti's words "murder, incest, everything that is evil is in there!!""  Wagner is a master in creating the ultimate "dramatic effect".

  marvin

[some guy]

I wonder if we're all ready for a wee bit conclusion on this thread...

...that liking or disliking something at first hearing doesn't mean a thing.

Why, I liked Carter almost immediately (1972), but didn't like Boulez (like as in enjoy, not as in admire--I've always admired Boulez) until just last December (2007).

Indeed, I think I'm ready for another conclusion. Hope ya like it:

That liking or disliking a piece says nothing, necessarily, about the piece itself. Liking or disliking says something about where you are in your listening, or perhaps who you are in your prejudices; that's about all.

[bhodges]

That liking or disliking a piece says nothing, necessarily, about the piece itself. Liking or disliking says something about where you are in your listening, or perhaps who you are in your prejudices; that's about all.

I would generally agree with you here. 

--Bruce

[marvinbrown]

I would generally agree with you here. 

--Bruce

  Me too.  Events, music etc. are neutral! Our feelings (liking/disliking) are governed by our thoughts..... nothing more!  Cognitive Therapy anyone??

  marvin

[MN Dave]

How about "Music that took beers to appreciate?" 

[Haffner]

Basically the entire classical period. I liked Beethoven's Fifth and a few piano pieces (Moonlight, Pathétique, Für Elise) but not much else; I didn't appreciate Haydn or Mozart either. As I said on another thread recently, Charles Rosen's book The Classical Style opened my ears.

Bruckner too was a hard sell. It wasn't an adolescent lack of patience (I took to Wagner and Mahler immediately) but something in the music just didn't appeal to my teenage self. But I came to love Bruckner far quicker than the music of the classical period.

Sarge

It's really interesting, how Wagner and Mahler you took to right off, but Haydn and Mozart, not. I was the reverse. Mahler especially took some concentrated listenings. Actually, it's strange, but it seems like once I "got" Mahler's style, the other symphonies are alot easier to digest at one or two sittings. Almost like you have to set your ear for them. The 9th Symphony took me at least 3 listens. The 7th (my most recent discovery) took exactly one. Maybe "getting" the Mahler helped me get set for Bruckner as well, since I am having no problem with AB's 2nd, 3rd, 8th, and 9ths.