# Is there a Saturation Point?



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I have been thinking about the threads on new music and how things have changed for me.

When I was in my 20s, I was discovering new composers (and rock bands) by the dozens every week: Stockhausen, Ligeti, Messiaen, Malec, Mâche, Webern, Maderna, Nono, Kagel, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Schoenberg, Berio... The discoveries were astounding and seemed never-ending. The sounds were all so novel and new. It just got my blood racing and I had to have more, more, more...!

By the time I got into my 40s, things had slowed down _a lot_. It seemed like I knew everything there was, and the things I didn't know sounded like such-and-such and so-and-so when I did hear them. Little seemed new and different.

I still make discoveries today, but only perhaps a dozen a year, not hundreds like I used to.

Does this have to do with age, that the amount of past exposure makes the new no longer seem so novel? or is it an unwillingness to listen to something new (even though it appears to sound like things one already knows)?

Could there be a saturation point... where everything starts to sound a bit like something you already know? where it no longer grabs you by the balls like it did when you were 20? where you no longer feel that you absolutely must _have_ it?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> I have been thinking about the threads on new music and how things have changed for me.
> 
> When I was in my 20s, I was discovering new composers (and rock bands) by the dozens every week: Stockhausen, Ligeti, Messiaen, Malec, Mâche, Webern, Maderna, Nono, Kagel, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Schoenberg, Berio... The discoveries were astounding and seemed never-ending. The sounds were all so novel and new. It just got my blood racing and I had to have more, more, more...!
> 
> ...


The world is so incomprehensibly large, there must still be a lot of music that is unfamiliar to you, whether it's Burmese folk music, Cantopop, zydeco, Japanoise, European jazz, the "Swedish Mozart," or any of Brumel's music except that one mass that we've all heard. I mean _something_ out there would be new to you. But for some reason it doesn't interest you.

So it must be that you've lost interest in exploring new stuff. You seem to have been super-adventurous earlier, your mind may be changing.

There could be a psychological element to it: the brain gets more closed-minded around 25 or so. Before that lots of people change religions, for example. After that, not so much, and where it happens it's usually to a religion familiar to them since childhood. Perhaps something like that has happened to you musically.

Or it might simply be that there was stuff you wanted to know, and now you know most of it, so you're getting properly satisfied. I feel this about my classical music knowledge: ten years ago I didn't know all kinds of stuff that I wanted to know. Now I've learned it, and I'm increasingly satisfied. I'm aware that now I'm exploring little alleys of the tradition rather than discovering whole huge masterworks that I'd never heard of before.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Boredom is one of the greatest sins against oneself that one can commit. We must ever fight it, and actively try to maintain our innocence. For more information, read the chapters on Mr. Peeperkorn in Thomas Mann's _Der Zauberberg._


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Most things are not done as intensively or as enthusiastically when one is older. Time seems to hurry by - one feels tired - one feels one has 'done one's bit' in exploring the new. But what you do choose to do can seem even more special and meaningful, and there's always the possibility of 'falling in love' with a new music, whether you find it by accident or not. 

It is not a question of being bored so much as of choosing to be more of a connoisseur. Your appetite is not so great, so you choose things that you can really savour. So long as one is not absolutely unwilling to sample something new that crops up or is recommended by a friend, I can't see anything wrong with that.

Au contraire, old people who try to prove all the time that they 'still have it' are tedious in the extreme.


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

I hope there is not. And if yes, I hope I will never reach it.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I want to stay on the topic of classical music!

Yes, I was super-adventurous as a teen/young adult. I think I have retained this, though, but tempered with more calm and less frenzy. I still do explore new stuff. I regularly post a handful of my YT explorations, etc. I am not closed-minded to this music, either. I simply find that much of it sounds a lot like stuff I already know, or that the music I already have satisfies that particular itch better than the newer piece. Nevertheless, my tastes in classical have widened considerably over the past few years. I am even more wholeheartedly embracing an interest in vocal music, such as operas with stories I am interested in, while before, I would only have considered them if they were avant-garde.

Boredom is not it. I am far from bored. I have _mountains_ of music here that I have barely scratched the surface of and a little in the mail and more coming all of the time. I cannot keep up with it all. I am not in the least bored of it. If anything, I am in a persisting state of musical satori :angel::kiss:

No, I'm not an old man, either, although I am older than I was.

Perhaps I'm reaching an absorption threshold, where I need to digest for a while.

I love Thomas Mann. I think I've read all of his novels. I really ought to reread _Der Zauberberg_  I read it auf Englisch in the '70s. I need to find it in German.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> I have been thinking about the threads on new music and how things have changed for me.
> 
> When I was in my 20s, I was discovering new composers (and rock bands) by the dozens every week: Stockhausen, Ligeti, Messiaen, Malec, Mâche, Webern, Maderna, Nono, Kagel, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Schoenberg, Berio... The discoveries were astounding and seemed never-ending. The sounds were all so novel and new. It just got my blood racing and I had to have more, more, more...!
> 
> ...


No, this just shows you have become a Grand Master of Listening! We should be learning from your experience. 

And what do you make of the Stockhausen, Ligeti etc. that you mentioned versus older music from Baroque, Classical etc.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> No, this just shows you have become a Grand Master of Listening! We should be learning from your experience.


You adorn me with more merits than I am worthy of wearing  but experience has paid off.



ArtMusic said:


> And what do you make of the Stockhausen, Ligeti etc. that you mentioned versus older music from Baroque, Classical etc.


I adore their music :tiphat: and have done so for 40-odd years, but I do have some reservations with a small amount of it, too. I guess I'm a smidgen less avant-garde than I liked to think I was when I was 20  And were it not for them, I might not have made my way back to an appreciation of the Baroque.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Ingélou said:


> It is not a question of being bored so much as of choosing to be more of a connoisseur. Your appetite is not so great, so you choose things that you can really savour. So long as one is not absolutely unwilling to sample something new that crops up or is recommended by a friend, I can't see anything wrong with that.
> 
> Au contraire, old people who try to prove all the time that they 'still have it' are tedious in the extreme.


Great observation. I find that I'm doing that. I'm glad it's normal.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2015)

I agree with ingelou, even though I am still incredibly young.

I'm forever on the lookout for new music but my rate of "consumption" is quite low. I'm a picky Persian. Lots goes in front of me on the conveyor belt but I only pick up occasionally. I've never got saturated, because I control my absorption!


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Au contraire, old people who try to prove all the time that they 'still have it' are tedious in the extreme.


I missed this. I certainly agree; however, I have seen this taken to the opposite extreme, where people who are no longer 20 are not supposed to wear jeans, enjoy rock music, take part in strenuous physical activity, etc. I would rather the haters saw me as tedious than to sit away my life in a rocking chair, because I was not living up to their idea of ageing.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2015)

brotagonist said:


> I missed this. I certainly agree; however, I have seen this taken to the opposite extreme, where people who are no longer 20 are not supposed to wear jeans, enjoy rock music, take part in strenuous physical activity, etc. I would rather the haters saw me as tedious than to sit away my life in a rocking chair, because I was not living up to their idea of ageing.


I think, hopefully, as one ages one stops concerrning oneself quite so much what others think, whether it be music, film, clothes, hair etc etc. This week I'm in fashion cos I have a beard. Next week I won't be. Gosh.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2015)

I've always liked rocking chairs, but I like them a lot less now than when I was a kid.

Anyway, bro, I suppose anyone could hit a plateau from time to time. I've done it. Dinna fash. It's probably not permanent.


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> Could there be a saturation point... where everything starts to sound a bit like something you already know? where it no longer *grabs you by the balls* like it did when you were 20? where you no longer feel that you absolutely must have it?


Do you mean to address only the male TC members? 

----

I never tire of finding new things, but as I said elsewhere I don't go around looking for things. I let them come to me...


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## Fagotterdammerung (Jan 15, 2015)

A large part of later-in-life listening of of filling in the gaps, I find, which can take more time than just finding a new name. I'll give an example ( albeit a _deliberately oversimplified_ one ).

Say you're fresh into classical and hear _Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune_ and love it. So, you start listening to French composers, and in the span of one afternoon you've discovered Ravel, Satie, Les Six, Faure, etc. Sure, you've _discovered_ them now and can seem like you've learned so much in a short period, but chances are you've just briefly glanced over their works, with so much more to explore.

I recently decided to listen to every work of Stravinsky's I _haven't_ heard before and discovered a cluster of new favorites. Now I've "known" Stravinsky since my teens, so nothing across as _surprising_ because I know his style from his major works, but it's no less of an exploration just because it had less of the shock of the new.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> I have been thinking about the threads on new music and how things have changed for me.
> 
> When I was in my 20s, I was discovering new composers (and rock bands) by the dozens every week: Stockhausen, Ligeti, Messiaen, Malec, Mâche, Webern, Maderna, Nono, Kagel, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Schoenberg, Berio... The discoveries were astounding and seemed never-ending. The sounds were all so novel and new. It just got my blood racing and I had to have more, more, more...!
> 
> ...


"Excuse me teacher, can we take a break, because my brain is full?"

I don't seem to have hit the saturation point. One of the great things about the last 20 or so years is the explosion of repetoire available to music consumers today. So many more composers to discover, and so little time before we shuttle off the old mortal coil. I hope that you are in a dry spell, bro, and trust that you will eventually regain some enthusiasm.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Maybe go back over some stuff you haven't heard for years, that you liked but didn't love: perhaps, as you have grown and matured, you will be able to find more beauty in those things which are familiar yet unfamiliar, things which may have been hiding in plain sight for a couple of decades.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

As a general, but not universal, rule, one tends to be more adventurous when young. As Garcia Marquez wrote, "... the world was new then..." so many things did not have names. Several things happen as you age. 1) More and more "new" things start to remind you of pre-existing things. 2) You start to get jaded. And 3) you start getting into a "life is too short to . . ." mindset. I've always thought that life was too short to spend any amount of time watching a mediocre or bad TV show or movie (I'd rather read a cereal box). It's gotten that way with music, too. Listening to music is a time intensive activity -- and time starts running out -- so you want to be sure you're using it wisely.


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## MozartsGhost (May 9, 2014)

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. ~Victor Hugo


Hang in there brotagonist, sounds like you're going through one of those transitions. You may not discover hundreds of new talents each year, but like fine wine, you'll savor the things you do spend time with and enjoy them completely!

Oh, and I do think there is a saturation point if you live your life constantly on the move from flower to flower - always in a hurry (life's a marathon not a sprint!). 

Am I taking in less? I think not . . . at my age (50 something) . . . I take in more than I did when I was younger. I just do it different. In my youth I skimmed over details and was always in a hurry to move on to the next thing. NEED MORE INPUT! Now, I input but spend much more time in the details. I guess I've matured - ARGHHHH!


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

MozartsGhost said:


> I take in more than I did when I was younger. I just do it different. In my youth I skimmed over details and was always in a hurry to move on to the next thing.... Now, I input but spend much more time in the details.


Very true. In youth, it was lots at great haste; now, it is less at great depth.


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## opus55 (Nov 9, 2010)

I'm at the old age of youth and I say that constantly exploring new things has become _old_ for me. I'm past that phase of life and it doesn't interest me to strive for new things. I don't feel that things always have to go forward. Having said that, no, I certainly don't feel I'm reaching saturation point in appreciating music.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I've reached a point where I'm no longer seeking music like a lost soul prowling for the pinnacle of life. I'm always down to hear new things, but I know it won't fill the belly of my mind. I'm always left hungry, again... where is that ultimate meal? 

Regardless, it is one of the sweetest addictions to have.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

I think that you can always review old favorites and find something new and refreshing in those pieces. Right now I'm exploring some Luigi Nono pieces.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Excellent post, the whole chapters of each phase well-articulated.



brotagonist said:


> I have been thinking about the threads on new music and how things have changed for me.
> 
> When I was in my 20s, I was discovering new composers (and rock bands) by the dozens every week: Stockhausen, Ligeti, Messiaen, Malec, Mâche, Webern, Maderna, Nono, Kagel, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Schoenberg, Berio... The discoveries were astounding and seemed never-ending. The sounds were all so novel and new. It just got my blood racing and I had to have more, more, more...!


_The Sensate / Sensational / less-little-or-nearly no discernment phase,_ where there is, truth by told, very little ability to discriminate great from good, or less  A lot of great stuff is first found then which years later still does more than hold up and still holds interest, while a number of pieces and composers whose music 'was new to you' -- from any era -- which was _equally as thrilling then,_ becomes in a later retrospect dull, bland, pretentious, banal, preposterous, and / or 'not worth the time to listen to.'



brotagonist said:


> By the time I got into my 40s, things had slowed down _a lot_. It seemed like I knew everything there was, and the things I didn't know sounded like such-and-such and so-and-so when I did hear them. Little seemed new and different.


If you have accumulated a lot of familiarity of that wide a range of the repertoire, it is only normal to have gained with that experience the ken and discernment / discrimination which was not so present, strong, or clarified earlier. _This is both extremely normal and imo desirable._ There are many things also taken in exactly the same way when younger, a fascination with people, different types, how people look; exploring new foods; _ideas,_ (a complete gamut, the whole ball of wax, etc.) and those run in a near exact parallel quite in the same line of change as the experience of music. Much of everything experienced many times over takes the same perspective. _This is typical of sets of general realizations and awareness across the board that take shape right around age 40._ (zOMG, we're _*average *_ It is also the time when you find that it takes but a few minutes into a piece to know (somewhat) what the remainder of it will be like; your editing of any new thing gets both precise and radically efficient. Five minutes in, max, you know if you do or don't want to listen to the whole piece. Much else of life runs again parallel, that efficiency to quickly decide -- usually correctly -- how, and with what and whom, you wish to spend your time 

There, as you said, a 'new' piece by a composer you have not yet listened to will very likely not sound as startlingly like "news," precisely because you have so much in your data banks with which to compare it / measure it. _If that new voice is distinct enough_, even if it is in a general style already known to you, the piece gets logged in with the catalogue of already existing keepers. A piece can be fine enough, but this phase is that time when I more keenly than before realized that if a piece reminded me too strongly of another composer's music or the works of several other composers, or 'too like' the previously known it would then make me want to hear those instead  "Not original or distinct enough." So... you become canny, or much cannier!

[[ ADD: because I found it interesting. When those in their forties do not outwardly exhibit surprise, much visible emotion, whether it is over a sudden death loss of someone dear to them or a deep pleasure and excitement about a piece of music, most younger people observing any of that routinely think that elder person is cold, heartless, cerebral only, jaded, etc. _They are wrong of course_ -- the older person has in some direct or indirect way experienced things before, all the emotions are present, but because those events are so much less of a surprise or shock, they are dealt with with less overt drama or fuss. END ADD]]

In our twenties, with sensation and the accompanying out front thrill-seeking impulses there was a much larger _tabula rasa_ and far less discernment. O.K. now you're forty and here is that discernment. _What I found came with that was a good deal less (of the already known and earlier acquired rep) as well as the newly explored_ "did it" for me, while when a newly found work did do it for me...


brotagonist said:


> I still make discoveries today, but only perhaps a dozen a year, not hundreds like I used to.


 ...the pleasure and satisfaction was that much deeper and fuller than even when first discovering those great works in my twenties which still are with me. You know _more._



brotagonist said:


> Does this have to do with age, that the amount of past exposure makes the new no longer seem so novel? or is it an unwillingness to listen to something new (even though it appears to sound like things one already knows)?


Of course it has to do with age, but nothing to do with marching into your dotage or getting calloused, jaded, etc. It has everything to do with all that you now know and have experienced. "You can't go back home again." You can only recall what it was like to be 20, or 40, or.... You do not know 'too much,' but so much that anything which will be taken as novel has to be _seriously novel,_ as well as stand up to your (conscious or unconscious) now highly developed and qualified sets of criteria. This is more _demanding_ of the highest quality, a distilling of all your now-known demands and expectations of a work. Less is sensational, but just as it was at forty and more so, I think, when something is found which meets all the demands, the thrill and pleasure is then _really tremendous._ I didn't get around to any Rameau until my late thirties. I started, intensely, with music and learning rep much earlier than many, yet that initial exposure to Rameau blew me away to a depth I could not recall from those more sensational 'discoveries' that came via (lets say it, cries of elitism ignored) the more generally superficial approach of my teens / early twenties.



brotagonist said:


> Could there be a saturation point... where everything starts to sound a bit like something you already know? where it no longer grabs you by the balls like it did when you were 20? where you no longer feel that you absolutely must _have_ it?


 LOL. re-read the above. Less is more, when something really strikes it strikes profoundly deep; those occasions are far less frequent, much further apart. I should add that a good deal of what I first heard / acquired in my data banks still does it now to a similar depth, but it is a very different thing from a first exposure in the more raw and superficial thrill-seeking mode which is 'youth.'


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

On the "less is more" idea - 

When I was in college, I had maybe 25 CDs of classical music, and I listened to them over and over and over. They weren't necessarily particularly good recordings, just stuff I'd happened to come across somehow in my near-total ignorance. But I got to know those recordings damn well. You can play a few seconds of any of them and I will know what they are. If you play the same work by other performers, you're not going to have me fooled too long. 

Now I have thousands of CDs, essentially none of which I've heard more than 50 times, most of which I've heard less than 10 times. They're much better recordings according to those who are supposed to know these things, of much better music according to the same, but my personal experience of them is being much less rewarding. 

Occasionally I try to recreate the college experience by limiting myself to a few dozen CDs that I'm supposed to listen to repeatedly for a few months, but I have never managed to pull that off. Too little self-control!


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

PetrB: _A piece can be fine enough, but... if a piece reminded me too strongly of another composer's music or the works of several other composers, or 'too like' the previously known it would then make me want to hear those instead _

You bet! I've done it many a time... and don't I know the value of the slider on YT 

Thanks for the analysis, PetrB. Sometimes, when scanning the threads, I sense so much expectation to be constantly seeking new musical experiences. I'm no longer SO motivated to find them, like I used to be... and when I do, they don't always sound all THAT novel to me.

"Discernment." That's sort of how I look at it, too. I feel like I'm honing my taste, paring it down to the essential... but I can still feel like such a cynic, such an ingrate  but time seems short and getting shorter.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

science said:


> Occasionally I try to recreate the college experience by limiting myself to a few dozen CDs that I'm supposed to listen to repeatedly for a few months, but I have never managed to pull that off. Too little self-control!


So that's it, with these what should I spend more time on polls :lol:

I'm still trying to get to the point of being able to recognize the music I have collected. I think it's hopeless, but I think I am getting much better at recognizing a composer's work.

Instead of constantly looking for new composers, I find that I like to explore the ones I know. It's like having a favourite author and wanting to read all of their novels.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Saturation with music is directly related to how much female companionship you are getting.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2015)

Very interesting post, Petr. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. And here, without further ado, some fruits of that provocation.



PetrB said:


> _The Sensate / Sensational / less-little-or-nearly no discernment phase,_ where there is, truth by told, very little ability to discriminate great from good, or less  A lot of great stuff is first found then which years later still does more than hold up and still holds interest, while a number of pieces and composers whose music 'was new to you' -- from any era -- which was _equally as thrilling then,_ becomes in a later retrospect dull, bland, pretentious, banal, preposterous, and / or 'not worth the time to listen to.'


I had rather a different experience. I had only Hollywood music at first; that's all there was in my home. Around age nine, I inherited a bunch of 78s from my dad's step-brother. These included Bing Crosby and Fats Waller and a mix of classical, including sides one and four of _Peter and the Wolf._

I took to the classical music immediately. As I articulated it later, I felt like this was what music was supposed to sound like, what all the Hollywood music was trying to do but not quite succeeding. And discernment was there from the beginning. While I was omniverous, I had distinct preferences. As time went on, I would discover that my tastes were pretty much in alignment with the "experts." I thought that was OK at the time, but even later I would question that "discovery." I'm pretty sure now that it was not a good thing. But there it was. I prefered Bach to Corelli, Beethoven to Spohr, Mozart to Salieri, Brahms to Berwald and so forth. And all of them to popular musics. Curious little kid.



PetrB said:


> If you have accumulated a lot of familiarity of that wide a range of the repertoire, it is only normal to have gained with that experience the ken and discernment / discrimination which was not so present, strong, or clarified earlier.


I accumulated a lot of familiarity very quickly. And I don't recall any time within the short period of time before discovering twentieth century music (about eleven or twelve years) that I didn't have discernment or discrimination, in spite of my voracious appetite. Perhaps this accounts for its continued voracity into my sixties.



PetrB said:


> You do not know 'too much,' but so much that anything which will be taken as novel has to be _seriously novel,_ as well as stand up to your (conscious or unconscious) now highly developed and qualified sets of criteria.


So, for me, this was also a phase. And I have learned to unlearn my "highly developed... sets of criteria." When I first read Picasso's comment about taking four year to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child, that really resonated with me.



PetrB said:


> ...when something really strikes it strikes profoundly deep; those occasions are far less frequent, much further apart.


Sadly, I have not been able to escape this, however. Recently, I have been hankering for someone to write something so different from anything that I'm used to, that I don't know how to process it. I do spend a lot of time, most of the time, listening to music that I "don't like," stuff that's new enough to be still prior to either liking or disliking. But it doesn't last. I often start out in a condition of neutrality or even bewilderment, but it doesn't take too many minutes to know whether I like something or not. I want it to take weeks or years!



brotagonist said:


> "Discernment." That's sort of how I look at it, too. I feel like I'm honing my taste, paring it down to the essential... but I can still feel like such a cynic, such an ingrate  but time seems short and getting shorter.


I feel like I have spent the last twenty years or so getting rid of my taste, not paring it down but eliminating it as a factor. Time _is_ short. I want to spend whatever is left with things I don't know yet. I love the things I do know, no doubt. But I have them already. I don't want them. I only want, strictly speaking, what I don't have.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

some guy said:


> I feel like I have spent the last twenty years or so getting rid of my taste, not paring it down but eliminating it as a factor. Time _is_ short. I want to spend whatever is left with things I don't know yet. I love the things I do know, no doubt. But I have them already. I don't want them. I only want, strictly speaking, what I don't have.


I think I'll stick with pears, which I love, in all of their varieties, than to try to get myself to like a fruit that has been described as stinking like a toilet :lol:


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Man I am always looking for something new even obscure 19th century and earlier music and I just turned 68.

There is so much great classical music out there it is impossible to know everything.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2015)

brotagonist said:


> I think I'll stick with pears, which I love, in all of their varieties, than to try to get myself to like a fruit that *has been described* as stinking like a toilet :lol:


(Bolding my own.)

I wouldn't consider anyone's nose but my own. And I apparently am willing to ignore its messages!


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> I feel like I have spent the last twenty years or so getting rid of my taste, not paring it down but eliminating it as a factor. Time _is_ short. I want to spend whatever is left with things I don't know yet. I love the things I do know, no doubt. But I have them already. I don't want them. I only want, strictly speaking, what I don't have.


You're a wise man, some guy. The paradox of letting things go... and receiving everything in return.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

I was reading the third volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' tonight (I can heartily recommend this sequence of 'novels' by the way!)-in 'Boyhood Island' he concerns himself with the early years of adolescence and early encounters with the world beyond his immediate family-including music-the sense of significance Knausgaard portrays, the wonder as music literally unfolds left me feeling a deep 'pang' of nostalgia for those days-when the last movement of Sibelius 5th left one stunned and the first Clash album meant that music might actually change the world-but then again I reminded myself that eighteen months ago I had not heard Martinu, six weeks ago I had not heard Grechaninov........so maybe we just need a little perspective!

anyway as I drove today the Band song 'It makes no difference' still left me a near emotional wreck, exactly as it did when I first got to know it 40 years ago!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

jim prideaux said:


> I was reading the third volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' tonight (I can heartily recommend this sequence of 'novels' by the way!)-in 'Boyhood Island' he concerns himself with the early years of adolescence and early encounters with the world beyond his immediate family-including music-the sense of significance Knausgaard portrays, the wonder as music literally unfolds left me feeling a deep 'pang' of nostalgia for those days-when the last movement of Sibelius 5th left one stunned and the first Clash album meant that music might actually change the world-but then again I reminded myself that eighteen months ago I had not heard Martinu, six weeks ago I had not heard Grechaninov........so maybe we just need a little perspective!
> 
> anyway as I drove today the Band song 'It makes no difference' still left me a near emotional wreck, exactly as it did when I first got to know it 40 years ago!


Very nice post, and you used a word I avoided but which I think is central in these kinds of ruminations: _Nostaligia._ I did toss in "You can't go back home again," wishing to make that allusion. But _thank you_ for that up-front use _Nostalgia,_ the two Greek words from which the word is derived are _memory_ and _pain._

I think a lot of the impetus that has anyone 'going there' to recall those singularly remembered peak experiences is due to nostalgia. The nostalgia underlies that thinking through and back, and is "a lot of what that is," i.e. thinking in a mode of yearning or wanting to be of high-school or college age again, *while selective memory is of course in high gear* 

The yearning for the peaks of those roller-coaster sine waves of experience with music met for the first time and other firsts completely ignores that wanna go back to when it gets to all the rest from the same time -- so much of all the rest which was just as volatile and as not at all fun -- because that yo-yo high contour sine wave had its highs along with its lows.

Young, middle age or older, I think most anyone in any of those phases realizes each of those, in the mid of their present, is / was all of one piece, ergo, I think some of this looking back and on what was past and then thought of now as something regrettably lost is very much a highly selective and sentimental bit of business.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Very nice post, and you used a word I avoided but which I think is central in these kinds of ruminations: _Nostaligia._ I did toss in "You can't go back home again," wishing to make that allusion. But _thank you_ for that up-front use _Nostalgia,_ the two Greek words from which the word is derived are _memory_ and _pain._
> 
> I think a lot of the impetus that has anyone 'going there' to recall those singularly remembered peak experiences is due to nostalgia. The nostalgia underlies that thinking through and back, and is "a lot of what that is," i.e. thinking in a mode of yearning or wanting to be of high-school or college age again, *while selective memory is of course in high gear*
> 
> ...


I wasn't expressing nostalgia. It's just a fact that I once listened to few recordings many times, and now listen to many recordings few times. One way I got to know a few things (mostly poorly chosen, as I un-nostalgically mentioned) very well, the other I get to know some great things only a little bit.

That's not sentimental nonsense.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

science said:


> I wasn't expressing nostalgia. It's just a fact that I once listened to few recordings many times, and now listen to many recordings few times. One way I got to know a few things (mostly poorly chosen, as I un-nostalgically mentioned) very well, the other I get to know some great things only a little bit.
> 
> That's not sentimental nonsense.


Aha, a bit of a confusion. I was thinking only of the OP, and that business of looking back from, say closer to age 60 to those ages of the teens and early twenties, and nothing more specific.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Fagotterdammerung said:


> A large part of later-in-life listening of of filling in the gaps, I find, which can take more time than just finding a new name. I'll give an example ( albeit a _deliberately oversimplified_ one ).
> 
> Say you're fresh into classical and hear _Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune_ and love it. So, you start listening to French composers, and in the span of one afternoon you've discovered Ravel, Satie, Les Six, Faure, etc. Sure, you've _discovered_ them now and can seem like you've learned so much in a short period, but chances are you've just briefly glanced over their works, with so much more to explore.
> 
> I recently decided to listen to every work of Stravinsky's I _haven't_ heard before and discovered a cluster of new favorites. Now I've "known" Stravinsky since my teens, so nothing across as _surprising_ because I know his style from his major works, but it's no less of an exploration just because it had less of the shock of the new.


Ha! Ha! Great tag you have there!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I've been listening mostly to J.S. Bach to the exclusion of all the other usual suspects. Mostly solo keyboard.

I don't know if at my age I have reached a point of saturation with the exclusion of most other composers or that I have simply taken my listening to another more introspective, mature level where I value quietly profound music over the extroverted exciting music of my long forgotten youth.


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