How wide or narrow is your musical taste?

[Chris Newman]

I was a teenager of the 1960s so the Liverpool Sound, protest Folk and Rock were part of my upbringing. A flook experience at school in a music lesson meant that "classical" music grabbed my attention too. I now happily go to concerts of Guillaume de Machaut (1300 -77) or Rufus Wainwright (1973 to the present). Sometimes I feel that a fellow boarder's taste may be stuck in 1780 - 1920. I am sure that I am wrong.

What is your range and does your taste step outside the "classical" period?

I hope this thread can be enlightening and argumentative (in the best of all possible taste).

[teamsaint]

I like to think that my taste is pretty wide, and I will certainly give anything a go !!
I find one of my main problems with music is having the time to find the good stuff. finding out what is good in the "rock" world I find just too much trouble, now that John peel has gone, (not enough reward for time spent).
so for me, anything from a nostalgic listen to vintage Staus Quo , Punk and post punk (the Jam especially), quite a bit of folk and Folk rock(Eliza Carthy, Bellowhead etc) through to regular R3 fare.
More interesting maybe is what I need to discover....I need a good guide for some Jazz, and a help through the dizzing "world Music" scene.

Oh and to prove the "try anything once thing", I once sat through 5, count them, 5 metal bands at the NEC arena....although I was really accompanying my son !!
and if you don't know what metal sounds like, its pretty uncompromising !!!

[ardcarp]

Yeah. I really groove the Hit Parade man. Seriously, people of my age are being ridiculous if they feign an interest in what teenagers listen to. The whole point of the stuff is to be anti-establishment and not-what-your-parents-would-approve-of.
As far as 'art music' is concerned, I hope I keep a fairly open mind. Not sure I'm enjoying this post-minimalist era much.

[Chris Newman]

teamsaint,
Heavy metal!! My son has just stopped playing in a band of such noisy b......! I too put up with it (with earplugs). What I have only just got his agreement with is that earplugs made the music sound much clearer. It is much better with the volume turned down

I regard myself as a success of William Glock's reign as controller of the Proms. To me the range of music played these days at the Proms and that people will listen to is far narrower. Am I right or just bigoted? Has music become stuck in ghettos?

[Richard Tarleton]

I was a teenager of the 1960s so the Liverpool Sound, protest Folk and Rock were part of my upbringing. A flook experience at school in a music lesson meant that "classical" music grabbed my attention too. I now happily go to concerts of Guillaume de Machaut (1300 -77) or Rufus Wainwright (1973 to the present). Sometimes I feel that a fellow boarder's taste may be stuck in 1780 - 1920. I am sure that I am wrong.

What is your range and does your taste step outside the "classical" period?

I hope this thread can be enlightening and argumentative (in the best of all possible taste).

Chris, my experience is not unlike yours. I grew up with classical music (although parental tastes leaned more towards "Your Hundred Best Tunes ) but the soundtrack of my youth was Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. I still listen to Dylan. I gave up going to live rock gigs in the 1980's because I was worried about the effect on my hearing. My last outings were to hear ZZ Top and the Blues Band. I first started going to opera in the late 60's, and had heard most of Bruckner and Mahler by 1974, so the two genres coexisted quite happily. As a classical guitarist I've always been fascinated by guitar playing of all stripes. Most of the best known lutenists were initially inspired by pop and rock - North and Lindberg namecheck the Beatles and Shadows.

[Petrushka]

I like to think of my tastes in music to be tolerably wide. Born in 1954, I grew up with the pop music of the '60's which still has enormous nostalgic value. By the end of that fascinating decade I had turned to the military band and tried out my first forays into the classics via that medium. Somehow it seemed a natural progression to Wagner and Mahler.

Nowadays, I would characterise my favoured range in classical as being from Haydn to Birtwistle. There is very little pre-Haydn that captures my imagination (a bit of Bach occasionally) but the HIPP brigade leave me cold. Opera is not something I greatly care about except for Wagner, Strauss and the odd Verdi, so my main focus is on orchestral works. Instrumental and chamber I will probably appreciate much more as I get older.

[french frank]

It does seem to be part of my character that I move on from one thing to the next. That's not necessarily moving *up* or improving in any way, but just leaving things behind.

Consequently, I have nil interest - haven't kept any records at all - in the music that I listened to as a teenager when I heard very little classical music at all. Now I tend to move about within the classical field, have loved and loathed Mozart (currently love again) and have begun to consolidate rather than abandon. But the whole classical field seems so bewilderingly wide ...

[antongould]

.....But the whole classical field seems so bewilderingly wide ...

Surely the whole world of music is bewilderingly wide - not everyone leaves things behind. I moved from pop through Jazz to classical but I still buy occasional pop CDs, recently Paul Simon's latest - he has been an ever present since the early 60s.
What fascinates me is how wide are our children's musical tastes and what part does classical play? If, as with mine, no part - will they ever come to it and if so how?

[teamsaint]

It does seem to be part of my character that I move on from one thing to the next. That's not necessarily moving *up* or improving in any way, but just leaving things behind.

Consequently, I have nil interest - haven't kept any records at all - in the music that I listened to as a teenager when I heard very little classical music at all. Now I tend to move about within the classical field, have loved and loathed Mozart (currently love again) and have begun to consolidate rather than abandon. But the whole classical field seems so bewilderingly wide ...

well i agree that moving on is what is vital..i am certainly always looking for something new. At present classical interests me the most since I find i get most reward for my efforts, not least because i spent a long time listening to other things.
However, I don't feel there is any area of music that I have left behind for ever. its certainly true that much of what I thought wa good in the past , I probably now recognise was mediocre.
i really fell in love with pop music aged 10 in 1972...virginia Plain, starman, the string of classic singles by Bolan, even slades better moments still sound pretty good to me.
and if anybody really wants a recommendation, XTC's albums from Drums and wires onwards are still amongst the finest music I know.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... Seriously, people of my age are being ridiculous if they feign an interest in what teenagers listen to. The whole point of the stuff is to be anti-establishment and not-what-your-parents-would-approve-of.
...

Having experienced a dumbed-down orchestral concert in a secondary school, I found it incredibly embarassing when some of the relatively geriatric players and teachers started behaving like the kids in their pathetic attempts to pretend they were "equally cool".

[Richard Tarleton]

Now I tend to move about within the classical field, have loved and loathed Mozart (currently love again) and have begun to consolidate rather than abandon. But the whole classical field seems so bewilderingly wide ...

I find my interests changing as I get older. I've grown increasingly interested in early music (15th century onwards) and baroque, and chamber music (right through to about Britten and Shostakovich).

[Mandryka]

I struggle to get excited about much pre-Beethoven and have virtually nil interest in anything recorded after 1980 (post-New Wave).

Otherwise, pretty eclectic....have not dismissed any of my youthful enthusiasms, apart from Bruce Springsteen (what the hell was I thinking....?). anc can enjoy stuff from most genres apart from the usual suspects ('rap', 'hip-hop', 'garage', etc).

Tend to think of music in terms of food (not original, I know)....orchestral/opera is fine dining, rock is fish and chips/junk and folk is honest, plain stuff. There are times when one will do and not the others....

[rauschwerk]

I consider myself fortunate in that, until I was nearly 50, I pursued music as a hobby. Consequently I could perform largely what I liked, regardless of whether it earned me any money. Brought up as a a pianist, I explored the repertoire from Bach to Bartok, not neglecting Gershwin and Joplin. I have accompanied many singers in classical and music hall songs, enjoying both equally as long as the singer was good! I went to a good few concerts and amassed a large recorded music collection ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, including jazz. I sang in symphony choruses and got to know the choral/orchestral repertoire. Later I formed my own vocal ensemble. We began with barbershop, and although as a teenager I hardly imagined I would ever sing such songs as 'Nellie Dean', I did - and enjoyed the experience! This quartet gradually expanded to an octet and over the years our repertoire has ranged from Machaut (what a challenge that was!) to difficult new music. I never played jazz, but I had a school friend who was an enthusiast and to some extent he influenced my tastes.

I have got to know and enjoy a great deal of music in 60 years, and my tastes are most easily defined by my blind spots. I have not been very enthusiastic about pop music since the Beatles disbanded. Wagner is a major one. So is free jazz. Most 'minimalist' music I can take or leave. Most of all BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY! which I had to accompany recently at a local choral society rehearsal.

[salymap]

I started with the early days of radio {Henry Hall and his orchestra] when very small, listened to John Peel much later on, visited jazz clubs with friends when working in London, was taken to the ballet at an early age and loved it, worked in music so attended lots of rehearsals and concerts.
I think my musical tastes are from JSB to Stravinsky, Bartok, RVW, etc I find now it's difficult to take in new works and too old or lazy to make the effort. I have enough music in my head anyway and I'm still discovering little gems in the standard repertoire.

[MrGongGong]

I always find this a bit of an odd question as people will tend to suggest things that demonstrate a stance (a bit like DID where politicians always choose a bit of "serious" music to demonstrate their intellectual credibility !)

for me
what people seem to regard as "wide" seems hopelessly narrow
music is not always divided into the genres that people seem to think (as is used to sell it more than anything else)
I find it remarkably easy to move between

Ryoji Ikeda and Mahler
Merzbow and Palestrina
etc etc

I do have musics that I don't like (most Country music ........ though not all ) and much "crossover" seems to me to me to be trying to cross a road that simply doesn't exist , "R&B" (the new sort !) sounds to me like black music without the things that make it worth listening to !!! i.e Gospel without the bible, Rap without the urban grit and Soul without soul ! (but i'm told by teenagers that there is good stuff that i need to find........) dubstep on the other hand ...

some music is in its very nature ephemeral but a good friend of mine who had a phd in electroacoustic composition and manages a large contemporary music organisation listens to Klaus Wunderlich lps (never CD) of an evening , there is an ironic appreciation of naffness (Trunk Records being the wonderful source of much that is good in this respect)

Bohemian Rhapsody is an abomination , not even good rock music and dreadfully put together (if you really listen to it as we had to when I asked some music students to play and talk about a piece that they found had changed their perceptions ........ and NO i didn't say that it was rubbish , tact is necessary at times !)

I gave a lecture last week to some students about how "wide" music was, some find this bewildering though I love finding new things that I had no idea existed.

one of the piles of cds on my desk at the moment
goes

Nic Collins : Handmade electronic music DVD
a CD of an education project performance
Kronos Quartet : Winter was hard
Trentemoller : into the great wide yonder
Eotvos: Psychokosmos
Tom Waits : Rain Dogs
a Cd of insect noises sent to me by a friend
Ligeti Piano concerto
Bruckner 7
a sound installation master CD
Tim Souster : Equalisation
Sainkho Namtchylak: Who stole the sky
Robert Van Heuman: Fury
Hotek: Form and Function
King Missile: Happy hour
Phil Niblock: food
Ligeti : String quartets
Abdulla Ibrahim: Blues for a hip King (or Knig as it says on the spine)
Wigmore Live CD: Schubert Octet
Alvin Lucier / Christain Wolff: a DVD of random pieces
Messiaen : Visions de l'Amen

some for work research
some simply for listening

and there are about another 8 or 9 similar heaps (i'm not a compulsive catalogue man !)