# What happens when that "magic" is gone?



## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

What happens when you have become disillusioned to your favorite composer or a classical piece? Your initial enthusiasm becomes lukewarmness and wariness.. The magic is gone! Nada.. It can also happen when you are so in love with Romantic era of music, and now loathes it because of Modern music..


Take for example, COAG and Ligeti.. Ligeti's music become the preoccupation of COAG for several months, now he was over with him and now Sibelius is his favorite composer..(COAG, I love you,, you know that!!) 

(I dread the day when I become tired of music of Schubert.. But I think, It will be a very very long time...)

Thoughts?


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

I remember when I first heard Reich (Different Trains was my introduction) I was amazed. I had never heard music like it before. Unfortunately, my amazement eventually wore off. I still like him a lot, but not as much as I used to.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think this could be a natural course. We don't owe composers any loyalty so if we exhaust their repertoire, we move on. I think most of us here have a favourite composer but we also have other composers who we love too. The great thing is, they're not competing with each other. Also, it isn't a moral failing to get over a composer. 

I often describe Mozart as my home key, and I always return to the home key. But that's what I like now and there's still so much to explore. If I feel like I'm repeating myself with him, putting on the disc and forgetting about it, then it's time for a change. I used to be a Bob Dylan obsessive when I was a teenager, you know? Now I buy a new cd from Bob, like it, and in a very smooth transition find myself back in my home key...


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Before I joined TC I was Michael Nyman obsessed...I listened to _nothing_ but Musique à Grande Vitesse for two and a half months, and before that I couldn't get enough of things like Water Dances, And Do They Do, his film scores for Peter Greenaway films...I can still listen to MGV and the magic is still there but I often take it in smaller doses nowadays. I don't think the magic wore off with Michael Nyman, it's more that I discovered new stuff...

I was preoccupied with Ligeti for too long....much too long... :lol:

I think the secret for me is becoming obsessed with one composer and listening to them all the time and become really familiar with their style so that later when I don't listen to them as much, the nostalgia is also part of the magic.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

In close to 30 years of listening to classical music, this has never happened to me. Of course, I do not overplay any composer or pieces - even my favourites I have probably not listened to more than 10-20 times, preferring to explore new composers or new works of composers I know.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> What happens when you have become disillusioned to your favorite composer or a classical piece?


its temporary, its gone if you try a different performing of the same piece or composer.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> What happens when you have become disillusioned to your favorite composer or a classical piece? Your initial enthusiasm becomes lukewarmness and wariness.. The magic is gone! Nada.. It can also happen when you are so in love with Romantic era of music, and now loathes it because of Modern music..


in short, you temporarily move on. But I have found out that "your greatest loves" (as it's very much like a love affair) never quite vanish. You listen to stuff you haven't listened to in years because you became burned out and you can still feel fondness for it. You won't want to listen to it obsessively like during the "honeymoon", but there is still something there that you connect with. It's quite a lovely feeling and occasionally it can still affect you as much as it used to. Or at least that's my case


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## Ryan (Dec 29, 2012)

You do the same thing you do when you've watched your favourite film too many times, go to the cinema.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Art Rock, has hit the nail on the head, so to speak.
Overexposure can cause you to become "underwhelmed" by the music.
Temperance is the key
Explore the wealth that is out there unexplored


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

peeyaj said:


> What happens when you have become disillusioned to your favorite composer or a classical piece? Your initial enthusiasm becomes lukewarmness and wariness.. The magic is gone! Nada.. It can also happen when you are so in love with Romantic era of music, and now loathes it because of Modern music..
> 
> Take for example, COAG and Ligeti.. Ligeti's music become the preoccupation of COAG for several months, now he was over with him and now Sibelius is his favorite composer..(COAG, I love you,, you know that!!)
> 
> ...


Most of the time, when this happens, it might just be in fact realising that the composer is not one of the true greats (Ligeti is a good example) ...


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think these things are very subjective. "Temperance is the key" to people who like that. For me, I get obsessive on the details, the music burns a hole in my head - I have to listen to it! And if it's the tenth time I listen to one piece that day, so be it. There's a million classical music composers spread over a thousand years and we haven't a hope in hell of hearing everything they wrote. If I throw myself in the deep end of one piece too often, that's grand: there's another deep end somewhere else to plunge into after it...


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## julianoq (Jan 29, 2013)

Kieran said:


> I think these things are very subjective. "Temperance is the key" to people who like that. For me, I get obsessive on the details, the music burns a hole in my head - I have to listen to it! And if it's the tenth time I listen to one piece that day, so be it. There's a million classical music composers spread over a thousand years and we haven't a hope in hell of hearing everything they wrote. If I throw myself in the deep end of one piece too often, that's grand: there's another deep end somewhere else to plunge into after it...


I agree. Even if sometimes I listen too much and got tired of a piece, there is something inside me that makes digg deep on every piece I enjoy.

Before classical music it happened with Dylan, Beatles, João Gilberto and a lot of other artists. The amazing difference with classical music is that it is much more complex to understand (at least for still inexperienced ears) and there are a lot of difference on recordings/conductors performances. Sometimes I think that I listened to the 7th symphony of Beethoven so much that I know it entirely, then I listen to a different performance and it blows me away.


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## OboeKnight (Jan 25, 2013)

I usually obsess over Tchaikovsky's music...I'm burnt out on the Romeo and Juliet Overture and the Violin Concerto right now, which makes me really sad because I loved them so intensely. Ive tried "listening in moderation" but it's no use. There's so much music out there that no matter how many pieces I get burnt out on there is always going to be something new to discover.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I listen to other music while I wait for it to come back. Everything goes in phases with me.


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## Llyranor (Dec 20, 2010)

You just need a break from that composer/period. If the music is truly magic, you will come back to it.


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## Feathers (Feb 18, 2013)

When I get tired of a favourite composer, I usually tell myself that my rediscovery of the composer will be just as good of a feeling as my initial enthusiasm towards the composer. (Plus, there is always going to be other great music out there to explore.) When I eventually come back to the same composer I had once adored, my love for his music may be revived, and I will be able to listen to the music with new ears, perhaps from a different perspective and on a deeper level. One can think of "getting tired" of a composer as an opportunity to discover other composers as well as rediscover the same composer later on. I often find that the rediscovery is an even more magical listening experience than the initial obsession.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Simple: take another composer and let him to be your new obsession and so on.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Look at it this way: if you stayed that obsessed with one composer your whole life, you'd just have to devote your life to performing only that composer's music, or writing books about him/her, with very little attention left for the work of other composers (or your own) !


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## Bone (Jan 19, 2013)

Never had it happen: Brahms can't be overplayed.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Bone said:


> Never had it happen: Brahms can't be overplayed.


lol, that's because you were not my neighbor when I was playing the first movement of the third piano sonata some years ago.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Youthful discoveries which become passions often fade quickly, true in youth's relationship to art as well as people and ideologies. It is a somewhat unavoidable chapter of your book. Children are even quicker to love and then not, jumping from one thing to the next.

What happens during this transition and later -- more refined discernment, at least insofar as what interests you and may have 'staying power.' The fact there is so much more yet to go makes it more than natural to have one enthusiasm fade to only be replaced by another.

It is difficult for some to not want to consume all of the newly discovered artist's work, but I rather despair when I see a post like, "o.k., now I'm through all the Beethoven sonatas and am doing the quartets next." That is far too methodical for 'love,' and an approach which makes truly 'digesting' the material virtually impossible.

I can only tell you I recall some of my 'temporary enthusiasms' were just that -- on youtube, last year, I stumbled upon a work I had entirely forgotten about, which I had thought wonderful, and listened to it again and found it really dreadful to the point where I blushed at my youthful thoughts on that one. In retrospect, I was suckered into thinking something fairly trendy, flashy and superficial was 'tremendous.' I don't think you will have that with a much later renewed listening to Schubert, for example 

There is only one 'flushed / blushed' true first time, though, and it is just a fact that the more repertoire you know, the less 'first times' there will be, even with 'new' pieces by a composer with whose work you are generally familiar. When a new enthusiasm does come, whether it is a piece of Haydn you did or did not get around to and then 'discovered' or a brand-new piece fresh off the composer's drafting table, and the music satisfies, then it really satisfies. The frequency becomes less, the enjoyment that much deeper when it is found.

Don't worry, nor weep too much about it, but look to more and branch out, survey, don't methodically go through the entire repertoire of one composer in the chronological order of the works having been produced, switch it up, read a list of names of other composers from one period or another, 'dipstick' check them on youtube when available and have a taste of this and that.

In a way you've traversed the threshold of your 'musical innocence': loss of innocence is always a bit poignant, but once something is gone which really cannot be had back, the only viable possibility is to move forward.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

I listened to Rachmaniov to death when I was a teenager and the magic certainly was lost.
But coincidentally I was listening to the Previn/Ashkenazy Piano Concerto No.2 in the car the other day in an effort to wean the kids off of Gangnam Style and the slow movt sent those same shivers down my spine as 25 years ago. 
It pays to give pieces a long rest and return to them fresh. And it pays to listen with new ears, as I was playing it to my kids, I remembered when my Dad played to it to me on a car journey. So I was imagining/remembering hearing it for the first time with them.

All music loses it's charm with overfamiliarity eventually though.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

peeyaj said:


> What happens when you have become disillusioned to your favorite composer or a classical piece? Your initial enthusiasm becomes lukewarmness and wariness.. The magic is gone! Nada.. It can also happen when you are so in love with Romantic era of music, and now loathes it because of Modern music..
> 
> ...


Its tended not to happen to me, but only because I'm not that systematic & very slow in getting through things. I mean lately, in recent months, I've developed a Bruckner focus. But to avoid biting off more than I can chew, I've focussed on one symphony of his at a time. I got all of his 11 symphonies (numbered + unnumbered) except 2 on cd now, but have still got to hear one of the discs. Its happened since the start of this year. That's over 3 months now. With Mahler its similar and also Shostakovich, but my rate of getting thru theirs is even slower. This is despite me knowing more of their stuff from old recordings I had and am now replacing.



Crudblud said:


> I listen to other music while I wait for it to come back. Everything goes in phases with me.


Same with me. But I must admit, since focussing more on classical in recent years, the phases last longer and I get thru more in each phase & be more systematic/comprehensive than before (eg. the Bruckner phase I talked of has been the longest/most consistent). Its also about what satisfies me emotionally at any given point in time. I just go with my own flow, with what I need.


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

I used to collect Vivaldi. I still like to play the favorite works, and recently got three discs of bassoon concertos. I had very selected favorites from the classical and romantic eras. Slightly expanded now but mostly the same composers.

Some pieces just "wear out" after 100 plays. Some never do, even in pop and rock.

My cycles of listening come and go. The popular era bands are fewer and the interest may only last a few months for new bands.


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

its probably because you see it as an academic study or something that's vogue.

the music was never part of your persona just a fad.


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