# Your Taste In Music: What Factors Determine It?



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

We all have a taste in music. What factors determine it?

Does it change? If so, by substitution or by agglomeration? Is there an age when it becomes fixed?

Is it shaped or determined by culture? By current fashions and trends? By the influence of media and advertising? By social associations?

Do likes determine future likes or dislikes? Do dislikes or prejudices?

Etcetera.

Comments?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Obviously musical taste depends on a number of factors specific to each individual. Societal factors must have a huge influence because so many people grow up with tastes similar to their friends but there are also so many distinct tastes - hip hop, country, metal, jazz, classical, etc. I do suspect that most people have the majority of their tastes fixed fairly early in life (before early 20s or so). Some (a small percentage) push to expand their musical exposure and search for new sounds. 

My tastes were pretty well fixed by my 30s - rock and soul. My wife is a violinist so I became exposed to classical and never turned back. Until recently (3-4 years ago) I had little interest in anything but Baroque through Romantic music and had heard one opera. Since then I have explored just pretty much every type of classical or art music and discovered that most (but not all) sounds were wonderful. I added Renaissance, Medieval, much modern and contemporary, and opera. My tastes are clearly not fixed. 

I would say external factors had an enormous influence on me with AM radio determining much of my early tastes and my wife greatly influencing my later tastes. I can't say what pushed me to explore beyond that other than a great desire to find as much beautiful music as I can.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Great question, but as to either a brief or massively extensive answer... that is


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Has remained exactly the same and constant - insofar as for as long as I can remember there's been a constant need for more and deeper and for the different and the similar and the unknown.

Earlier on it may have "smelled of the lamp" a bit more that it does now. (Besides books and reviews I guess early guidance was provided by the kind of "top ten list" stuff that many here hate - and its why when I see younger people push for them I sympathize and cut them some slack)

Does it change? No: once I've loved something I'll keep loving it - it just expands.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

My reply would mimic Simon's and PetrB's! Generally I'm stuck on very few works that I feel are eternal, a few works that I think is crap, and the rest that are in constant evaluation!

/ptr


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I would like to think that my taste in classical music is broad but nonetheless specific. Broad in the sense that I like pieces of all eras, from the middle ages to today. However, my taste is also specific since I find that I generally look for the same qualities or elements in music. There are countless exceptions, obviously, but generally, I like music that is predominantly abstract, has a strong sense of rhythm/pulse, is contrapuntally rich, and uses somewhat angular melodic material.

There are composers I used to dislike that I like very much now, and there are composers that I once held in high esteem but which have faded since. I suppose one makes order, tidies up, as it were, even in one's taste over time. Maybe it's part of a general process of self-recognition. I'd hope so, and it'd be a nicer thought than being a leaf in the wind of trends and fashions.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I do not think my taste has changed, essentially. As a child I was captivated by rhymes and songs and heard Scottish dance & folk music (Jimmy Shand, Andy Stewart, Kenneth McKellar & also my father played the melodeon); the 50s & 60s were a time of folk revival which reached even my infant school where we learned singing games and seventeenth century ballads such as 'a frog he would a wooing go'. Consequently my mind has been fixed on patterned melody and lyrical emotions and situations. In terms of classical music, the folk tunes of Scotland, Ireland and England are nearest to the baroque. 

There is also the fact that my mother was passionately fond of history and transmitted this to all her six children - we spent our childhood years touring old churches, museums & art galleries, and always got top marks in our history exams. And I've always loved Shakespeare. So I soon learned to carry the lyrical patterning back into the past, and learned to love medieval, renaissance and baroque music.

And I have always loved dancing of any sort.

It's still the same. The periods I like are medieval through baroque, but I enjoy operas and ballet music from a later era too. 

Nobody can say they are unaffected by fashion. My twenties and thirties were spent amid the boom in folk music, folk festivals, morris dancing, real ale, Laura Ashley et al. But in general, I was always 'uncool' and a bit of a swot, so at a conscious level, I tend to react against fashion.

My essential tastes haven't changed, but since I joined Talk Classical, I have made an effort to educate myself more widely & have learned to appreciate a wider variety of music. I like to keep an open mind.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Another child of the 1950's folk revival, my initial taste was for Irish music. I also picked up on the light classics popular in that period. As I grew up, I developed a taste for folk and as that moved into folk-rock and ye olde medievalism - think the cover of Steeleye Span's "Below the Salt" - we developed a taste for early music. We were also folk dancing which brought us into contact with the music of Playford dance. I've managed to progress into the Baroque and early Classical - Mozart, Haydn et al. - but tend to skip the Romantics until we hit the folkies - Greig, Bartok, Grainger, RVW.

I also like Opera and Ballet and am moving back into the Baroque period away from the pop classics of my youth.

Since I joined TC my tastes haven't so much changed as broadened and developed. Part of this is down to retirement where I've got into classical music more - partly as a result of playing the piano and partly through having more time for concerts, opera and ballet.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I won't lie, I like modernism, and serialism, because I'm attracted to the intellectual appeal of it. 

I have different criteria I developed as I listened, and I apply these different criteria to different genres for different reasons. Then, I apply them again, and then rinse. :lol:

But really, as I get older, I like to have all my ducks in a row, and I much prefer quieter music. My nervous system can't take heavy rock like it used to. Plus, I like "space" in my music. It relaxes me. Some rock records tend to sound very harsh and cluttered to me nowadays. I still like The Beatles, though.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

We all have a taste in music. What factors determine it?

Life.

Does it change?










If so, by substitution or by agglomeration?

Both

Is there an age when it becomes fixed?

If so I have yet to reach that age.

Is it shaped or determined by culture?

Is there anything that isn't "shaped or determined by culture" in at least some small way?

By current fashions and trends?

I suppose this plays a role as well. Off the top of my head I might argue that the current popularity of HIP may be called a "fashion" or "trend". Is this good or bad? To my mind it opened up new ways of hearing some of the old favorites and led to a real Renaissance of discovery of Baroque and earlier music.

By the influence of media and advertising?

Damn you Amazon "One Click" purchasing! You are wreaking havoc with my bank account!

By social associations?

I can't think of any social acquaintance more obsessed with classical music than I... although I have probably been prodded into exploring this or that work from time to time by a friend who shares a passion for music.

Do likes determine future likes or dislikes?

Well... I suppose if I like work X by composer X there is a good chance that I may also like work Y by the same composer. But there's no certainty of this. The same could be said of the inverse.

Speaking wholly of my own experience, I began seriously exploring classical music sometime around the time I graduated from high-school. I began seriously collecting classical music nearly a decade later after getting a "real job". My taste has broadened a great deal along with my music collection... but it remains centered largely upon the music from the Baroque through Early Modernism (Strauss, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Britten, Poulenc, etc...). I have come to quite admire a good deal of Renaissance and Medieval music... and two or three years ago I invested much of my surplus time and money to exploring late Modern/Contemporary music. I discovered some real gems... but also a lot of music that was tedious, annoying, or just plain ugly. I am now at the stage where I find myself more likely to discover something of real interest (to me) among alternative recordings of favorite works... or unknown (to me) works by favorite composers. I've come to believe that there is no difference between seeking out the "new" (to us) by digging deep among a limited oeuvre of the past (opera or chamber music, or the music of the Baroque) than there is in exploring the latest novelties.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I am an introvert and I hate noise, so intimate music- chamber and solo are more what I am into. I am really shunning large orchestral works at this stage in my life. The more intimate, the better.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

There is an academic construct for this - it is called 'Recreational Specialisation' and derives from the work of Bryan (1977). Basically, proponents of this theory propose that entrants to a recreational activity enter as generalists with a wide but shallow range of interest and that through engagement with the activity and with others engaged in the same activity, they often develop a more specialised interest within the activity. Thus, one _might_ start listening to Classic FM and then _might_ end up mainly listening to Baroque flute music played in a HIP style. 
There is some semblence of truth in the proposal, at least for some activities and for some people although the situation in the 'real world' is complicated - it depends on the activity, it depends on the individual, it depends on the circumstances of the individual and the activity.

So, speaking for myself, I started off with comparatively wide general interests in music and over time I have deepened my knowledge and I have some areas that interest me much more (and a few that interest me much less) than 30 years ago. I now listen to some composers a lot that I hadn't even heard of at the start, and listen to some of my starting works hardly ever.


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

_We all have a taste in music. What factors determine it?_
I think I'm rather curious, and try many different styles, periods and composers, even if I have a preference for late 19th and first half of the 20th century works. I have started to listen to smaller ensembles (solo and chamber music) only recently, and some more modern music (Boulez, Xenakis, Messiaen, etc.) as well.

_Does it change? If so, by substitution or by agglomeration? Is there an age when it becomes fixed?_
It does "agglomerate" ; I'm only 18 and do not have enough hindsight to tell you if substitution applies to me. Will I become unable to listen to Sibelius one day?

_Is it shaped or determined by culture? By current fashions and trends? By the influence of media and advertising? By social associations?_
Advertising or fashion does not influence me, I believe. But the _Currently Listening_ thread definitely does! The orchestra of my region has a very various repertoire (a great part of which curiously consists in 1900-1950 works! Coincidence?), and I sometimes listen online to what their programme - unfortunately, I don't find enough time to go to concerts...

_Do likes determine future likes or dislikes? Do dislikes or prejudices?_
I think likes determine the next composers I want to explore. This is what happened when I had gone through my first Nielsen cycle; I read that Sibelius and Nielsen had common influence, and decided to try Sibelius. I definitely do not regret it.
Thanks to my curiosity, I think I do not have many prejudices. When I try something which, at first, does not appeal to me (it was the case when I first listened to Mahler's First Symphony), I "forget" the composer for a certain time, and then go back to him (the second time I took the Mahler CD was the beginning of an all-Mahler semester). Recently, I re-tried some Chopin, but it still bored me; so far, I cannot bear serialism. I try to make efforts, but I never forget the notion of pleasure.

_Comments?_
When it comes to your personal tastes, do not bother of the others or of the future. Just stay open-minded without gining up what really touches you.
KEEP CALM AND LISTEN TO MUSIC.


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