Music which doesn't grab you!

[Richard Barrett]

it wd be inhuman to think that thro' such analysis one could really over-ride underlying preferences. It is allowable not to like everything.

It is of course; but where do these "underlying principles" come from?

[vinteuil]

It is of course; but where do these "underlying principles" come from?

... I'm not sure a search for causation is very fruitful here. It amuses me to recognize aesthetic connections between the things that appeal to me, and I have some cod-psychology ideas about why I like some particular stimuli and am repelled by others - but it doesn't amount to anything deep. I suspect these preferences and matters of taste are overdetermined -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermination

,

[french frank]

Not necessarily more focused but perhaps differently focused.

I meant focusing especially on the points you've identified, more or differently

It's happened to me many times, not just in theory!

By 'in theory' I meant that in reality you may not discover your "awkwardness" or "sloppiness" that was in some way valid or intended; only such features as unvarying dynamic (=loud), unvarying heavy beat, which may be essential to the style of music, but that doesn't mean you should learn to love them because they are essential to an appreciation of the style.

It's surely just as rewarding to identify, however vaguely, the aspects that one likes and look for them where it's likely that you'll find them?

[Richard Barrett]

It's surely just as rewarding to identify, however vaguely, the aspects that one likes and look for them where it's likely that you'll find them?

Depends on how much you appreciate a challenge I suppose.

[french frank]

Depends on how much you appreciate a challenge I suppose.

The Puritan through life's sweet garden goes
To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose …

[vinteuil]

Depends on how much you appreciate a challenge I suppose.

... I don't think my musical tastes have expanded as a result of a "challenge" like this, nor by an "analysis" of what I don't like in a particular work / performance. My musical tastes have expanded over the last sixty-odd years (o yes they have!) - but it's more random than that - thro' friends' enthusiasms, thro' happenstance (hearing things unexpectedly). I learned to appreciate Wagner in a long boring period in the Middle East in the company of the head of the local CIA station...

I still maintain the view that tastes / preferences are not easily explicable. As Montaigne said, ruminating on the reasons underlying his deep affection for Estienne de La Boétie - "Parce que c'était lui ; parce que c'était moi".

Sometimes there is no more to be said.

.

[teamsaint]

.....and more often than not, for me, the question arises not so much from what I happen to like now, as from trying to understand what others see or hear in something, or more significantly, why the creator chose to put their talent and effort into producing something that doesnt perhaps immediately grab me, but that they clearly felt was worth doing.

As to whether tastes are explicable, I suspect that with time and effort, which we might regard as wasted, they usually are We might not always like what we find though.

[vinteuil]

As to whether tastes are explicable, I suspect that with time and effort, which we might regard as wasted, they usually are. We might not always like what we find though.

Why would you think so?

.

[teamsaint]

Why would you think so?

.

Because something like this happened to me recently. I wouldn't say in this instance that I didn't like what I found, but it certainly made me question my judgement about the music in question. As I said though.... "might".

As a more speculative and tangental response , we ( and I include myself)might tend to not question our enjoyment of that which we do like,as a passive means of excluding that which we don't yet understand.

[Ferretfancy]

Because something like this happened to me recently. I wouldn't say in this instance that I didn't like what I found, but it certainly made me question my judgement about the music in question. As I said though.... "might".

As a more speculative and tangential response , we ( and I include myself)might tend to not question our enjoyment of that which we do like,as a passive means of excluding that which we don't yet understand.

Unfortunately there is often nothing to understand, or at least there's music that some of us don't wish to waste time with. My recent date with Florent Schmitt's Second Symphony is a case in point.
Especially since the arrival of the CD, record companies have frequently offered us music which they claim as being unjustly neglected. After a couple of movements it's easy to hear the reason for the neglect.

[french frank]

Sometimes when you have a 'long list' derived from almost infinite things (say pieces of music, styles of music, books), you're not looking to add to the list. You're only too glad to find reasons to knock some of them off in order to end up with something manageable.

I saw a discussion here recently about something on Radio 3 which had been much anticipated and subsequently enjoyed. I thought I would sample it and heaved a sigh of relief after a minute or two ('Phew, don't need to bother with that').

On the other hand I've had a boxed set of the Mozart violin sonatas for several years which I sampled once and dismissed as 'not sounding very interesting'. I noticed them again a few days ago and have been playing nothing else for days. I am enjoying discovering the ones which I really like and picking them out for repeated listening.

I play the piano sonatas quite frequently, so is this discovering 'something new' or just revisiting the familiar corpus of 'what I like'?

[teamsaint]

Unfortunately there is often nothing to understand, or at least there's music that some of us don't wish to waste time with. My recent date with Florent Schmitt's Second Symphony is a case in point.
Especially since the arrival of the CD, record companies have frequently offered us music which they claim as being unjustly neglected. After a couple of movements it's easy to hear the reason for the neglect.

I think we may be at cross purposes here FF.

[Richard Barrett]

The Puritan through life's sweet garden goes
To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose …

"Life's sweet garden."

And strange that you're conflating Puritanism with a desire to widen one's experience and enthusiasms (or the poet is anyway).

Clearly something like musical taste is overdetermined in the sense mentioned earlier by Vinteuil. But so no doubt is the quest for consciousness-expansion on the one hand, or looking to "end up with something manageable" on the other. I wouldn't ever wish to end up into a situation where I'm sure that I "know what I like and like what I know", nor do I expect to. But others are obviously quite content with that situation. What I'm talking about shouldn't be interpreted as a search for novelty - the outward search can also give one new perspectives on things one already knows and loves.

I attended a concert yesterday evening that I wasn't particularly looking forward to, containing as it did music by Elgar and Rachmaninov who are two composers whose work I generally find it impossible to appreciate. But I thought to myself it would be an interesting way to find out more about what it is I don't like about them, and possibly to expose the reasons as untenable. Actually the concert was made memorable for me by its relatively brief first item, The Enchanted Lake by Lyadov, a composer about whose work I had no opinion at all, which was a highly pleasant surprise ("Forest Murmurs" filtered through French impressionism, luminous and transparent in sound). Did I change my mind about Elgar and Rachmaninov? Unfortunately not. I found Sea Pictures, which I'd never heard before, undistinguished in melodic invention, suffused by the Meistersinger Prelude (my least favourite moment in Wagner) and (as usual with Elgar) suffused by Edwardian propriety - Elgar of course defended Salome against those who found it tasteless, but his own music seems so expressively stifled and gentlemanly it makes me want to scream. The Isle of the Dead, on the other hand, which I had heard previously, I found (owing no doubt to a more sympathetic performance) much less turgid and overscored than I had done before, at least in its opening and closing stages, although the middle section I still found tediously bombastic. The rhythmical ambiguities of the first few minutes are compelling in sound and expression, which I didn't remember them as being, but unfortunately everything else about the piece seems to me much too obvious. I don't consider this concert to have been a waste of time by any means.

[cloughie]

Sometimes when you have a 'long list' derived from almost infinite things (say pieces of music, styles of music, books), you're not looking to add to the list. You're only too glad to find reasons to knock some of them off in order to end up with something manageable.

I saw a discussion here recently about something on Radio 3 which had been much anticipated and subsequently enjoyed. I thought I would sample it and heaved a sigh of relief after a minute or two ('Phew, don't need to bother with that').

On the other hand I've had a boxed set of the Mozart violin sonatas for several years which I sampled once and dismissed as 'not sounding very interesting'. I noticed them again a few days ago and have been playing nothing else for days. I am enjoying discovering the ones which I really like and picking them out for repeated listening.

I play the piano sonatas quite frequently, so is this discovering 'something new' or just revisiting the familiar corpus of 'what I like'?

I was thinking along the same lines. After many years of listening - establishing a mental list of things on the continuum of things liked a lot to things I'm not bothered about hearing again - how much do I want to add to my almost full memory, and how much time do I wish to spend listening to things which are of little or no appeal to me or those which make my head hurt....but every now and then I hear something which excites me and I want to hear more of, or I go back to something I bought some time ago and listen to in more depth.

[french frank]

"Life's sweet garden."

A poetic conceit, not to be taken as a literal description of 'Life'. Surely you admit that there are some roses to be picked?

And strange that you're conflating Puritanism with a desire to widen one's experience and enthusiasms (or the poet is anyway).

No. I'm not conflating anything. I don't know about Kenneth Hare. But simply pointing out that what you may look for in music is not what others look for. Your rose is not their rose. I'm not saying, "My rose is better than yours." But I'd prefer not to see mine dismissed as "I know what I like and like what I know". As I said, I deliberately listened to something (that I would not normally find myself listening to) because it was praised by others. I was seeking to expand my knowledge. But 'the quest for consciousness-expansion' does sound a bit like dabbling with hallucinatory drugs …

I wouldn't expect a professional composer to have the same attitude as someone for whom music is only a, possibly, secondary interest, possibly less. And is quite happy not to be listening to anything at all other than the Cagean noises all around me.