# Hate 'em - then love 'em?



## BillT (Nov 3, 2013)

Has it ever happened to you that there is a composer or a work or set of works that, try as you might, you just could not love -- until a light went off and then you could not get enough?

This has happened to me more times than I can remember. For decades I listened to Beethoven's string quartets because I "heard" they were so good. Nothing, for like 20 years. Then one day - BAM! Loved them. They would certainly be my desert island music, especially the late ones. The same with Mahler. Gawd did I despise him! Now I cannot get enough. I often go to multiple performances of the same Mahler symphony, the same week, here in SF. 

I am somewhat hoping this happens with Mozart. I find him boring. I have been listening to classical music for .... ahem... quite a few years. I figure I must be getting old because once in a while I find myself liking a snitch of Mozart. But then I come back to reality and realize that I still "feel young" ut:

- Bill


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

I've never come to love music I've outright hated (there are plenty of things I used to love that I now hate, but I used to love a lot of terrible music). But there are many things I now love that I used to find boring or incomprehensible - Mozart, Brahms, Bruckner, all pre-baroque music.



BillT said:


> I have been listening to classical music for .... ahem... quite a few years. I figure I must be getting old because once in a while I find myself liking a snitch of Mozart.


That's the first stage. I don't know whether it will creep up on you or whether it will suddenly click in an instant, but you will like Mozart before too long!


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Stravinsky. I heard Rite of Spring in Disney's Fantasia as a kid. The dinosaurs were cool but I disliked the music. Then several other pieces in concerts and the score to the ballet Agon. Still disliked Stravinsky. Then.... FIREBIRD! Saw it on video as a teenager and loved the music. Also, maybe because I was a little older or maybe something about the music, but after that I began to love almost all Stravinsky as well including Rite and Agon.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

No. I can learn to like something I don't know or haven't really given a chance to.
But what I hate, I hate! 
Must be the clan ancestry.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I have "opened up" to certain music in a number of ways. 

Through many listenings I simply could not hear the Berg Violin Concerto as anything but mildly unpleasant random sounds. After focusing on an audio discussion of the work and then listening several more times, suddenly and almost miraculously, I found the work beautiful. 

My first several attempts at Beethoven's Grosse Fuge gained me nothing but curiosity at how he could have written such a bizarre work. One day I found the work beautiful, and now it is my favorite quartet of his.

When I first started expanding my listening I did not enjoy Ravel, Debussy, or Stravinsky. Now many of their works are remarkably beautiful. I still can't believe that I once found Stravinsky's Violin Concerto unpleasant. 

Similarly Messiaen was a muddle of weird noise, but now there are parts of the Turangalila Symphony that are just too wonderful. 

In general repeated listening to modern and contemporary music has opened up my listening pleasure. I used to find the vast majority of modern music very unpleasant. Now I cannot listen to works before 1900 for too long without wishing to hear something modern. I still adore the old works, but perhaps I just want something different.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Believe it or not, I once listened to Debussy's Images for Orchestra and thought to myself "_this_ is why I hate modern music!"

Oh, I was young and foolish...


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## Rhombic (Oct 28, 2013)

Haydn symphonies in general. They were dull and uninteresting but then, one day, I suddenly realised that I loved them while listening to Symphony No. 82 (The Bear).


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## BillT (Nov 3, 2013)

Garlic said:


> I've never come to love music I've outright hated (there are plenty of things I used to love that I now hate, but I used to love a lot of terrible music). But there are many things I now love that I used to find boring or incomprehensible - Mozart, Brahms, Bruckner, all pre-baroque music.
> 
> That's the first stage. I don't know whether it will creep up on you or whether it will suddenly click in an instant, but you will like Mozart before too long!


There may be hope for me yet, then huh?

Maybe one day I would even begin to like academic-type quotes, too - ya think? 

- Bill


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Well this is pretty much the story of my life when it comes to my classical music listening habits.

I guess I wouldn't say HATE for all of these but just to make it short I used to dislike Mozart and pretty much all classical era, pretty much all 20th century music, all opera, most vocal music, Vaughn-Williams, Schumann, Liszt...

Now I like all of those. I'm like a posterboy for classical music success stories.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Hate's a pretty strong word for something as inconsequential as someone's musical preferences. 

Moving along... it did take me a bit to get into Bruckner, and now he's in my top 3 composers of all time. I figured out the other composers pretty quickly. Well, all except for Mahler, I'm still having trouble with him. I'll crack his code eventually.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Funny you should mention Mahler, Vesuvius. About four years ago, I would not have been able to tell you that I had ever sat through a Mahler symphony. I had tried several times to listen to the 5th symphony, but to no avail.

In the last few years, I began to realize how great this man really was...and I've never looked back! There was a time where I listened to Mahler every single day, and now I listen to him at least once or twice a week.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I don't think I've ever gone entirely from hate to love or vice versa, but I've gone from "this is wretchedly boring" to "this is interesting enough to want a recording." I've always been curious about all types and eras of music. My reaction is usually boredom before hate.

I'm probably still in the "liking a snitch of Mozart" phase and have been for decades now. His later works tend to resonate better with me. 

The biggest turn around I've had is in the area of chamber music. I used to find solo strings annoying and was more interested in the big clangs and fortissimos a full orchestra could raise. But now I find chamber to be equally interesting and sometimes more so. You can hear the individual parts so much more clearly and I find it amazing how many colors a composer or performer can get out of a limited palette. Likewise I used to think of solo piano as "plain old vanilla," but now I find it be one of the most expressive versatile instruments ever made. I think Beethoven was instrumental in effecting both of these changes in me.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Mahler and the Second Viennese School were a long time coming for me. Interestingly, that happened not long after I started to gain an appreciation for Mozart and Haydn.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Weston said:


> I don't think I've ever gone entirely from hate to love or vice versa, but I've gone from "this is wretchedly boring" to "this is interesting enough to want a recording." I've always been curious about all types and eras of music. My reaction is usually boredom before hate.
> 
> I'm probably still in the "liking a snitch of Mozart" phase and have been for decades now. His later works tend to resonate better with me.
> 
> The biggest turn around I've had is in the area of chamber music. I used to find solo strings annoying and was more interested in the big clangs and fortissimos a full orchestra could raise. But now I find chamber to be equally interesting and sometimes more so. You can hear the individual parts so much more clearly and I find it amazing how many colors a composer or performer can get out of a limited palette. Likewise I used to think of solo piano as "plain old vanilla," but now I find it be one of the most expressive versatile instruments ever made. I think Beethoven was instrumental in effecting both of these changes in me.


Glad to hear you turned around to piano. Debussy and Ravel's solo piano is like aural honey. I've always loved the piano though....


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Berlioz is a good candidate for me, although "love" might be too strong a word yet.

Stravinsky has the distinction of being a composer I liked, then hated, then loved.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

It is rare that I do a complete U-turn from hate to love but there are many pieces which I was initially indifferent to but now love. It took me a long time to appreciate harpsichord music, until I heard a very thrilling rendition of Bach's Italian Concerto by Pieter-Jan Belder, and that opened up for me much more baroque keyboard music, such as Couperin and Scarlatti who are now among my favourites.

It works the other way round as well; there are pieces I used to love but am now indifferent to, e.g. orchestral works of Richard Strauss.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Agreeing with Winterreisender, I don't often make that U-turn. There will, though, be works that I have overlooked, or just not known well enough to fully appreciate and love yet. 
A recent example of the hate-love U-turn, though, would be Tchaikovsky's *Romeo and Juliet Overture.* Just yesterday, I believe, I was listening to it by chance, when I realized that I had disliked it for little reason! Thankfully, though, I hope never to care for 1812 Overture. I don't ever want to have to risk the headaches.


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## Benny (Feb 4, 2013)

When I was a boy I detested Alban Berg's Sonata op. 1; when my mother played it I ran to my room and closed the door. Today it's one of my most beloved piano pieces.


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

I didn't like the sound of the harpsichord at all when I was young (not a big fan of the word "hate"...), now I really love it.
The peculiar metallic sound make the music seem more articulated, more precise. And i have the feeling that it is usually played slower than the modern piano, but I don't know if that is true.

Cheers,
Jos


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

I can't say that I've gone from Hating to Loving anything when it comes to Music. 

I can only say that there are things that I wouldn't listen to at all, to which I now occasionally listen to or try to integrate more frequently into my listening habits, but I can't say that I love them. 

I pretty much instantly liked or loved everything from Gregorian Chant to Mahler...it's the modern music that continues to be more tricky for me to enjoy. But I give much more of it a chance than I used too.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Serialism! Studied it at school about 5 years ago and hated it, now I really love the serialists, Schoenberg et Webern in particular.


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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

I have been really listening -eagerly- to classical music for a year. At first I deemed almost all symphonies inaccessible, unhomely if you will. But now I get the strongest esthetic experiences from symphonies; by Mozart, Schumann, Mahler etc. 

It's funny that I never disliked the Second Viennese School, actually always liked the 'free' sound of them. But I love Romantic gestures and sensibility, so I "hate" a lot of modern music, though.

I only seriously like Baroque opera. I wonder if that will change. We'll see


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## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

It is interesting how perceptions change.

The oddest experience for me was with Prokofiev. I heard his fifth symphony in a record store (vinyl--we called them el pees back then, sonny) and really liked the scherzo. Being me, I wanted to hear more of this guy. So I tried Romeo & Juliet. Hmm. Not so much. After awhile, I came to like Romeo & Juliet so much that I went to every production of it I could. Probably a dozen, some of them more than once. But what about the fourth symphony? The same.

There was a time in my life when Prokofiev was the twentieth century composer I listened to the most. And I came to realize that each piece of his I had never heard before was going to sound hollow and empty and stupid. 

Until it didn't, of course. And for each piece, after I had come to love it, I couldn't fathom how I ever thought it anything but wonderful. And I still knew that the next Prokofiev piece I heard for the first time would seem meh. Incroyable. This lasted for a long time, too. When it stopped happening, there were only a handful of Prokofiev pieces I had never heard. It was cool to hear each of those for the first time and like them immediately.

I struggled similarly with Berlioz, too. At least with him, I figured out why I didn't like each new (to me) piece at first. Berlioz doesn't use the germanic cantus firmus. What's underneath his music is not a foundation in the bass. What's underneath his music is silence. Even when it's playing, you're aware of the silence. The Germans--and everyone who wrote according to that principle--always had some sound going on "underneath" the main stuff. You've always got some sound going on. Even when there are rests--common rests--you're not really aware of silence as a thing. The music has just stopped momentarily and will start up again real soon, folks. With Berlioz, there's nothing there "underneath." Nothing but silence, that is. Which assumes a musical and structural importance, of course, but that's for later. At first, it just seems like his music is shallow, nothing much there beyond what's on the very top level. It's only top level. Or so it seemed to me. Of course, that's all wrong. But there you have it.

With Prokofiev, I never did figure out why I always felt each new (to me) piece was superficial note-spinning. At first. It just did. And then it didn't.


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