Which of these composers do you struggle with the most and why?

[Mirror Image]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having likes and dislikes just as long as we know why we like/dislike something. I'm reminded of this Copland quote: "I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it, I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business." But the 'contemporary music' in his quote can apply to any music from any era.

[some guy]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having likes and dislikes...

Funny how often this assertion is made.

Even funnier is how infrequently anyone says that there's something wrong with having likes and dislikes. (I cannot recall anyone ever saying that there's something wrong with having likes and dislikes.)

But the assertion continues to be made, as if there were a context for it.

Curious.

Of course, in this instance, it may be no more than simply finding this statement troublesome, "I don't know if I will like or dislike what I don't know yet, so liking or disliking can hardly be the point is all. I listen in order to experience" but not having any counter-argument, so substituting the non sequitur for that. It may even be that the troublesome statement was mis-read as a blanket condemnation of having likes and dislikes, which it in no way is.

Anyway, I've seen this same point confidently asserted in many many instances over the years, with no corresponding assertion for it to be a counter to.

[Karl Henning]

[A] plaintive little some guy kind of question.  I like that.


Thread Duty:  I struggle with none of those composers.  I'm not sure I struggle with any.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I think Some Guy really got to the crux of the matter of what the most exciting thing about music is....learning more about it. Rather than refining my personal taste and working out what I like and what I don't like, I prefer to expand my tastes. One side effect to keeping an open mind is that more often than not I find that I actually like repertoire and interpretations I've previously disliked............I have come across people who have said I am very odd because of how I begin to like music that I've disliked, but I don't see how that is unusual. I never used to like fried onions but I love them now.

[Karl Henning]

It's okay not to like everything. It's okay to like anything for what it is.

It's perfectly normal to come to like music one did not like at first.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

But I do have a plaintive little some guy kind of question. Are classical music fans the only kind who essentially define themselves by their struggles, by what they don't like, don't connect with?

"Plaintive"? You'd better hold back any of the deep stuff!!

But honestly I don't see what the problem is with your query. It's as fair as anything else I've seen on this board.

I would say any person willing to dive into this classical mosh pit should expect to have their senses challenged, their beliefs rocked, etc... After all, this isn't preschool (although the board seems that way sometimes ). Yes, the learning curve might be daunting but, hey, either run with it or skip to the next hobby!

That said, nothing wrong with throwing a help line...as long as it's a **help** line. 

But what sucks is too often the "struggle to understand" is not taken as the challenge it should be but becomes an opportunity to foam at the mouth (witness the "Unpopular Dumb Ass Opinions" thread! ). Erudition goes out the window. In its place is little more than pseudo-intellectualized vomiting.

To those people I'd say, this hobby isn't for you.

[Mirror Image]

Funny how often this assertion is made.

Even funnier is how infrequently anyone says that there's something wrong with having likes and dislikes. (I cannot recall anyone ever saying that there's something wrong with having likes and dislikes.)

But the assertion continues to be made, as if there were a context for it.

Curious.

Of course, in this instance, it may be no more than simply finding this statement troublesome, "I don't know if I will like or dislike what I don't know yet, so liking or disliking can hardly be the point is all. I listen in order to experience" but not having any counter-argument, so substituting the non sequitur for that. It may even be that the troublesome statement was mis-read as a blanket condemnation of having likes and dislikes, which it in no way is.

Anyway, I've seen this same point confidently asserted in many many instances over the years, with no corresponding assertion for it to be a counter to.

I'm either allured by the sounds that are hitting my eardrums or I'm not. I always like finding out why I don't enjoy something, but it's obviously more important for me to continue to listen to music I enjoy the most.

[71 dB]

Rather than refining my personal taste and working out what I like and what I don't like, I prefer to expand my tastes. One side effect to keeping an open mind is that more often than not I find that I actually like repertoire and interpretations I've previously disliked............

Expanding musical tastes with an open mind can have very surprising consequencies. A few years ago I realised I like a lot the pop music of Katy Perry and Kesha (formelly known as Ke$ha).   

I have come across people who have said I am very odd because of how I begin to like music that I've disliked, but I don't see how that is unusual. I never used to like fried onions but I love them now.

This is another aspect of "widening" one's tastes. Most of the time I feel other people have ridiculously narrow taste in music. For example People in Tangerine Dream forum like ONLY electronic ambient music. They don't care about electronic dance music or classical music. I feel like an alien among them. People lock themselves into styles and think everything in "other" styles is crap. It's almost sad.

I think we born disliking all music. We are exposed to some music and we learn to like it. Narrow minded people start to think the music they like is the "right" music and everything else is "wrong".

I also believe our personality makes it hard to like some music. I have never learned to like any heavy metal or blues. I feel I'd had to open my skull to be open minded enough! 

[some guy]

I think we born disliking all music.

I immediately disagreed with this and almost responded that we are born liking all music, but then I realized that that was just as wrong. "We" like and dislike all sorts of things, from the very start.

So what I eventually came up with was this: "We are born."

Otherwise, yeah--narrowminded people have narrow minds. No disagreement there.

[Florestan]

Well, my point was that they're ubiquitous. I don't want to take the time (!!) to list even three.

I saw that coming. There's way too much empty rhetoric in your posts. 

Why have you not yet listened to all the major works by your top-ten favorite composers yet?

Time, my friend, time. Strange as it might sound to you, I don't usually listen to music 24/7 (and at the end of those days when I do listen for hours long to music I realize the experience has not been entirely satisfactory and much of what I listened to was actually lost on me the second after the music ended.) There have even been, and probably there will still be, extended periods of time, up to a few weeks or even months, when I didn't listen to music at all. You see, music for me is a passion (my dearest alongside literature) but not an obsession. And were I able to play an instrument, my listening time would be even shorter because I'd rather be involved in actually making music myself.

Besides that, had I listened to my favorite composers only I would have missed discovering so many others whose music I thoroughly enjoy.

Last but not least, the thought that there is still so much music by my favorite composers that I have not heard yet is quite exciting.

Re: Xenakis et al, I am really not interested in coming to terms with their music and persevering in listening to it until I finally see the light. All I know is that I do not enjoy listening to their music --- end of story. Look at it this way: the music which I enjoy now is more than enough to fill my needs for the whole remainder of my life (I include in this each and every composer I have not heard of yet, whose music is right up my alley); wasting my time on Xenakis or Boulez in the hope that some day I would enjoy their music too would be like walking through a 1,000-mile-wide desert for the sole purpose of dropping a glass of water into the ocean. 

[some guy]

I saw that coming. There's way too much empty rhetoric in your posts. 

Ah. Well, I think there's way too much tedious challenging in yours. (Anyone who has read a coupla dozen threads on any board will have seen dozens of examples. There's really no need to waste time calling them up for you. If you have not noticed them--and this is the real crux, I think--that's because you don't think that they exist. And if I gave you examples--two, twenty, two hundred--you would reject all of them. Come on, you know you would.

So I just thought I'd give your challenge a miss this time.

Otherwise, these two things strike me as having no sort of connection to each other at all:

There have even been, and probably there will still be, extended periods of time, up to a few weeks or even months, when I didn't listen to music at all.

You see, music for me is a passion...

Even the rest of that sentence

but not an obsession

didn't really help me. "Music for me is a passion" still seems like a non sequitur.

Anyway, we clearly do not have similar concepts of time at all. I think there's plenty of time. But you think that if you had listened to your favorite composer only, you would have missed discovering many others. I don't follow that. I've listened to everything by my favorite composers and have discovered many others. Easy. Indeed, I've done that so much that I no longer have favorites. I just listen to music.

Last but not least, the thought that there is still so much music by my favorite composers that I have not heard yet is quite exciting.

Here we are in complete agreement. There is no music by my (erstwhile) favorite composers that I have not heard yet. And if there were--when there was--that was quite exciting. Indeed.

Now I have to wait for some new composer to write something else. Fortunately, new composers are writing stuff alla time.

Quite exciting.

Just by the way, I had an image of "walking through a 1,000-mile-wide desert" just now, and if I had enough food and water for that trek, it might turn out to be quite fun. OK, maybe 10 miles only.

I would probably not drop any glasses of water into the ocean, however, regardless.

[Florestan]

Anyway, we clearly do not have similar concepts of time at all.

Seems to me that we do not have similar concepts of pretty much anything at all. 

[some guy]

Seems to me that we do not have similar concepts of pretty much anything at all. 

It's true, huh?

Why, I just now noticed your tag from Mr. Luigi: "Music without feelings and passions is meaningless.."

That statement seems completely meaningless to me. For one, it's not music that has feelings and passions, it's people. And every person has feelings and passions. For two, some people are passionate about this music over here, some about that music over there. That is, any music will be something that someone is passionate about.

I made a very rude remark about a composer once, thinking that there would be no one who could possibly like his stuff. And after my remark, someone said, "I like his stuff. I think it's fine." Well, that cured me. No music, even what I consider to be obviously awful, fails for everyone.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Lol, people seriously don't think that music is sentient do they?

[Florestan]

it's not music that has feelings and passions, it's people. And every person has feelings and passions.

IOW, music is written by people with feelings and passions, yet nothing of those feelings and passions is to be found in their music.

One can as well say, novels, dramas and poems are written by people with feelings and passions, yet nothing of those feelings and passions is to be found in their novels, dramas and poems.

Or, paintings and sculptures are made by people with feelings and passions, yet nothing of those feelings and passions is to be found in their paintings and sculptures.

More generally, although art is the work of people with feelings and passions and artists have historically been known to be among the most sensitive and passionate people, art in itself expresses not, and cannot express, any feelings and passions whatsoever. Whatever the purpose of art is, if indeed it has any at all, it is not and cannot be to express feelings and passions, albeit distilled and filtered through the personality of the artist and according to the aesthetics to which he subscribes.

How anyone can maintain such a view, which is contrary to everything that the history of art and the implicit or explicit testimony of all great artists teach us, is utterly incomprehensible to me.

To return to music, it is well documented that for Beethoven at a certain stage in his life composing meant utterly agonizing torture and anyone witnessing him in those moments could take him for a madman seized by a violent bout of fury. Yet you seem to think and believe, and would like me to think and believe as well, that the final musical product of those pains bears no trace whatsoever of the feelings and passions he was agonizing about, and that in fact all his tortures and pains were about whether the combinations of sounds he was putting to paper were interesting or not interesting enough...

[Karl Henning]

IOW, music is written by people with feelings and passions, yet nothing of those feelings and passions is to be found in their music.

Music is written by people who experience sleepless nights, the odd bit of indigestion, periodic occasion to be impatient with one's fellow man, yet nothing of that sleeplessness, indigestion, or impatience may be found in the music.

[Florestan]

Music is written by people who experience sleepless nights, the odd bit of indigestion, periodic occasion to be impatient with one's fellow man, yet nothing of that sleeplessness, indigestion, or impatience may be found in the music.

Lame (and I am truly sorry having to write it, Karl, because I''m sure you know very well what I meant).

[Karl Henning]

Lame

As you like.  I'm the guy who actually composes, and I cannot assure anyone of any definite, observable relationship between my feelings and passions, and the music I write.  So I'll shut up, and let the thinkers tell me what it's all about.

[Florestan]

I'm the guy who actually composes, and I cannot assure anyone of any definite, observable relationship between my feelings and passions, and the music I write. 

I was actually talking about Beethoven and others of his ilk. But your point about the difference between your music and theirs is certainly well taken.




(Sorry, Karl I really couldn't resist...    )

[some guy]

OK, so we are capable of making simple correspondences between the emotional realities of a creator's life and the emotional content of that person's work.

How lovely for us.

But even with Beethoven, it's not that simple. Why, it's not really that simple with Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich or Pettersson, either.

Anyway, as you probably already know, your simplistic distortion of my point is not even close to anything I have ever actually said.

IOW, your "IOW" is a total crock.