The Unanswerable Question

[heliocentric]

it sounds as though his (Young's) insistence on controlling the conditions in which his music is heard would, pretty much put him above criticism - because the listener must come to the music on the composer's terms.

There's no "must" though - you can listen to Young's (commercially-released, in a very limited sort of way) recording of his own Well-Tuned Piano on Youtube (until he finds out it's there and has it taken down) and make of it whatever you will. Personally I would say it has more to offer a listener than does Lol Coxhill's Beatles tribute, but I expect Lol would have cheerfully agreed with that, and been somewhat bemused that such an ephemeral thing was the departure point of such an extended discussion. Nobody should feel forced to like something they have a negative reaction to, but it's often interesting and revealing to think about where that negative reaction comes from.

[MrGongGong]

Nobody should feel forced to like something they have a negative reaction to, but it's often interesting and revealing to think about where that negative reaction comes from.

There if often much to be gained from listening to music you "don't like"
One question I sometimes ask students is whether they can think of something they think is "great" but they "don't like".

[teamsaint]

There if often much to be gained from listening to music you "don't like"
One question I sometimes ask students is whether they can think of something they think is "great" but they "don't like".

Listening without expectation, i have discovered, is very liberating.
good question , MrGG.

The finale of Beethoven 9 might be quite a few peoples initial answer to your poser.

[David-G]

Listening without expectation, i have discovered, is very liberating.
good question , MrGG.
The finale of Beethoven 9 might be quite a few peoples initial answer to your poser.

How very strange. I can't imagine not liking the finale of Beethoven's 9th.

Trying to think of an answer to the question ... perhaps the Puccini operas. I would not deny that they were great - but (with one or two exceptions) I don't really like them.

[heliocentric]

whether they can think of something they think is "great" but they "don't like".

I can think of plenty of things other people think are great but which I don't like (eg. the finale of Beethoven 9, since it's been mentioned), and I agree there's often something to be gained from listening to music you don't like - that's what I meant by my comment about looking at the reasons for a negative reaction. But I don't think there's anything to be gained from thinking of a piece of music as "great" in some pseudo-objective kind of sense, it smacks to me too much of constructing a canon of good taste and/or dividing music into mainstream and periphery (at the expense of the periphery), neither of which are particularly enlightening ways of looking at music in my opinion.

[Roehre]

I can think of plenty of things other people think are great but which I don't like (eg. the finale of Beethoven 9, since it's been mentioned), and I agree there's often something to be gained from listening to music you don't like - that's what I meant by my comment about looking at the reasons for a negative reaction. But I don't think there's anything to be gained from thinking of a piece of music as "great" in some pseudo-objective kind of sense, it smacks to me too much of constructing a canon of good taste and/or dividing music into mainstream and periphery (at the expense of the periphery), neither of which are particularly enlightening ways of looking at music in my opinion.

That makes two of us then

[heliocentric]

Another thing that might be relevant to this discussion is the "Piotr Zak" affair of 1961, in which Hans Keller and Susan Bradshaw concocted a hoax piece of new music by the fictional composer Zak and broadcast it on the radio, the intention being, according to Keller, to expose the low intellectual level of discussion of contemporary music in the UK at the time. Unfortunately this plan backfired somewhat because all the reviews of the work were negative (imagine! reviews of a contemporary music broadcast!), one (in The Listener) correctly surmising that it was a hoax.

Listen for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6maWI85kSxU

I suppose some (including the reviewers of the original broadcast, which also featured music by Nono, Webern, Petrassi and Mozart) might say that it doesn't sound so different from "real" contemporary music, but I would say it's fairly clear that it's a clumsy and arbitrary succession of sounds without any of the poise that makes for example Cage's "arbitrariness" so fascinating.