# Article on Musical Taste Changing w/Age



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...s-prove-taste-music-DOES-change-lifetime.html

Interesting! I'd like to know how this applies to other cultures, but I'm sure the trend is true of Europe/America who do share these values at each stage of development.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2019)

I'm really still only at "stage 1". My interest in "classical" is pure fantasy. I make it all up as I go along.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Probably generally true, but individual examples may vary greatly. I was exposed to all sorts of music from early childhood, and as a kid, liked "intense" music and soothing music equally, both classical and popular. I was the earliest adopter of rock among my peers, and love the stuff I liked then just as much today. I find that, rather than being an Evolver, I am much more an Expander, just adding to a pre-existing archive rather than throwing out the Old and replacing it with the New.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Probably generally true, but individual examples may vary greatly. I was exposed to all sorts of music from early childhood, and as a kid, liked "intense" music and soothing music equally, both classical and popular. I was the earliest adopter of rock among my peers, and love the stuff I liked then just as much today. I find that, rather than being an Evolver, I am much more an Expander, just adding to a pre-existing archive rather than throwing out the Old and replacing it with the New.


We fanatics are outliers, no doubt, but I can see validity in these trends.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

At 62, I still like a lot of the pop/rock music I liked when I was 16.

In classical music, my tastes have not dramatically changed from a few years after age 29 (when I started) until now. Just exploring more and more composers.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I wish this was true, but in my experience it's not. There is nothing sadder than seeing elderly men and women who haven't shaken off the '60s or '70s and still spend their time listening to Jerry Garcia, Alice Cooper, or even the Rolling Stones and wearing tie-die shirts and pony tails. Of course listening to 200 year old "classical" music is fine!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> I wish this was true, but in my experience it's not. There is nothing sadder than seeing elderly men and women who haven't shaken off the '60s or '70s and still spend their time listening to Jerry Garcia, Alice Cooper, or even the Rolling Stones and wearing tie-die shirts and pony tails. Of course listening to 200 year old "classical" music is fine!


The sample size was large though in the study...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

This quote reflects my present experience:

_'At the same time, for many this life stage is frequently exhausted by work and family, and there is a requirement for relaxing, emotive music for those rare down times that reflects the other major life challenge of this stage - that of nurturing a family and maintaining long-term relationships - perhaps the hardest of all.'_

At the moment I'm still into classical music, but much more mainstream than say five or ten years ago. Whereas then I consumed a good deal of highly complex and dark music, now after a hard day at work I prefer to listen to either nothing (or what amounts to it) or something more on the light side which is easy to relax to. It can still be substantial, a good example being my most recent listening:



Sid James said:


> *Ravel*
> Bolero
> Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2
> Ma Mere L'Oye
> ...


Within classical I've basically become the equivalent of what's called _normcore_ in the fashion world. I listen to what suits my needs at a given moment. Increasingly, I have little need for music that plumbs the lowest of emotional depths because life can itself be a rollercoaster. My mood is more important than anything else, and I've come to this via the route of starting to listen to a variety of things and narrowing them down to what's best for me. I see music as being like a buffet where I choose what I want so it matches my exact needs.

The MUSIC model developed by the Cambridge researchers provides a starting point for looking at how our musical tastes change over time. The researchers looked at how music corresponds to factors other than age, including personality, cognitive abilities and political views. Musical taste was broken down into the following components, based on music played to the participants in the study:

*Mellow *for pop, soft rock, and R&B excerpts percieved as slow, quiet and not distorted
*Unpretentious*, for country and rock 'n' roll excerpts that tended to be romantic and relaxing
*Sophisticated*, for classical, jazz, and world music excerpts said to be intelligent and complex
*Intense*, for loud, forceful punk or heavy metal excerpts
*Contemporary*, for rap and electronica excerpts - but also jazz

Catchy acronyms aside, the main limitation is that musical taste is such that all of these are not homogenous. Somewhat like my buffet example, everyone's taste will involve mixing these. There are trends of course, but individually we all choose and make our own unique mashups. There have been other studies that conclude the opposite, e.g. people's tastes more or less remain static based on what they started listening to in their formative years. I think it's obvious that in reality we have a mix of the two. Even though we change in life, the experiences and influences of our earliest years remain intact.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu initiated this line of research in the 1960's, and his concept of cultural capital remains current today:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/21/pierre-bourdieu-philosophy-most-quoted


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I love Classical because it has elements and combines them in all 5 broad categories: mellow, unpretentious, sophisticated, intense, contemporary. It beats out music I like from other musical genres for each category for me.

Mellow: Mozart Piano Concertos over Tim Buckley's Happy Sad or Simon and Garfunkel
Unpretentious: Grieg's Lyric Pieces over John Lee Hooker
Sophisticated: Prokofiev, Bartok over Eric Dolphy, Mingus
Intense: Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky over X-Ray Spex, the Clash, the Pixies
Contemporary: Rihm over Florence and the Machine (as current as I would go).


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

I think there has been a physical change in my heariing over the years. As a teen I liked Stravinsky, Boulez, Berg, Webern etc, but now my elderly ears find their music mindlessly discordant and repugnant. Perhaps it's a philosophical thing too - I still like Bartok and some of the other guys who stuck to tonality.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

My musical tastes have changed in that I'm becoming increasingly irritated with music that I consider syrupy.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_<<They (researchers) believe humans use music to experiment with identity and define themselves and then as a social vehicle to establish a group and find a mate, before using it to express their intellect, status and greater emotional understanding.>>_

For me I would say this formula is backwards if anything. I changed from popular to classical in early adulthood because I felt I outgrew popular music -- it didn't speak to me any longer. Exploring classical music in college and beyond was an adventure and probably a way to more clearly define part of my identity.

I never thought my identity revolved around music, however. And it had nothing to do with social group or meeting a mate. I never hung out with others that liked it or musicians, just like I never hung out with athletes even though I participated in sports all my life (still do age 68.) In fact the woman I met and married could give a hoot about my music.

I accept the part about expressing intellect, however. I think that's probably the main difference between classical and other forms of music. It takes more brain power to understand it and stick with it. If you are just in it for feelings or feeling good any little thing will do.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2019)

I think you'll need at least 70 years of data to prove this study. At present, it's shallow nonsense, and typical of The Daily Mail to assert that "teenagers have no taste".


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

When I was a teenager and went to college I fell in with the wrong crowd - music students, choir members, people who pushed classical LPs (and four or five of them were engineering students)..... Tragically, loving classical music hasn't done a thing to promote any "accumulation of wealth" as I aged. The opposite, really.

But the study is scientific and broad and the results "very robust" so I expect I tended to gravitate towards self-selected outliers who shared my passion for music. I'm just emitting a tiny whimper of disbelief before accepting the depressing assumption behind the results.

'I find it fascinating to see how seemingly_ trivial behaviour_ such as music listening relates to so many psychological aspects, such as personality and age.'


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> My musical tastes have changed in that I'm becoming increasingly irritated with music that I consider syrupy.


Insider secret: a whole lot of classical music is not worth listening to (but don't let this get around). The key is figuring out which is the nourishing stuff that will satisfy longterm, and which is "filler".


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I guess these guys know what they're talking about. But in my experience, a lot of my friends got stuck in the musical era when they were 16 to 25 and stayed there. 

Personally, I'm just interested in what's out there. This week I discovered Burundi drumming, pygmie music (through watching an interview with the B-52's), and the (somewhat old) rock groups Cake and Ting Ting in addition to Anne Queffelec's take on Erik Satie. 

I guess, as was said previously, this group consists of outliers.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I pretty much like the same music now as I did as an 18 year old. I wasn't resistant to non pop or rock music as a kid, I just hadn't heard much of it. And my dislikes have remained for the most part. The only thing that's changed with age is that I'm not as passionate about straight ahead blues music, or folk as I used to be. I can get my blues listening to jazz or rock.

This forum has aided my discovery of a couple dozen composers I wasn't familiar with ten years ago and at the present time I'm pretty well satiated. I still haven't been able to warm up to much classical era or older music, so I'm content with my late romantic, modern French, and 20th century music collection. And some Bach and Beethoven.

And to balance the jazz and classical, I wish I could find some new first rate pop/rock music but I haven't heard much that gets me excited. I don't want any esoteric prog or English stuff, just some accomplished American music with a great rhythm section and a good piano/keyboard player doing some good original material. But I'm a 70s dinosaur and the kind of music I'm looking for doesn't exist anymore.


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