Does your spouse/partner share your musical tastes?

[Anna]

Couldn't agree with you more on the non-cohabitation front. :)

There again Mandryka, to be serious and dismissing the Pot Noodle question, it may be that it just shows a lack of commitment and, dare I say it, a degree of selfishness in not being willing to accommodate other peoples tastes musically? A weekend together is fun, but then a sigh of relief when you wave them off? I don't know, perhaps it's why in a lot of ways, a lot of people prefer being, how shall I say, semi-detached rather than attached? Oh dear, this could get very soul searching couldn't it?

[Serial_Apologist]

I see they also do a Doner Kebab one

I wonder how they manage to fit it all in - the skewer & that...

[ahinton]

There again Mandryka, to be serious and dismissing the Pot Noodle question, it may be that it just shows a lack of commitment and, dare I say it, a degree of selfishness in not being willing to accommodate other peoples tastes musically? A weekend together is fun, but then a sigh of relief when you wave them off? I don't know, perhaps it's why in a lot of ways, a lot of people prefer being, how shall I say, semi-detached rather than attached? Oh dear, this could get very soul searching couldn't it?

I reckon that it might be rather more to do with being one of the Ladies of Powys who lives on the frontier with Herefordistan...

[MickyD]

It can be a very tricky issue. My previous partner found it quite impossible to share my love of eighteenth century music - having endured a few concerts with him yawning, looking at his watch etc, I finally came to the conclusion that if I was to really enjoy a concert, I was much better off going on my own. It was sad, but really the only solution.

[rauschwerk]

A minor factor in my choice of wife was that when I played her Les Noces, with which I used to drive my family mad, she liked it at once. (I'm not sure that I could have spent my life with anyone who hated Stravinsky.) Though musically fairly untutored, she had a school music teacher who inspired her pupils and taught them always to listen with an open mind.

[Anna]

A minor factor in my choice of wife was that when I played her Les Noces, with which I used to drive my family mad, she liked it at once. (I'm not sure that I could have spent my life with anyone who hated Stravinsky.) Though musically fairly untutored, she had a school music teacher who inspired her pupils and taught them always to listen with an open mind.

Well, what can I say. When I played my future partner Tears for Tears the response was "This is not Pink Floyd is it" Although musically untutored, I think they have now embraced Justin Haywood

[scottycelt]

My poor wife can't stand Bruckner, but her saving grace is she feels much the same about Brahms. She thinks Shostakovich is 'all bangs', whereas he is by far my favourite 20th Century symphonist.

She does like a lot of French and Russian music like myself .. Ravel, Tchaikovsky, all that sort of stuff so her musical tastes can't be all that bad.

I draw the line at ****** Neil Diamond though ...

[PatrickOD]

Oh yes! She sings; I play. Come up and see us some time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnsV4CvBBhQ

[Mandryka]

Some of my better half's comments on music which I have been unwise enough to play for her:

Prokofiev, Symphony 7: 'Shapless and unstructured.....is this a juvenile work?'

Delius, Song Of The High Hills: 'Sounds like a Disney soundtrack.'

Wagner, Lohengrin (Prelude): 'When does this stop?' (said after approx 30 seconds)

Strauss, Dance Of The Seven Veils (from Salome): ' Awful....it's like he's thrown everything in there and is determined to make as much noise as possible.'

Bartok, Concerto For Orchestra: 'PLEASE turn that off. Now!'

How did I end up with such a philistine?

[cavatina]

I can't imagine falling for someone who isn't passionate about music in some form or another... particular works aren't important, but rather a shared intensity of feeling and openness to new musical experiences. Though I must say if someone made fun of the music I find most meaningful, it would definitely be a deal-breaker.

I met my former husband when we were both in our early teens, and although he loved the guitar and show choir, he'd never had much exposure to classical music. I gradually introduced him to all my favorite works and the world of historical opera recordings-- and much to his surprise, he found his calling. Eventually, he ended up getting a university degree in music composition, a second degree in singing-- and a few months ago, he signed with an artists' management company as a bona-fide professional opera singer. Even though we aren't together, when I heard him sing [insert significant role here] for the first time, I was so proud of him I cried.

I think my biggest stumbling block would be a non-appreciation of food, i.e., if someone was happy with a bucket of KFC or, Heaven Forbid, a Pot Noodle or tinned ravioli.

Hear hear! I find gastronomes and gourmands curiously appealing--to my mind, there's no one quite so sexy as a bon vivant who knows how to relish a great meal.
People with big appetites, and all that...

[rauschwerk]

I have been remembering how I put my future wife's musical tastes to pretty severe test! She may have mentioned that she had the LPs of the Britten War Requiem which had only just come out (envy on my part here!), but at any rate our first proper date was at the RFH for a programme of Beethoven, Brahms and Britten (Spring Symphony). Before we married I took her to Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron at Covent Garden (she didn't turn a hair) and we heard that again at the Proms later that year. We also saw the British premiere of Prokofiev's Fiery Angel (another uncompromising work!) at Sadler's Wells. Blimey!

[antongould]

I find this a fascinating thread - are some hereabouts e.g. Cavitina saying that although I had no love for classical when Lady Gould and I married that when it grew in me and found not the faintest echo in her we should have divorced immediately and packed our 5 children off to Marshelsea? I suppose on the Anna test we do share a love of Delia's mushroom risotto or indeed anything that Lady G serves up.
Moving wider but not hopefully unrelated what about sharing our musical interests with our children - mine "hate" classical music even though they have come through, if not good schools, top universities.
They have obviously been exposed to classical from in some cases an early age but also all claim to hate Lady G's beloved Pink Floyd. But is this not a case of total rebellion against all parental tastes - well no they all love Paul Simon!?
To go far too wide but to a subject that occasionally exercises minds hereabouts how, if at all, are these 5 philistines to come to classical? Not I would suggest by stumbling across a CD of the Quartetto Italiano playing Webern Quartets
or mistuning to a performance of the Rite of Spring -there has to a bridge does there not?

[salymap]

My late partner was a proper musician, I more an amateur pianist but music lover from an early age. We liked a lot of the same things though and I even wrote some not very good words for children's part songs which he composed and they were actually published, but abroad and long out of print.

[Serial_Apologist]

There's usually an entry poiint, I think, Anton, rather than a bridge. And that entry point could well come as a surprise. I can't speak for classical music - most people I know who love classical music, always have. Taking another musical genre as an example, I loved jazz from my mid teens, but it wasn't until my mid thirties that so-called free jazz twigged with me. So, those "Webern quartets" might be just the ticket! :cool2:

To be serious, though, it seems to me that opportunities for "young people" to get into classical music, other than the most obvious and tuneful sorts, diminish year by year, as school curricula narrow, and peer pressures and what quickly sells, regardless of lasting value, more and more mould the processes of taste formation.

Consumerism is one of the subtlest means thus far devised by The Powers That Be to keep us all in line, eh??

[vinteuil]

what about sharing our musical interests with our children?

That's an interesting point! - and, as far as I can see, these things are pretty random.

My father was a serious early music man; my mother had no particular musical interests at all: they had a good marriage.
Of their three sons - one was only into pop'n' rock; one was into jazz, and later into ambient, minimalist, electroacoustic stuff; one (moi) followed pa in being into classical, esp early music.

My partner has a limited interest in classical music: she has coped with Tristan at the ROH and is happy to listen to Bach in the car - but really it's Dusty Springfield who floats her boat (and why not - it does mine too...)