# Music that bores you to tears?



## Ravellian

A spin-off of the "Music that moves you to tears" topic. 

- Brahms never ceases to bore me. His romanticlassical style just doesn't work for me.
- Vivaldi concertos. They're all the same!!
- Anything 12-tone
- Anything minimalist


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## Huilunsoittaja

Haha great idea for a thread.

Bores me to tears... perhaps some of those early Romantic composers, except for Schubert. The rest, I'm sorry to say, my mind just turns off. Sorry, Mendelssohn, I respect him otherwise entirely.


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## myaskovsky2002

*mmm....*

Yes, Vivaldi has all concertos...like Danielle Steal...all the same, guys.

Martin, Bored


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## Webernite

Vivaldi doesn't bore me. His music is generally quite exciting and listenable. That's why it's so popular. What irks me is when people start comparing him to truly _great _ composers like Bach, Handel, Rameau and Buxtehude, who are all in a completely different league.

No doubt Vivaldi understood the Baroque violin better than anyone, and before someone points it out: yes, his choral writing is not bad either. But I would still have mixed feelings about putting him in a list of the top 40 composers.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

Much of 20th century contemporary "classical" music that I have heard. Many pieces are utterly bizzare that one would not even be able to comment if it was well or badly performed, let alone what the heck it was on about.


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## Ravellian

I agree with you Webernite.. his concerti do sound very lively and upbeat when compared to the majority of music that preceded him. They are quite 'fun' and uplifting pieces overall. They just get pretty stale pretty fast.


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## Nix

I'm pretty open minded and any composer that has made it onto a disk probably has some merit... unless it's a bad piece by a good composer- not the biggest fan of 'fur elise.' But very little non-classical music captures my attention. It doesn't bore me, I just zone it out- honestly I don't even register most of it as music (again, a few exceptions, the Beatles be one of them).


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## bassClef

Brahms for me too - I've tried. No doubt he was a genius, but there's nothing there to hook me.


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## Edward Elgar

How can people not like Brahms?! What's not to love?! It's not enough to say he just 'doesn't do anything for me', I want reasons!

Only minimalism bores me to tears. Philip Glass and company. I need lots of meaty material to maintain my interest, and on those grounds, Brahms delivers.


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## Delicious Manager

Not the world's greatest Brahms enthusiast, his _Deutsches Requiem_ once very nearly bored me so much I was close to tears. Interminably dreary music apart from the lovely _Denn alles Fleisch_ second movement.

Philip Glass's music bores me rigid, apart from the ranting I do about the "emperor's new clothes" whenever I hear anything by him. The operas are the worst. I had to leave a performance of the excrutiating _The making of the representative for Planet 8_ after the first act, lest I expire in my seat.


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## Olias

All Strauss waltzes. I think its because I'm a horn player and EVERY Strauss waltz is the same for me:

rest - BOP - BOP
rest - BOP - BOP
rest - BOP - BOP
rest - BOP - BOP


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## Aramis

Mature and late XXth century neo-romantics. Minimalists. Less significant classical period music. Johann Strauss and his father and his brother and his mother and his dog. Followers of Brahms. Operas with lot of recitativos.


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## jurianbai

i can't think that romantic music is bore to tears. isn't the romantic concept is NOT to BORE anyone?

I agree on Phillip Glass.


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## Chris

Anything announced with the dreaded words 'BBC commission: first performance'


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## Guest

I couldn't make it through Tristan und Isolde. In fact, most of Wagner bores me. Brahms, however, is my favorite composer so he never bores me! I can listen to the same piece everyday for a month and not get tired of it.


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## bassClef

Edward Elgar said:


> How can people not like Brahms?! What's not to love?! It's not enough to say he just 'doesn't do anything for me', I want reasons!


Perhaps I need to devote more attention to it. I do most of my listening to works unfamiliar to me while I'm working, so it's background really, my way of reviewing the thousands of pieces I have which I don't know well yet, or have never even heard. This is unfair I suppose - a work needs some immediacy in order to make an impact in this scenario. I've had Brahms works play without anything registering - it's not a dislike or a like, just .... nothing.


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## Ukko

bassClef said:


> Perhaps I need to devote more attention to it. I do most of my listening to works unfamiliar to me while I'm working, so it's background really, my way of reviewing the thousands of pieces I have which I don't know well yet, or have never even heard. This is unfair I suppose - a work needs some immediacy in order to make an impact in this scenario. I've had Brahms works play without anything registering - it's not a dislike or a like, just .... nothing.


You should be listening to elevator music while you work, not the good stuff.

:scold:

Some of Brahms' chamber music, e.g. the sonatas for violin and piano, is nearly as distracting to 'the man at work' as Franck's. You could injure yourself.


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## Rasa

Giorgio Battistelli and his criminally boring operas have traumatised me in this respect. George III and Prova d'orchestra.

Prova D'orchestra.... I was so bored that I fell asleep. I don't really mind this, it's a good way to pass time when you're not enjoying the play yet.

When I woke up I figured it must've been a really short nap because the same singer was singing the same thing with the same people in the same setting. Turns out actually half an hour had passed.

I tried to focus on the show, and found that I kept checking my watch. I decided to refrain from this in order to focus better. About an hour later I checked my watch and came to the conclusion 5 minutes had passed.

By this point, halfway into the show I started like feeling a prisoner in my seat and a single tear of longing for the great outdoors (which i usually smirk at) rolled down my cheek.

The very best moment of the piece was when after what seemed an infinite amount of time, the first act was done. I was already wringing my hands together on just GTFO and not coming back, when I overheard someone say it was a one-acter. I had not felt that relieved in a long time.


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## Guest

Telemann, for me, tends to be rather boring. I have not yet found any work of his to be particularly memorable. And I generally very much enjoy baroque.

Schumann is also very boring to me. I love Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, some works of Mendelssohn, but Schumann does nothing for me.

Wagner. I know, I know, but apart from the occasional rousing overtures, his operas just do absolutely nothing for me.


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## superhorn

I used to be a horn player myself and played Strauss waltzes quite often. But I love them(and the music of Johann Strauss in general) for purely musical reasons.
Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass is as tedious as waiting endlessly in a doctor's office which has no magazines. 
Same with everything else by Glass. Yes,Vivaldi is as formulaic as all get out.


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## Rasa

I like the Strauss waltzes aswell.

they're better then their popularity let's suspect. Popular doesn't equal bad after all...


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## PianoCoach

*John Cage 4'33"*

I find John Cage 4'33" the most boring piece in the repertoire. (haha) Can anyone beat that.


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## PianoCoach

Before you try to beat Cage 4'33", you'll need to look it up if you're unfamiliar with it.


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## Webernite

PianoCoach said:


> I find John Cage 4'33" the most boring piece in the repertoire. (haha) Can anyone beat that.


I prefer it to Alkan.


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## Il Seraglio

Brahms' Handel variations. One very long piece in a major key with zero modulations. It's actually quite pleasant in the first couple of variations, but it's not long before it begins to feel like sensory deprivation.


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## Ukko

Webernite said:


> I prefer it to Alkan.


Have you heard Hamelin play Alkan?

If you have, and still don't get it, working in a foundry without ear protection will do you no harm.

:scold:


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## Couchie

*Liszt*. Amazing that he could play so well, accomplish the enormous repertoire that he did, and yet still not have a single interesting musical idea floating around in his head that isn't either sentimental drivel or vacuous showiness.


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## Aramis

> and yet still not have a single interesting musical idea floating around in his head


Yeah, creating new genre of symphonic music, writing first atonal piece, experimenting with forms, exploring harmony as deeply as pioneers like Wagner, writing timeless and masterful piano transcriptions - not interesting ideas at all.

Sentimental drivels or vacuous showiness is one huge stereotyphe of Liszt - how about thinking for yourself.


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## Couchie

Aramis said:


> Sentimental drivels or vacuous showiness is one huge stereotyphe of Liszt - how about thinking for yourself.


And how about you acquaint yourself with basic music terminology.

*Musical idea:* Term associated with Arnold Schoenberg, who used it to describe the initial musical impulse behind a work. Sometimes the term refers to a single musical motive, which he termed the fundamental motive, and sometimes to a more abstract concept of which the fundamental motive is a single instance. In any case, it is the musical idea which gives a work both its unique character and its organic unity. 
http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/musical+idea

My comment wasn't on Liszt's collective output and contribution. It has nothing to do genre, forms, or transcriptions. Liszt's motives are boring. The fact that he wrote the first "atonal" piece and transcribed every Beethoven symphony doesn't make them any less boring, sorry.


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## Aramis

> My comment wasn't on Liszt's collective output and contribution. It has nothing to do genre, forms, or transcriptions. Liszt's motives are boring.


And where did Liszt put those things that I wrote about if not in musical ideas? If his first atonal piece includes musical idea then this idea is co-creating originality of this work and that alone makes it interesting. You may not like it, but if music of Liszt was so original and groundbreaking it also concerns his musical ideas which are inherent element of his music - how do you want to separate musical ideas from music as a whole?


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## Webernite

Hilltroll72 said:


> Have you heard Hamelin play Alkan?
> 
> If you have, and still don't get it, working in a foundry without ear protection will do you no harm.
> 
> :scold:


Sorry, Alkan was an easy target. He sounds like Schumann, transcribed by Busoni for four hands, played with two hands.

That's as I recall, any way. But I should probably listen to some more of his works. I have heard Hamelin, I think, but I wasn't paying close attention. I'll give it another go.


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## Couchie

Aramis said:


> And where did Liszt put those things that I wrote about if not in musical ideas? If his first atonal piece includes musical idea then this idea is co-creating originality of this work and that alone makes it interesting. You may not like it, but if music of Liszt was so original and groundbreaking it also concerns his musical ideas which are inherent element of his music - how do you want to separate musical ideas from music as a whole?


I think you're overreaching. My point was merely that I don't find his memorable music particularly interesting (ie. Hungarian Rhapsodies), and I don't find his interesting music particularity memorable (ie. his later works).


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## Air

Webernite said:


> Sorry, Alkan was an easy target. He sounds like Schumann...


... not in the least! What have you heard so far?


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## Norse

A lot of Mozart (and Haydn) can bore me (almost) to tears. And Viennese om-pa-pa music (New Year's Concert from Musikverein etc) is not something I would listen to voluntarily.. I know it's tradition and will probably never change , but I would really like a so famous concert to spice it up a little, or a lot. I don't think it does the "image" of classical music any good.


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## Webernite

Air said:


> ... not in the least! What have you heard so far?


I can't remember very well. The Symphony for Piano, for one thing.


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## starthrower

I gave Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 a listen recently. I found it rather boring and tedious.


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## jhar26

Norse said:


> Viennese om-pa-pa music (New Year's Concert from Musikverein etc) is not something I would listen to voluntarily.. I know it's tradition and will probably never change , but I would really like a so famous concert to spice it up a little, or a lot. I don't think it does the "image" of classical music any good.


When I want a melody
Lilting through the house,
Then I want a Melody -
BY STRAUSS
It laughs, it sings! The world is in rhyme,
Swinging to three-quarter time,
Let the Danube flow along,
And "Die Fledermaus"!
Keep the wine and give me song -
BY STRAUSS
By Jo, by Jing
BY STRAUSS is the thing!
So I say to ha-cha-cha: HERAUS!
Just give me an oom-pah-pah
BY STRAUSS!!!
:tiphat:


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## Eusebius12

Webernite said:


> Sorry, Alkan was an easy target. He sounds like Schumann, transcribed by Busoni for four hands, played with two hands.


I don't think so. Nor did Schumann, he wrote that the music was "inward emptiness, outward nothingness". Its more akin to Liszt and (dare I say) Czerny.


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## Air

Eusebius12 said:


> I don't think so. Nor did Schumann, he wrote that the music was "inward emptiness, outward nothingness". Its more akin to Liszt and (dare I say) Czerny.


Alkan's music is akin to Liszt in the fact that it's virtuosic and experimental - in a more modernistic sense, though. Schumann, on the other hand, is classic early-era Romanticism (even though it's hard to call it "classic" as no other composer really developed or realized the same brand of Romanticism as Schumann).

I wouldn't say that Alkan's music is vapid though - some of it is perhaps, quite like Liszt's paraphrases, with simple melodic lines brought out above bravura-type passage work (dare I call it empty?). But even in these there is often strange rhythmic complexity and dissonance. Alkan's type of passage-work I also find quite unique - it's more excessive than Liszt (and harder!), kind of tips the balance sometimes and leaves you wondering. It's often more orchestral compared to Liszt too, but in a pianistic sense.


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## Il Seraglio

Actually, I take back what I said about Brahms' Handel variations. I had been listening to an orchestrated version which wasn't very good. The original solo version is a great piece and it _does_ modulate, just in that unusual Brahmsian manner.


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## TWhite

Il Seraglio said:


> Actually, I take back what I said about Brahms' Handel variations. I had been listening to an orchestrated version which wasn't very good. The original solo version is a great piece and it _does_ modulate, just in that unusual Brahmsian manner.


Believe me, that's one of the problems of listening to music originally concieved for the piano and then transcribed for orchestra (unless it's purposely done so by the composer). I agree with you, the original piano version of the Handel Variations is an exciting, extremely musical tour-de-force for not only the pianist, but the listener.

Where I generally lose it, is the Baroque Era. And before everyone comes down on me like a ton of bricks, let me say that I've been a professional musician for almost fifty years, with a great deal of performing and accompanying experience, so I think I can honestly speak from personal preference.

I love Medieval and Renaissance. I love Classical, Romantic, and quite a bit of 'Modern'. But I could never figure out why I did not care for the Baroque Era in music, and it finally dawned on me: I just don't care for the 17th Century, period. Art, Music, Sculpture, Architecture, and particularly what people WORE back then. It's just a whole lot of Too Much for me. Like slicing into a cake and suddenly finding out that it's just so many layers of frosting and no dough. So musically, I usually stop after Palestrina and take a break until Haydn.

Okay, crucify me, but I've listened to enough of it in my long career to realize that it just isn't for me.

Tom


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## Eusebius12

I have heard quite a bit of Alkan, on youtube and elsewhere, I suppose the Czerny dig was based on the figurations (many uploads have the cool feature of watching the score whilst listening to the music played). Actually, Alkan has a unique sound, but it is related to the tonal world of Liszt, of that I'm sure. And you're right, sometimes Liszt's note spinning is pretty vapid. But Alkan cannot escapte the charge of note spinning. Also quite a lot of the pieces I looked at involved a surprising amount of unisono playing, this just looks like Czerny (as well as the constant arpeggios and broken chord figurations which I was thinking of above). 
Heard some Tausig the other day, and really he followed some of the most vapid aspects of Liszt slavishly. Amazing technically in some respects, but very disappointing musically. On the other hand, Reubke and Draeseke seem to capture the spirit of Liszt without so much tinsel.


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## Eusebius12

Oh, and many composers were heavily influenced by Schumann, usually lesse known ones like Volkmann, Dietrich, Fuchs, Peterson-Berger, Adolf Jensen, Johann Burgmueller, but also more notable ones like Parry, Grieg, Schoeck, and there are definite resonances for those with open ears in Wagner, Faure and others. Elgar called him 'my ideal'. The musical resonances with Brahms are often superficially analyzed, but are notable all the same (some thematic 'mining', the arrangement of certain of his piano works [notably op.116 which is a clear homage to the Kreisleriana])


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## Norse

jhar26 said:


> When I want a melody
> Lilting through the house,
> Then I want a Melody -
> BY STRAUSS
> It laughs, it sings! The world is in rhyme,
> Swinging to three-quarter time,
> Let the Danube flow along,
> And "Die Fledermaus"!
> Keep the wine and give me song -
> BY STRAUSS
> By Jo, by Jing
> BY STRAUSS is the thing!
> So I say to ha-cha-cha: HERAUS!
> Just give me an oom-pah-pah
> BY STRAUSS!!!
> :tiphat:


Is that a song? Never heard that one


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## Xaltotun

I find a lot of classical music boring, but that's because I have a whopping 6 months of listening experience - I wholly assume that the fault is on me, not the music. If I still find some compositions boring in, say, 2015, then I might start assuming that maybe that fault is on the composition, or rather that it doesn't work for me.

But as for now, I'm still learning, and I often find that something that I didn't grasp 2 months ago makes complete sense now.


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## jhar26

Norse said:


> Is that a song? Never heard that one


Yes. It's a Gershwin song.


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## Comus

Sibelius. Am I hearing the wrong stuff? I know many here love him. I've heard Finlandia, the violin concerto, Kullervo, and the Tempest. All quite boring.


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## Ukko

You are not hearing 'the wrong stuff'.


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## Aramis

Hilltroll72 said:


> You are not hearing 'the wrong stuff'.


Yes, he is - except the violin concerto. I have heard Kullervo after I estabilished much love for Sibelius and it was so bad that I almost lost all my esteem for him. This work is quite close to "epic" soundtrack-like kitsch.

Anyway, the fact is noone should give up on Sibelius before hearing his symphonies, at least the most important ones - 2nd, 4th and 5th.


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## Argus

opera





Comus said:


> Sibelius. Am I hearing the wrong stuff? I know many here love him. I've heard Finlandia, the violin concerto, Kullervo, and the Tempest. All quite boring.


All that serialism and hardcore punk seems to have melted your fragile little mind.


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## Ukko

Aramis said:


> Yes, he is - except the violin concerto. I have heard Kullervo after I estabilished much love for Sibelius and it was so bad that I almost lost all my esteem for him. This work is quite close to "epic" soundtrack-like kitsch.
> 
> Anyway, the fact is noone should give up on Sibelius before hearing his symphonies, at least the most important ones - 2nd, 4th and 5th.


Finlandia is 'boring'? If that is boring, how will Comus take 'The Swan'? The violin concerto is rather closely related in atmosphere to the 2nd symphony. If the OP is bored by the former, he is apt to be bored with the latter.

No, I think Comus is a hopeless case.


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## Ravellian

I agree - first listen to the 2nd and 5th symphonies before passing judgment on Sibelius. I have heard them both and I am now hooked!


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## TWhite

Comus said:


> Sibelius. Am I hearing the wrong stuff? I know many here love him. I've heard Finlandia, the violin concerto, Kullervo, and the Tempest. All quite boring.


Comus:

Before you give up completely, try "Lemmenkainen's Return" and the "Karelia Suite." It might make you re-think Sibelius (or not). Then if they interest you, start off easy with the 1st and 2nd Symphonies. These might open you up to him. IMO, trying to start off with "Kullervo" is like trying to start off liking Rachmaninov by listening to "The Isle Of The Dead". Not the best of choices, LOL!

Tom


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## Ukko

TWhite said:


> Comus:
> 
> Before you give up completely, try "Lemmenkainen's Return" and the "Karelia Suite." It might make you re-think Sibelius (or not). Then if they interest you, start off easy with the 1st and 2nd Symphonies. These might open you up to him. IMO, trying to start off with "Kullervo" is like trying to start off liking Rachmaninov by listening to "The Isle Of The Dead". Not the best of choices, LOL!Tom


LOL? Well, OK. It's only in the last few weeks that the population of TC has slid into strangeness for me; it may be only symptomatic of my annual Holidays depression. And it's not a matter of _liking_ The Isle of the Dead, it's a matter of resonating to the music.

To be born is a guarantee of dieing. Two of my siblings lived for ~20 minutes - didn't get to read the warranty. Music stretches the soul in more than three dimensions; much of Sibelius stretches it into 'Nature's Realm' (which is not necessarily benevolent). The 'Isle', much of Mahler, and Bruckner too at one remove, and Bloch, and... are relatively gentle nudges toward acceptance that whatever you 'got going' will end. Much gentler than a bayonet.

Merry Christmas.

:trp:


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## Comus

Argus said:


> All that serialism and hardcore punk seems to have melted your fragile little mind.


You have quite a memory. I haven't been on this forum in about a month.


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## Romantic Geek

What little I've heard of Carl von Weber = extremely boring.

Still having a hard time getting into Wagner. Which is strange, because I like some of his contemporaries.

I'm finding Prokofiev to be more and more of a bore than when I first heard him/played him.


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## Guest

Romantic Geek said:


> I'm finding Prokofiev to be more and more of a bore than when I first heard him/played him.


! Have you heard the 5th symphony? Or the 2nd and 3rd piano concertos? And I agree about the other two composers you mentioned.

One I forgot to mention was Tchaikovsky. I hate Tchaikovsky. Not as much as Beethoven, who I find very boring, but almost.


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## Romantic Geek

Jeff N said:


> ! Have you heard the 5th symphony? Or the 2nd and 3rd piano concertos? And I agree about the other two composers you mentioned.
> 
> One I forgot to mention was Tchaikovsky. I hate Tchaikovsky. Not as much as Beethoven, who I find very boring, but almost.


But I LOVEEEEEEE Tchaikovsky (Manfred, 5th, 6th symphonies...solo piano works!!!)

I'll have to give Prokofiev another try though...maybe when I'm on a Russian kick (not Tchaik)


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## Huilunsoittaja

*Unless it's flute and piano...*

Chamber Music
30 minute String Quartets
40 minute String Quintets
40 minute Piano Trios
Miscellaneous Groups
Wind Quintets
Most Violin Sonatas


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## Webernite

Huilunsoittaja said:


> 30 minute String Quartets


I don't like these either. Too short.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Webernite said:


> I don't like these either. Too short.


lol as for me, I couldn't take it even if it lasted 5 minutes. Just a few exceptions.


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## teccomin

Most of the top 20 stuff on classical charts.


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## MarthaD

*who don't your like*

One can admire the skill but not the music. For me its Chopin. i had the luck for several years of being a student in the Cambridge Center for Adult Ed. The retired professor played on the piano pieces by a number of composers and invited us to his home for chamber music. When it came time for him to discuss Chopin he said " I felt about him like a fisherman in Maine where I went every summer felt about his wife." He said "when I went to Maine as I did every summer I heard that this fisherman's wife had died. I expressed my sympathy and the fisherman said' Ayub she was a good worker, ayub she was a good mother, I didn't like her' . The professor said " and that's how I fell about Chopin." Me too.


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## jurianbai

I think I have found entry for this thread, *Delius*! Listen several times to his suppose to be a compilation CD, included Suite for Violin, Dance Rhapsody no.1, 2, and the Violin Concerto and more. Quite dissapointed with the Violin Concerto since that is my main interest, in short bores me to tears.


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## Guest

I second the mention of Chopin. I get tired of hearing every person in studio class playing either Chopin or Beethoven.


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## Vehemence

Most of today's classical music. People are only composing impressionist garbage. I need, at the very least, a melody to keep me entertained...


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## Falstaft

Vehemence said:


> Most of today's classical music. People are only composing impressionist garbage. I need, at the very least, a melody to keep me entertained...


Vehemence, what contemporary classical music are you referring to specifically? Impressionist is a, well, a fairly vague term. There's plenty of melodic composition still happening, perhaps you shouldn't give up on the modern classical scene so totally.


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## emiellucifuge

Some of the themes in his Faust Symphony I find quite startling. But true - his strength is definitely in the treatment and transformation of the ideas rather than the actual conception of them. Though the same could be said of Brahms and some others.


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## myaskovsky2002

*it is difficult for me...*

to get bored with music...
Many times I just don't like a work. But many times I like it.

People get me bored more often than music..their voices are boring, their speach is boring, their personality is boring.

Martin, sincere.


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## StephenTC

Beethoven 7th Symphony.
Bored to tears? 
Well let me put it this way:
If a tyrannical government came to power that randomly outlawed performing or listening to LVB's 5th Symphony - I would be pissed and feel that something important had been taken from me.
If the same government outlawed the 7th I would just say "ehh" accompanied by a 'whatever' shrug of the shoulders.
Am I totally alone here people?
Even the much admired Allegretto does...not...quite...fully satisfy me - it is a close but no cigar.

It AMAZES me that in polls of greatest works, the 7th is usually up there with, or even above, the 5th.
Beethoven gave it a big rap - but he _was_ , I understand, writing to his publisher as part of his making a living.
Even if he was sincere, LVB was a great man not an infallible god.

As a 'relativist' (see http://www.talkclassical.com/35318-there-any-objective-criteria.html )I cannot just call the 7th 'crap' and imply that I have better musical taste than everybody else, even if I really want to. 
We can only try to put our musical experiences into words and see if others share them with us.

Others have reported that the 5th takes them on a journey of struggle with calm interludes and triumph and I share this experience.
The 7th has, for me, the experience of much trampolining up and down but not really getting anywhere.
(the Carlos Kleiber DG for both). 
If you know of a performance of the 7th that manages to transform it somewhat compared to the Kleiber I would be interested to have a listen)


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## hpowders

Anything by Liszt.

Most Schubert.

Bruckner Symphonies, No.'s 1,2,4,5.

Anything by Debussy except l'isle joyeuse.

Elgar Symphony No.1

Sibelius Symphony No. 2.

All Shostakovich except Symphonies No.'s 5 and 15.

Most Dvorak.

Beethoven Symphonies No.'s 1, 2 and 8 and Piano Concertos No.'s 2 and 5.

Brahms String Quartets.

337 Domenico Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas.

All Vivaldi except a few Concertos for Diverse Instruments.

The above don't bore me to tears. They bore me to sleep!!

And one other important point: YOU can love the above works all you wish! Just please don't criticize MY right to dislike them!! Tolerance is a virtue!


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## Albert7

If I have to hear Ravel's Bolero a zillion times again, I would be going insane.

Everything else is fair game to me.


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## Cosmos

I second,third,and fourth Debussy. He has some nice orchestral works, Afternoon for a Faun is pretty, but over all, UGH

I used to be both Anti-Brahms and Anti-Mozart, but my opinion has turned for the better for the two of them. However, I still can't warm up to Brahms' German Requiem

Satie is bizarre to me. I genuinely don't understand his popularity.

Finally, I don't care much for John Cage. It's like Nyquil for the brain


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## SixFootScowl

Argus said:


> opera


You have to get it on DVD with subtitles so you can understand what is going on. Try the Rossini La Cenerentola conducted by Abbado on DVD. It is action packed from beginning to end, and very entertaining, quite a lot of humor packed into it and great singing and acting.

Way back in my youth I found classical boring (compared to the hard rock I was brought up on) but liked it, so to make it more interesting I would attend operas. The idea was that it is pretty hard to be bored if there is an orchestra playing along with people singing and acting out a story. It works for me, but I suspect there are plenty of boring operas out there, so you have to be selective.


----------



## brotagonist

There are always exceptions in every genre that seem to stand out as surpassing the generic. I have discovered some of them.


----------



## hpowders

Emergency! Emergency!

Add Scriabin to my list. Hope it's not too late for the fourth round of voting!!


----------



## omega

My deepest apologies to Chopin. 5 minutes Chopin in a year is too much for me.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

About 90% of all modern pop, rock etc. music and Stockhausen.

There is also music I was not able to really apppreciate at one time or another and it seemed boring to me, such as Handel's Italian operas, but I understand the problem is with me, not with music and I would probably learn to love it at a different time or in a different mood.


----------



## Skilmarilion

Is it even possible to be "bored to tears"?


----------



## Bellinilover

Most of those religious oratorios from the Baroque period (MESSIAH is an exception).


----------



## DeepR

hpowders said:


> Emergency! Emergency!
> 
> Add Scriabin to my list. Hope it's not too late for the fourth round of voting!!


Since apparently you don't like Liszt and Scriabin as a whole, may I assume that you have heard all, or at least a lot of music by these composers? There is actually a lot of diversity in the output of both composers and I find it hard to imagine that they have composed absolutely nothing to your liking.


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> About 90% of all modern pop, rock etc. music *and Stockhausen*. [...]


Just to be clear, SiegendesLicht, apart from disliking 90% of all modern pop, rock, etc., you also dislike *90%* of Stockhausen? I wouldn't mind knowing what the 10% is (which pieces are represented by that remaining 10%).
I've never tried before to quantify my personal musical 'dislike' that way, but I'll go along with you and say there is about 20-30% of Stockhausen's output that I can pass on, but the other 70-80% I'm solidly in favour of.


----------



## Guest

May I just quickly say that - in light of the above - there is maybe about 5% or so of Beethoven's output I'm less than keen on.


----------



## Guest

On reflection, I probably respond very favourably to rock and pop to the tune of 30%.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I have never calculated how much of Stockhausen's total output I have heard, but everything I've tried listening to, has been just that - boring. No food for the soul whatsoever. And I have tried in all sincerity to like him.


----------



## EdwardBast

For me, Bruckner, a lot of Mahler, early Schoenberg, half of Richard Strauss. And yes, Skilmarillion, it is possible. Just the first movement of Mahler's Third was enough for me — "How many more movements?" _-_ "You're kidding, right?" _-_ "Waaahhh"


----------



## ScipioAfricanus

everything shostokovich


----------



## csacks

I will commit public suicide. To me, most of Bach´s sacred music is imposible to tolerate.


----------



## brotagonist

I couldn't count the number of times I have proclaimed that I dislike some composer or era or style, only to later find myself passionately enjoying it :lol:


----------



## PetrB

DeepR said:


> Since apparently you don't like Liszt and Scriabin as a whole, may I assume that you have heard all, or at least a lot of music by these composers? There is actually a lot of diversity in the output of both composers and I find it hard to imagine that they have composed absolutely nothing to your liking.


*"...may I assume that you have heard all, or at least a lot of music by these composers?"*

It is still Liszt or Scriabin, lol.

Me, I like (for their completely zany over-the-top quality) Scriabin's _Divine Poem_ and _Prometheus_ -- ALL the rest, the banal late romantic symphonies, the 'transitional' from romantic to modern piano pieces, just leave me cold.

I have yet to find any Liszt which does anything for me, period.

Best regards,

NotHPowders


----------



## PetrB

csacks said:


> I will commit public suicide. To me, most of Bach´s sacred music is imposible to tolerate.


We'll die together, then, perhaps I more tortured prior death because I think about 90% of all he wrote is monumentally boring -- master-crafted, perfectly made -- and just as _p e r f e c t l y _ b o r i n g._


----------



## KenOC

PetrB said:


> We'll die together, then, perhaps I more tortured prior death because I think about 90% of all he wrote is monumentally boring -- master-crafted, perfectly made -- and just as _p e r f e c t l y _ b o r i n g._


But there's that other 10%. And in Bach's case, that's a *lot*.


----------



## Itullian

Most all of Berlioz.
I just don't get this guy.


----------



## trazom

I honestly can't think of any classical music that actually _bores_ me, just that music that doesn't perhaps thrill me as much as others. I'm usually concentrating too much on what I'm listening to, to be bored, and am just on the cusp of getting it. The Grosse Fuge, for example, always captures my attention when I'm listening even if it doesn't move me.---However, I just remembered I usually find Hummel, Clementi, and Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words boring. Not that it isn't well-crafted and good quality, I just don't find it as interesting.


----------



## Dustin

Debussy tends to bore me, but that's not me trashing him. I just haven't grown to like his style, but I'll continue to work at it.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Itullian said:


> Most all of Berlioz.
> I just don't get this guy.


If Jethro's Troll's asleep under the bridge, what would one expect?


----------



## DonAlfonso

'Leonore Overture No 3' to Fidelio. It's about 15 minutes long - might as well call it Symphony 6A
Actually all of Fidelio bores me


----------



## Chronochromie

DonAlfonso said:


> 'Leonore Overture No 3' to Fidelio. It's about 15 minutes long - might as well call it Symphony 6A
> Actually all of Fidelio bores me


Oh, a coincidence. I've just finished watching Fidelio for the first time, I quite liked it.
Boring music? Well, some of Bach is sublime but sometimes he is quite boring with the cantatas, parts of the WTC and the organ music. A few months ago I would have said that Mozart is somewhat boring, but after hearing The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute....


----------



## Woodduck

Gregorian chant.

Vocal music of the early Italian Baroque, with its obsessively imitative phrases ending in an identical cadence every four measures.

French Baroque music for harpsichord or organ, with a mordant, shake, trill, slide, or other senseless gewgaw on every damned beat.

Vivaldi's concerto(s), an entire evening of which I had the misfortune of sitting - and dozing - through, especially the one for piccolo.

Innumerable Classical period symphonies, divertimenti, cassations, whatever, by people like Cannabich, Dittersdorf, Myslivecek - even sometimes the Big Boys.

Liszt's splashy piano transcriptions of music he fails to improve.

Delius, listening to whose endless chromatic descents into further chromatic descents is like watching a continuously repeating film of a pink candle melting.

Satie.

_Ein Heldenleben_.

Minimalism, which raised monotony to the level of a criminal offense.

Other innovative and therefore important stuff, mention of which will get me in even deeper trouble with some people (if possible).


----------



## DeepR

PetrB said:


> *"...may I assume that you have heard all, or at least a lot of music by these composers?"*
> 
> It is still Liszt or Scriabin, lol.
> 
> Me, I like (for their completely zany over-the-top quality) Scriabin's _Divine Poem_ and _Prometheus_ -- ALL the rest, the banal late romantic symphonies, the 'transitional' from romantic to modern piano pieces, just leave me cold.
> 
> I have yet to find any Liszt which does anything for me, period.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> NotHPowders


Well that's something at least. And kudos for still listening to ALL the rest while being left cold all the time.


----------



## KenOC

Almost any music made up of squeaks, squawks, honks, thunks, and scratches. That sort of thing seems to have fans here, for whatever reason. Well, I admit to kind of liking Subotnick... 


Pianos-falling-down-stairs music irritates me too. No exceptions.


----------



## techniquest

Pachelbel's "Canon in D"
Anything by John Rutter.


----------



## Dustin

KenOC said:


> Almost any music made up of squeaks, honks, thunks, and scratches. That sort of thing seems to have fans here, for whatever reason. Well, I admit to kind of liking Subotnick...
> 
> Pianos-falling-down-stairs music irritates me too. No exceptions.


You're really missing out on some wonderful music, such as the "Double Concerto for Squeaker and Scratcher"


----------



## dgee

Boring to tears is a high threshold, no? It's also not irritating, unsatisfying or offensive. Best to be specific. In real life I had to listen to the Elgar Violin Concerto a number of times live and boy did that make me sad - and I'm not against Elgar per se. I also had to attend a performance of L'Elisir d'amore - it's not really my thing and it couldn't end fast enough. Ditto the time I had to sit through Giselle - really out of my comfort zone, that one. Doing long seasons of Pearl Fishers was dire as were Tales of Hoffmann and Lucia da Lammermoor. Strangely enough, I grew to enjoy Merry Widow - I just like Vienna, I guess 

I've also had plenty of boring new music experiences, including many involving composers I know personally so I won't go into it


----------



## Andolink

I'd guess that 90+% of all music "bores me to tears". That which doesn't, however, has provided me with a passionate, life long, virtually endless journey of immensely rewarding discoveries.


----------



## dgee

Dustin said:


> You're really missing out on some wonderful music, such as the "Double Concerto for Squeaker and Scratcher"


Yeah - that's a really good one. Big hit at Darmstadt. Got any other recommendations? I've heard Mozart's Violin Symphony number 18 in A sharp major is really good too


----------



## DonAlfonso

techniquest said:


> Pachelbel's "Canon in D"
> Anything by John Rutter.


I'd forgotten about the Taco Bell "canon" but for me it's more irritating than boring.


----------



## csacks

PetrB said:


> We'll die together, then, perhaps I more tortured prior death because I think about 90% of all he wrote is monumentally boring -- master-crafted, perfectly made -- and just as _p e r f e c t l y _ b o r i n g._


Lets we face it together. I couldn´t find a better way to say it. The perfection of theory, to the limit of the complete lack of emotion


----------



## Skilmarilion

Not so much boredom related, but in any case...

Given its placing in the recent string quartets ranking list, I went and listened to Crumb's _Black Angels_. I listened to maybe five seconds before having to *turn that racket off*. Now I don't want to generalise but there is a lot of music belonging to the "avant-garde" that I cannot (at least yet) bear to listen to.


----------



## Skilmarilion

EdwardBast said:


> For me, Bruckner, a lot of Mahler, early Schoenberg, half of Richard Strauss. And yes, Skilmarillion, it is possible. Just the first movement of Mahler's Third was enough for me - "How many more movements?" _-_ "You're kidding, right?" _-_ "Waaahhh"


I guess it's the beauty of different tastes. There's not a single boring second in the first movement of Mahler's 3rd, for me. :tiphat:


----------



## PetrB

KenOC said:


> But there's that other 10%. And in Bach's case, that's a *lot*.


 :tiphat: 
______________________________________


----------



## Bruce

Woodduck said:


> Gregorian chant.
> 
> French Baroque music for harpsichord or organ, with a mordant, shake, trill, slide, or other senseless gewgaw on every damned beat.
> 
> Delius, listening to whose endless chromatic descents into further chromatic descents is like watching a continuously repeating film of a pink candle melting.
> 
> _Ein Heldenleben_.


That's an excellent description of the way I perceive the compositional style of several British composers. I'd add to the list, Bax, Stanford, and Rubbra. And on the continent, Reger, and Scriabin's first 3 symphonies. I don't mean to offend anyone; I know there are quite a few on the forum who enjoy these composers, but it's just not my cup-o'-tea. I'm frustrated that I can't detect anything in the way of melody--it all seems transitional passages from ? to ? There must be something to these works, though, if they're so highly regarded by some, and may only need a bit more work on my part.

I can't say I find the French composers boring, but the ornaments do intrude, IMO. I'd rather hear the unadorned (or slightly adorned) melody, which is often quite beautiful.


----------



## hpowders

Itullian said:


> Most all of Berlioz.
> I just don't get this guy.


Not even Les Troyens? Trojan March? The wife plays it whenever I come home and walk through the door!
Ready for a hard day's posting on TC!


----------



## Itullian

hpowders said:


> Not even Les Troyens? Trojan March? The wife plays it whenever I come home and walk through the door!
> Ready for a hard day's posting on TC!


Yeah, the march is ok and Fantastique too, which was way ahead of its time.


----------



## hpowders

I never took to Saint-Saens Violin Concerto #3. I would put that on my "boring" list.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

PetrB said:


> We'll die together, then, perhaps I more tortured prior death because I think about 90% of all he wrote is monumentally boring -- master-crafted, perfectly made -- and just as _p e r f e c t l y _ b o r i n g._


Same thing with Palestrina. Although I think his god-like reputation has already (and justifiably) gone downhill among listeners better acquainted with Renaissance music.


----------



## hpowders

Any British music not composed by William Walton.


----------



## fjf

Temptation...I must resist...

Atonal music!.

Damn!. It slipped out of my mouth!.


----------



## Simon Moon

Almost anything pre 20th century. About 1890 and earlier, I'd guess.

Does nothing for me, with a few exceptions.


----------



## hpowders

Old style romanticized Haydn and Mozart with huge orchestra, heavy vibrato and slow tempos. Deadly!


----------



## Tristan

Originally I would've said chamber music: string quartets, piano trios...wake me when it's over. And I probably would've said that with seriousness about a year ago.

That is not the case anymore, and I really enjoy chamber music quite a bit and I've found it can be quite exciting--it took discovering Brahms' chamber music for me to really change my mind about it.

I guess what bores me: Satie's piano music I find good to listen to while studying or reading, but I can't really say it does much for me to just sit down and listen to it. Music of the Second Viennese School also tends to be a bit dull for me, but it depends. I can listen to a concerto from that period and be quite enthralled by it, but solo piano and other works tend to bore me a bit and I'd just rather be listening to something else. Most minimalist music (Part, etc.) can put me to sleep.


----------



## Chronochromie

It didn't bore me to tears, but having just watched Verdi's Il trovatore, I was pretty bored through most of it, except for a few brief great moments.


----------



## ahammel

One word, starts with a 'B', ends with an 'O'...


----------



## hpowders

Anything with the word "unfinished" after it.


----------



## tdc

ahammel said:


> One word, starts with a 'B', ends with an 'O'...


Surely you couldn't be referring to Berio?! I'll assume Bomtempo here.


----------



## elgar's ghost

tdc said:


> Surely you couldn't be referring to Berio?! I'll assume Bomtempo here.


'Bolero', perhaps???


----------



## ahammel

tdc said:


> Surely you couldn't be referring to Berio?! I'll assume Bomtempo here.


Close!

Wait, crud, how do you spell Beethoven?


----------



## tdc

elgars ghost said:


> 'Bolero', perhaps???


Ahhh - yes, that would make a lot more sense.


----------



## tdc

ahammel said:


> Close!
> 
> Wait, crud, how do you spell Beethoven?


Ha! Didn't see that one coming. I hear ya though, although he does have some works I genuinely love. I think its the rabid fan boys that make me think I dislike his music more than I do.


----------



## Couchie

Bach... he sucks. Was he even German. We can't be sure he wasn't Italian.


----------



## DavidA

Couchie said:


> Bach... he sucks. Was he even German. We can't be sure he wasn't Italian.


Oh dear! Poor you! I listened to the Christmas Oratorio this week with my wife. Just cannot see how anyone could be bored by such wondrous music!


----------



## Skilmarilion

Der Leiermann said:


> It didn't bore me to tears, but having just watched Verdi's Il trovatore, I was pretty bored through most of it, except for a few brief great moments.


Opera's a different ball-game. I know many who feel that symphonies by Bruckner and Mahler are 'too long' ... well much opera is often at least twice as long, often with a lot of 'filler', sung in a foreign language, and with often quite uninteresting plot-lines verging on ridiculous*.

* case in point -- that lovely "largo" aria from Handel's Xerxes -- all well and good, quite moving as a piece of music ... but then you find out that the lyrics entail Xerxes describing his love for a tree.


----------



## leafman

This is an interesting thread that proves that beauty is solely in the eyes of the beholder. Music and art is, by definition, a very subjective thing and one person's masterpiece can be another person's disaster.


.


----------



## Nevum

Ravellian said:


> A spin-off of the "Music that moves you to tears" topic.
> 
> - Brahms never ceases to bore me. His romanticlassical style just doesn't work for me.
> - Vivaldi concertos. They're all the same!!
> - Anything 12-tone
> - Anything minimalist


Brahms boring? Are you sure you are really listening to the right Brahms?






All Vivaldi concertos are the same? huh?


----------



## Triplets

Any thing by Liszt.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

The Beethoven rabid fanboys are everywhere, I tell ya'. You can't go anywhere on this forum without their "blind, aggressive devotion" (definition of 'fanboyism') manifesting itself somehow, derailing threads, etc. The other day on "Current Listening", someone said that they were listening to some of his piano sonatas.  Once, Ukko even called them "miracles". The rabidness.


----------



## Cosmos

Triplets said:


> Any thing by Liszt.


*jowls shake* preposterous!


----------



## ahammel

Cosmos said:


> *jowls shake* preposterous!


I used to feel that way about Liszt, but I'm on the turn. This album helped:









The Liszt Songza channel didn't help.


----------



## Lisztian

Triplets said:


> Any thing by Liszt.


What have you heard? What recordings?


----------



## MoonlightSonata

I can't say I'm fond of Boulez... I haven't listened to much, but I haven't liked it. Serialism isn't my thing either.


----------



## hpowders

What bores me? Anything with the name "Faust" in it.


----------



## dgee

ahammel said:


> One word, starts with a 'B', ends with an 'O'...


Beethovenviolinconcerto?


----------



## hpowders

Schubert's C Major String Quintet, HOWEVER, I was peeling a big beautiful Bermuda onion at the time I was listening.


----------



## PetrB

Couchie said:


> *Liszt*. Amazing that he could play so well, accomplish the enormous repertoire that he did, and yet still not have a single interesting musical idea floating around in his head that isn't either sentimental drivel or vacuous showiness.


Of Liszt's music, Chopin said, "He looks at the stars through an enema tube and dresses them up with tinsel and rags."


----------



## PetrB

hpowders said:


> What bores me? Anything with the name "Faust" in it.


Amen to that... I hope that includes that horrendous 'great' novel of Thomas Mann's


----------



## PetrB

dgee said:


> Beethovenviolinconcerto?


Maybe he means Luigi's only opera, _Bidelio?_


----------



## tdc

DiesIraeVIX said:


> The Beethoven rabid fanboys are everywhere, I tell ya'. You can't go anywhere on this forum without their "blind, aggressive devotion" (definition of 'fanboyism') manifesting itself somehow, derailing threads, etc. The other day on "Current Listening", someone said that they were listening to some of his piano sonatas.  Once, Ukko even called them "miracles". The rabidness.


Actually, I don't think its nearly as bad as you make it out to be. I certainly never suggested it was constant, everywhere or that Ukko was a fanboy, you said it - not me.


----------



## PetrB

Couchie said:


> Bach... he sucks. Was he even German. We can't be sure he wasn't Italian.


Saxony / Thuringian


----------



## Blancrocher

hpowders said:


> What bores me? Anything with the name "Faust" in it.


Yeah, Faust is totally overrated. I'm more of a Prometheus man, myself.


----------



## PetrB

... may as well stick my neck out all the way on the block, and add, that besides the tedious *Bach*, whose music I more often feel is a musical equivalent about as exciting and spiritually deep as a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, I add a few more to this list of music which for me is so tedious that it induces a genuine and deep _ennui_:

*Wagner* -- music and intent antithetical to my preference and aesthetic, I find it all tedious beyond belief, and at the least, vaguely ridiculous.

*Liszt *-- at his deepest, about as shallow as a saucer. I agree with that razor-sharp quip of Chopin's, _"Liszt looks at the stars through an enema tube and dresses them up in tinsel and rags."_

*Bruckner* -- labored and heavy-handed and overextended beyond any credible justification.

*Tchaikovsky* -- the pasty pastry sweet melodies -- toothache inducing -- with little else about the music other than those dratted melodies or melodic motifs, the repetition of same, a half or whole step up, the endless sequencing, the cheap theatrics -- and without the faults of dragging a repeated theme up a whole or half step and endless sequences, for those other qaulities listed for Tchaikovsky, ditto re: *Rachmaninov*.

*Sibelius* -- original, well-written, but like a ghost of pieces from an earlier time in a near similar style, where what had been worth saying had already been said.

*Cesar Franck* - that damnable _Violin and Piano Sonata_, better left as that bit of conceptual fiction in Proust's _*A la recherche du temps perdu*_ than an actual piece.

Almost all of *Shostakovich*.

*Puccini* -- just despicable, ugh.

I would add the overwhelmingly banal *Medtner*, but for the fact he is a Johnny come lately acquaintance, and I am not surprised that over the course of my decades of musical training, professional experience and somewhat later quasi-youthful second education as a theory /comp major, that his name had never come up _once_ over that entire length of time. -- Besides, I'm dissing here _the truly or pretty great_ composers, not the forgettably mediocre ones


----------



## Ingélou

PetrB, you have been very honest! :tiphat: 
After Mahlerian :tiphat: had alerted me to the absolutely wonderful _Le Merle Noir_, I thought I would listen to Messaien's _ Quartet for the End of Time_.
But I just *couldn't be doing with it*.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

But PetrB, don't you like Verdi?

Well, save a few exceptions, I find his music fits the title of this thread for me, specially Aida. 

Meanwhile, I get a lot of pleasure from Wagner, something only Mahler's lieder and Debussy can compete with. I think Bruckner's 9th is also very pleasurable, opened my ears to the rest of the very interesting lot. I find it very strange for somebody not to like Wagner once they really get to know the music. 

Sibelius is of course one of my favourite composers and I think he often gets misunderstood by many. In fact it seems to be completely alien to the French with the exception of some of the spectralists.

Frank and his school can go drown itself in its own mud. Liszt, only the late pieces are good and perhaps some particular moments from other works. 

There's a lot of music-box-like little piano pieces by Mozart filled with trivial never ending runs of figurations, plenty of strum und drag Haydn movements and chunga-chunga Beethoven that I am sure I will be tortured in hell with. There's also Vivaldi which has the same 'problem' as Bach plus my problem with the minimalists.


----------



## PetrB

Ingélou said:


> PetrB, you have been very honest! :tiphat:
> After Mahlerian :tiphat: had alerted me to the absolutely wonderful _Le Merle Noir_, I thought I would listen to Messaien's _ Quartet for the End of Time_.
> But I just *couldn't be doing with it*.


But this honesty is, I hope, what this thread is all about, i.e. a sort of venting ala confessional, _"There are truly great composers whose work(s) I do not get, or get quite well enough but just do not care for."_

Being 'old enough,' I get quite a chortle out of all the posts of the nature of "Liszt! How Can You Not Like / Love Liszt?" etc. Why? Well, the same reasons the person who cannot comprehend not liking / loving composer X does not like / love composer Y, LOL.


----------



## Ingélou

PetrB said:


> Being 'old enough,' I get quite a chortle out of all the posts of the nature of "Liszt! How Can You Not Like / Love Liszt?" etc. Why? Well, the same reasons the person who cannot comprehend not liking / loving composer X does not like / love composer Y, LOL.


 Reminds me of the epigram of Martial that was in my Latin primer:
'Why do I not send you my verses, Pontilianus? Because I am afraid that you might send me *yours*, Pontilianus!'


----------



## Triplets

Lisztian said:


> What have you heard? What recordings?


Lazar Berman, Brendel, Bolet,Horowitz, Arrau, some Leslie Howard. I did have an Earl Wild lp that I used to like, but. After about 4 decades of trying to like Liszt, it ain't worth the effort. All flash, no depth


----------



## Cosmos

PetrB I am flabbergasted by your opinions!!! But of course I respect them


----------



## MoonlightSonata

Ingélou said:


> PetrB, you have been very honest! :tiphat:
> After Mahlerian :tiphat: had alerted me to the absolutely wonderful _Le Merle Noir_, I thought I would listen to Messaien's _ Quartet for the End of Time_.
> But I just *couldn't be doing with it*.


I thought I was the only one!


----------



## Chronochromie

Ingélou said:


> PetrB, you have been very honest! :tiphat:
> After Mahlerian :tiphat: had alerted me to the absolutely wonderful _Le Merle Noir_, I thought I would listen to Messaien's _ Quartet for the End of Time_.
> But I just *couldn't be doing with it*.


Listen to his Turangalila Symphonie, that's what did it for me. Or L'ascension.


----------



## DeepR

So far I"ve always found at least a few pieces that I like from every famous composer that I seriously looked into. Take Liszt. I probably dont like 3/4 of what I've heard from Liszt, but the other 1/4 still makes me think very favorable of him. I judge a composer by their best works, no matter how few of those exist. One piece can can be enough to change my opinion. But maybe it doesnt work that way for everyone. So forgive me if Im a bit skeptical about this whole " I dont like composer X in its entirety" thing.


----------



## Skilmarilion

PetrB said:


> ... may as well stick my neck out all the way on the block, and add, that besides the tedious *Bach*
> 
> ....
> 
> *Bruckner* -- labored and heavy-handed and overextended beyond any credible justification.
> 
> *Tchaikovsky* -- the pasty pastry sweet melodies -- toothache inducing -- with little else about the music other than those dratted melodies or melodic motifs, the repetition of same, a half or whole step up, the endless sequencing, the cheap theatrics -- and without the faults of dragging a repeated theme up a whole or half step and endless sequences, for those other qaulities listed for Tchaikovsky, ditto re:
> 
> *Rachmaninov*.
> 
> *Sibelius* -- original, well-written, but like a ghost of pieces from an earlier time in a near similar style, where what had been worth saying had already been said.


You break people's hearts when you do this sorta thing ... you do realise that, don't you?


----------



## spokanedaniel

Contemporary music bores me. As does pretty much anything in the "classical" domain from the 20th century.


----------



## hpowders

Anything with the name Siegfried in it.


----------



## PetrB

Cosmos said:


> PetrB I am flabbergasted by your opinions!!! But of course I respect them


I thank you, but at the risk of incorrectly reading you, I believe you meant to say that you can respect that I (or anyone) has an opinion which may differ from yours, where I'm fairly certain _you do not agree_ with my personal opinion on a number of those composers I named. ... and _vive la difference!_

I think it should be, in large lit-up marquee-sized letters, made quite plain here that this thread is not about any issue with these great composers as to their being great (well, I wouldn't include Medtner as great, while he is _an accomplished composer_  -- but all about _'what music we don't care for'_, apart from the fact it should be and is recognized as great music.

I hope no one thinks my list of 'bore me' composers' has anything to do with my judging those same composers as 'not great,' because, well, they are great composers -- because recognizing quality and caring for that particular quality (as this thread should clearly demonstrate) are often two very different things.


----------



## PetrB

Skilmarilion said:


> You break people's hearts when you do this sorta thing ... you do realise that, don't you?


Just below your post, if I were hypersensitive, is a post which would "break my heart." For that poster, just about all modern / contemporary classical is on their list of "boring" music having -- to them -- nothing worthwhile about it.

Bash Berio, and my heart isn't broken. Bash Mozart, and I am only a little sorrowful for any with that opinion, because as a colleague said -- and what he said I quite believe -- "If you don't get Mozart, you really don't get music." 

I accept there is music some do not get at all, or they get it and it just does not speak to them ;-)


----------



## MoonlightSonata

PetrB said:


> I thank you, but at the risk of incorrectly reading you, I believe you meant to say that you can respect that I (or anyone) has an opinion which may differ from yours, where I'm fairly certain _you do not agree_ with my personal opinion on a number of those composers I named. ... and _vive la difference!_
> 
> I think it should be, in large lit-up marquee-sized letters, made quite plain here that this thread is not about any issue with these great composers as to their being great (well, I wouldn't include Medtner as great, while he is _an accomplished compoer_  -- but all about _'what music we don't care for'_, apart from the fact it should be and is recognized as great music.
> 
> I hope no one thinks my list of 'bore me' composers' has anything to do with my judging those same composers as 'not great,' because, well, they are great composers -- because recognizing quality and caring for that particular quality are often (as this thread should clearly demonstrate) is often two very different things.


This post should be made compulsory reading material for all forum members.


----------



## PetrB

Richannes Wrahms said:


> But PetrB, don't you like Verdi?


I hold Verdi in near the same esteem I have for, say, Beethoven.


----------



## Crudblud

Easy target: Alan Hovhaness.

I must have listened to something like 50 works of Hovhaness, which is not a great amount considering his huge output, but it does seem like a decent sample size. Of these 50 works, one of them, and I think it may have been the _Celestial Gate_ symphony, contained 13 seconds of interesting music. Taking this as a model for the ~450 Opus numbers in his catalogue (actually 434), that's just under two minutes of interesting music in a 70 year career.


----------



## hpowders

Any musical composition with the name "prelude" and/or "faun" in the title.
Quintuple the boredom if both names appear in the same title.


----------



## PetrB

hpowders said:


> Anything with the name "prelude" and/or "faun". Quintuple the boredom if both names appear in the same title.


Well so much for the masterwork cycle of the Chopin _Preludes_ ;-) -- but here we have it, this thread is _all_ about personal taste, and nothing more 'neutral' or substantial :lol:


----------



## tdc

^ Also hpowders has always seemingly spoken so highly of the Well-Tempered Clavier - to think all this time he was only referring to the fugues!


----------



## Schubussy

Crudblud said:


> Easy target: Alan Hovhaness.
> 
> I must have listened to something like 50 works of Hovhaness, which is not a great amount considering his huge output, but it does seem like a decent sample size. Of these 50 works, one of them, and I think it may have been the _Celestial Gate_ symphony, contained 13 seconds of interesting music. Taking this as a model for the ~450 Opus numbers in his catalogue (actually 434), that's just under two minutes of interesting music in a 70 year career.


I find as lot of his music a bit kitschy but there's something about it I like.

I'm left cold by a lot of baroque music but the pieces I like I like a lot.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

I can't get into Liszt, Schumann, and Chopin (to be fair, I haven't really given Chopin a proper chance, only a few listens here and there). None of them "bore me to tears", though. Just not my cup of tea.

I admit, while there's a good deal of Mozart I adore, there's also a larger amount that just doesn't do it for me. In fact, for the very same reasons why PetrB loves him; the "suavity and politesse". Same goes for quite a bit of 18th century classical. To each his own, I guess. ;-)


----------



## Woodduck

...............................

I'm bored speechless.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

tdc said:


> ^ Also hpowders has always seemingly spoken so highly of the Well-Tempered Clavier - to think all this time he was only referring to the fugues!


Poor Bach must feel so let-down!


----------



## PetrB

MoonlightSonata said:


> Poor Bach must feel so let-down!


Naaaawwww -- name just about _any_ great composer, and they're quite used to 'not being understood.'


----------



## Giordano

I don't mind Chopin, Debussy, & Ravel when used as figure skating music.


----------



## DeepR

I get bored by Beethoven's 5th: 2nd, 3rd and 4th movement. The 1st movement is justly famous, the rest is completely banal and a huge step back from the 3rd.


----------



## DeepR

As for solo piano music: atonal music a la Schoenberg and friends, but, someday I might like it. I don't understand all the technical aspects but I know it when I hear it. I much prefer late-romantic solo piano music and music that is in the transitional phase from late romantic to early modern, which uses all kinds of methods to expand on common practice tonality (or whatever), sometimes appearing to be borderline atonal, but when it's actually atonal it starts to bore me to tears.


----------



## Balthazar

With the exception of _Tristan und Isolde_ and the _Wesendonck Lieder_, anything by Wagner. Not only do I find it mind-numbingly insipid, but that stuff never ends.


----------



## techniquest

Crudblud said:


> Easy target: Alan Hovhaness.
> 
> I must have listened to something like 50 works of Hovhaness, which is not a great amount considering his huge output, but it does seem like a decent sample size. Of these 50 works, one of them, and I think it may have been the _Celestial Gate_ symphony, contained 13 seconds of interesting music. Taking this as a model for the ~450 Opus numbers in his catalogue (actually 434), that's just under two minutes of interesting music in a 70 year career.


Have you heard his "Fra Angelico"? I find it a beautiful and powerful work which isn't at all boring. I know what you mean about a lot of his stuff though.


----------



## Wood

......................................................................................................................................................................................................................


----------



## Ingélou

Wood said:


> ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................


Lucky you!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


----------



## Kibbles Croquettes

Ingélou said:


> Lucky you!!!
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Or maybe there has to be contrasts, differences in boringness, for music to be meaningful. If everything is on the same level of unboringness, is anything _really _unboring - or boring for that matter? Seeing is not just about having a constant stimulation of the rod cells at all times - that would be like looking into an eternal white fog-, there has to be contrasts for the surrounding world to be meaningful and contain useful information. I am able to sleep even if there is some constant noise that stays on the same level - ie. rain -, but if there are sudden changes - ie. music starting again after a pause - they will immediately startle me and wake me.


----------



## spokanedaniel

PetrB said:


> Just below your post, if I were hypersensitive, is a post which would "break my heart." For that poster, just about all modern / contemporary classical is on their list of "boring" music having -- to them -- nothing worthwhile about it. ...


I guess I'm the poster you are referring to. I never said there's nothing worthwhile about 20th century and later classical music, just that it bores me. (There is 20th century music I love, just not classical. I love early jazz, Cuban son, Spanish coplas, early Reggae, some R&B.) Art of whatever type need not interest me to have value. If it pleases one person it has value. But there are certain qualities in music, as well as in the other arts, that please me, and classical music began moving away from those qualities in, I suppose, the 19th century.

I love pretty much everything baroque and pre-baroque, all the way back to Gregorian chant, which is the earliest music I'm familiar with. But move away from tunes and harmony and you lose me.


----------



## Kibbles Croquettes

spokanedaniel said:


> But move away from tunes and harmony and you lose me.


Well, isn't that what everyone says about the music they don't like? "It doesn't even have any tunes!". That could be said about every musical style there is. You could say Mozart just fiddles around with scales uninterestingly and unable to create real tunes, Boulez's melodies are just random noise, hip hop is just speaking, heavy metal is just shouting and growling, blues is just permutations of the same basic idea etc. ad nauseam.

I'm not saying that you wouldn't be entitled to your opinion: of course you are, and your opinion is as valuable as anyone's. It is completely okay that you think the way you think, I'm not trying to talk you over, it is good that people have different opinions. I'm not even taking any stance in any "old vs. new" battle, if there is such a thing. It's just that I've been on this planet observing humans for a while now and have heard that "It doesn't even have tunes!" -phrase so many times - in all imaginable contexts, against and for all imaginable musical styles - that it has lost all its meaning to me.

The tuneness of a musical piece as a perceptual quality is very subjective and mystical thing. We should approach it carefully and with respect. None of us knows how the big and mystical thing - when sound waves suddenly become a tune that has some personal meaning for us - happens.


----------



## Woodduck

DeepR said:


> I get bored by Beethoven's 5th: 2nd, 3rd and 4th movement. The 1st movement is justly famous, the rest is *completely banal* and a huge step back from the 3rd.


Beethoven favored the _Eroica_ too - but I'm guessing he would have preferred your choosing slightly different words. If any.


----------



## Woodduck

Kibbles Croquettes said:


> Well, isn't that what everyone says about the music they don't like? "It doesn't even have any tunes!". That could be said about every musical style there is. You could say Mozart just fiddles around with scales uninterestingly and unable to create real tunes, Boulez's melodies are just random noise, hip hop is just speaking, heavy metal is just shouting and growling, blues is just permutations of the same basic idea etc. ad nauseam.
> 
> I'm not saying that you wouldn't be entitled to your opinion: of course you are, and your opinion is as valuable as anyone's. It is completely okay that you think the way you think, I'm not trying to talk you over, it is good that people have different opinions. I'm not even taking any stance in any "old vs. new" battle, if there is such a thing. It's just that I've been on this planet observing humans for a while now and have heard that "It doesn't even have tunes!" -phrase so many times - in all imaginable contexts, against and for all imaginable musical styles - that it has lost all its meaning to me.
> 
> The tuneness of a musical piece as a perceptual quality is very subjective and mystical thing. We should approach it carefully and with respect. None of us knows how the big and mystical thing - when sound waves suddenly become a tune that has some personal meaning for us - happens.


Granted that what one person finds "tuneful" another will not, what I'm inclined to call "tunes" are melodies with fairly basic tonal progressions underpinning them, a certain amount of symmetry in their phrase structure, and a certain self-sufficiency or separability from their possible larger context. "Tunes" tend to be the sorts of melodies people call "catchy" or "infectious" or, if they're less cheerful, "haunting" - or, if they're by great tunesmiths like Schubert or Tchaikovsky, "magical," making us feel as if the melody was not so much invented as discovered. A good melody and a good tune are thus not necessarily the same thing: Beethoven and Wagner are fine melodists, but Mozart and Verdi are more tuneful. Of course the melodist credentials of the former pair (and probably the latter pair as well) have been questioned and disparaged by those requiring more "tunefulness."

Tunefulness is certainly relative to a listener's ability to discern coherence in a melody's intervallic structure and underlying harmony. But, unless you're a jazz musician who calls everything a "tune" - odd, since there's plenty of jazz that's anything but tuneful by almost anyone's criteria - a (slightly fuzzy) distinction between "melody" and "tune" probably has some meaning. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that some music I love - say, the 7th symphony of Sibelius, is melodically fascinating but hasn't got a tune anywhere in it, while music I'm indifferent to may be tuneful as all get out but all it does for me is give me earworms.


----------



## Kibbles Croquettes

Woodduck said:


> Granted that what one person finds "tuneful" another will not, what I'm inclined to call "tunes" are melodies with fairly basic tonal progressions underpinning them, a certain amount of symmetry in their phrase structure, and a certain self-sufficiency or separability from their possible larger context. "Tunes" tend to be the sorts of melodies people call "catchy" or "infectious" or, if they're less cheerful, "haunting" - or, if they're by great tunesmiths like Schubert or Tchaikovsky, "magical," making us feel as if the melody was not so much invented as discovered. A good melody and a good tune are thus not necessarily the same thing: Beethoven and Wagner are fine melodists, but Mozart and Verdi are more tuneful. Of course the melodist credentials of the former pair (and probably the latter pair as well) have been questioned and disparaged by those requiring more "tunefulness."
> 
> Tunefulness is certainly relative to a listener's ability to discern coherence in a melody's intervallic structure and underlying harmony. But, unless you're a jazz musician who calls everything a "tune" - odd, since there's plenty of jazz that's anything but tuneful by almost anyone's criteria - a (slightly fuzzy) distinction between "melody" and "tune" probably has some meaning. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that some music I love - say, the 7th symphony of Sibelius, is melodically fascinating but hasn't got a tune anywhere in it, while music I'm indifferent to may be tuneful as all get out but all it does for me is give me earworms.


You have plenty of interesting points, indeed! There is a lot food for thought there and lot of room for discussion about melody and tunefulness. For example, I'd call Sibelius' 7th a tuneful piece. The Aino-theme is just wonderful and a constant earworm for me!


----------



## hpowders

Music that bores me to tears? Heavier and darker classical music.


----------



## Woodduck

Kibbles Croquettes said:


> You have plenty of interesting points, indeed! There is a lot food for thought there and lot of room for discussion about melody and tunefulness. For example, I'd call Sibelius' 7th a tuneful piece. The Aino-theme is just wonderful and a constant earworm for me!


Well, I have to admit that the 7th often runs through my head too. But then so does all three-and-a-half hours of _Tristan und Isolde_, which I consider one long outpouring of - tunes? Calling "O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe" a tune makes me :lol:! And then there's that little "tune" from the prelude that comes back at the end of that other "tune" which Isolde sings before dying.

Maybe I just watched too many Loony Toons as a kid.


----------



## Chronochromie

hpowders said:


> Music that bores me to tears? Heavier and darker classical music.


So you don't like Mahler?


----------



## scratchgolf

Der Leiermann said:


> So you don't like Mahler?


That was the very first thing to pop in my head as well. Mahler's pithy symphonies are certainly light and breezy.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

Der Leiermann said:


> So you don't like Mahler?


We are finding out some scandalous things about hpowders recently - first he doesn't like the WTC preludes and now he doesn't like Mahler!


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Isn't a major triad turning into a minor triad the most unsubstantial, trivial and disappointing principal motif every to be forcefully glorified in such an otherwise magnificently concentrated and hyper-elaborate work?


----------



## spokanedaniel

I am willing to admit that my idea of what constitutes a tune may be subjective. If that's the case, then I simply lack the language necessary to describe what it is I like about the music I like, and vice versa. Perhaps all I can do, then, is list composers and compositions that thrill or bore me. (There is also some music, beloved by many, that affects me like fingernails on a chalkboard.)


----------



## DavidA

DeepR said:


> I get bored by Beethoven's 5th: 2nd, 3rd and 4th movement. The 1st movement is justly famous, the rest is completely banal and a huge step back from the 3rd.


Sorry! Is this the same wondrous masterpiece I have been listening to for the last 50 odd years or did he write another 5th?


----------



## MoonlightSonata

DeepR said:


> I get bored by Beethoven's 5th: 2nd, 3rd and 4th movement. The 1st movement is justly famous, the rest is completely banal and a huge step back from the 3rd.


What an _interesting_ view. I can't say personally that I agree, but then I have some unusual opinions of my own.


----------



## hpowders

Music that bores me to tears? Christmas-themed classical music.


----------



## starthrower

New Age pablum.


----------



## Chronochromie

hpowders said:


> Music that bores me to tears? Christmas-themed classical music.


Something we can agree on.


----------



## Dasein

The archetypal metal guitar tone puts me to sleep instantly. It always has that over-mastered sound that pop music can get. No character, no bite.


----------



## DonAlfonso

DeepR said:


> I get bored by Beethoven's 5th: 2nd, 3rd and 4th movement. The 1st movement is justly famous, the rest is completely banal and a huge step back from the 3rd.


How funny, I always skip the first movement of the 5th with its overblown theme lifted from Mozart's 25th piano concerto. So over familiar, the 'nessun dorma' of symphonic music.


----------



## CypressWillow

I wouldn't say there's any particular music that bores me to tears, simply that if I'm forced to let someone else program the music I can't escape, then that bores me! Even listening to well-loved Christmas music this time of the rolling year causes my eyes (or is it ears?) to glaze over, if I'm in an elevator and can't get away from it.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

A lot of mainstream pop music bores me to tears and beyond. It's so obviously designed for no purpose other than to be as catchy as possible. The few songs with decent material are usually too short for any real development, and the whole genre seems to have maybe five song topics.
That said, some pop music is original, well-thought-out, and inspiring.


----------



## hpowders

PetrB said:


> *"...may I assume that you have heard all, or at least a lot of music by these composers?"*
> 
> It is still Liszt or Scriabin, lol.
> 
> Me, I like (for their completely zany over-the-top quality) Scriabin's _Divine Poem_ and _Prometheus_ -- ALL the rest, the banal late romantic symphonies, the 'transitional' from romantic to modern piano pieces, just leave me cold.
> 
> I have yet to find any Liszt which does anything for me, period.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> NotHPowders


Me too. I hate Liszt. Does nothing for me.


----------



## hpowders

PetrB said:


> Well so much for the masterwork cycle of the Chopin _Preludes_ ;-) -- but here we have it, this thread is _all_ about personal taste, and nothing more 'neutral' or substantial :lol:


Even so, people get offended. I don't know why. All I'm saying is I fall asleep listening to most Bruckner, Liszt, Debussy, Chopin, and Scriabin. If I forgot to offend anybody, I am truly sorry.


----------



## hpowders

MoonlightSonata said:


> We are finding out some scandalous things about hpowders recently - first he doesn't like the WTC preludes and now he doesn't like Mahler!


Who said I don't like Mahler? I never said that.


----------



## hpowders

tdc said:


> ^ Also hpowders has always seemingly spoken so highly of the Well-Tempered Clavier - to think all this time he was only referring to the fugues!


I do actually prefer the fugues to the preludes.


----------



## hpowders

Der Leiermann said:


> So you don't like Mahler?


I don't find Mahler heavy and dark at all.


----------



## violadude

Most of the "obscure" or "unjustly neglected" Romantic era symphonists end up boring the hell out of me, not all though.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

hpowders said:


> Even so, people get offended. I don't know why. All I'm saying is I fall asleep listening to most Bruckner, Liszt, Debussy, Chopin, and Scriabin. If I forgot to offend anybody, I am truly sorry.


Was that - was that a Brahms reference?


----------



## clavichorder

violadude said:


> Most of the "obscure" or "unjustly neglected" Romantic era symphonists end up boring the hell out of me, not all though.


Are you thinking of someone in particular? Raff is not that interesting to me, but Glazunov is nice. Balakirev is nice. I sort of like Berwald, even though he doesn't have much in the way of themes.


----------



## violadude

clavichorder said:


> Are you thinking of someone in particular? Raff is not that interesting to me, but Glazunov is nice. Balakirev is nice. I sort of like Berwald, even though he doesn't have much in the way of themes.


I didn't really have anyone in mind. I just know whenever I am told to check out some obscure Romantic (or even neo-romantic) composer I end up being pretty bored with the music. I like Rangstrom alright, Glazunov isn't bad from what I've heard but I don't often choose to listen to him. I've never heard any of Berwald's music.


----------



## Haydn man

Strauss Waltzes do it for me, if you want sameish here's your stuff


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

violadude said:


> Most of the "obscure" or "unjustly neglected" Romantic era symphonists end up boring the hell out of me, not all though.


This seems to be the general case, few (more or less obscure) exceptions I like for one reason or the other:

Siegmund von Hausegger - Nature Symphony 
(specially recommended for Mahler and Strauss fans)

Joseph Marx - Eine Herbstsymphonie
 (full of textural detail, recommended for fans of Gurrelieder and Daphnis et Chloe)

Franz Schreker: Chamber Symphony 
(somewhere in between the recommendations above)


----------



## Haydn man

violadude said:


> Most of the "obscure" or "unjustly neglected" Romantic era symphonists end up boring the hell out of me, not all though.


I guess that's why they got those accolades in the first place


----------



## PetrB

spokanedaniel said:


> I guess I'm the poster you are referring to. I never said there's nothing worthwhile about 20th century and later classical music, just that it bores me.
> ... move away from tunes and harmony and you lose me.


LOL. I said it earlier: no 'this bores me' in this thread should be taken as a judgement that the music / composers which do bore the individual are 'without value,' just of no value or interest to the person who just does not care for it.

I could take issue, and will only a little, in good humor, about what you call 'tunes' and 'harmony,' because even those are not beholdin' to stay within the confines of one listener's personal definition, i.e. the later stuff has tunes, and clearly "harmony" unless they are single note / single line pieces. But it is understood what you meant,_* "Not tuneful or Harmonious... to you." *_Still, anyone wanting to name melody / harmony and its supposed absence in the music they don't care for is better off realizing that is not enough of a legitimate criticism, but more announces that critic's personal limits


----------



## PetrB

Haydn man said:


> I guess that's why they got those accolades in the first place


Not really... the 'resurrection' of interest in the Medtners, et alia partially has to do with a public resistance to the more modern / contemporary, and this leads to an increased interest in 'more romantic, late romantic, please,' even if those composers are competent but not nearly as strongly appealing as the 'first tier' from the same period. The public who most prefer the romantics and can not / will not get into later music 'want more,' so it has been looked into, found worthy, and they are supplied with more 'like what they like and want,' which is also a pragmatic move on the part of orchestral programmers and recording companies -- who then boost their revenues.

Too, whether I like them or not, those 'second tier' composers from any period aren't _bad composers,_ just a bit less interesting than the ones who made the bigger and more lasting impression.


----------



## PetrB

clavichorder said:


> Are you thinking of someone in particular? Raff is not that interesting to me, but Glazunov is nice. Balakirev is nice. I sort of like Berwald, even though he doesn't have much in the way of themes.


For me, I just cannot get why there is a fanbase for Medtner, or any number of a lot of the other mid to late 'second tier' romantics. Being 'what I am,' I certainly 'get' that they knew how to compose, that composer X was capable of some 'interesting' development within the old symphonic forms, etc. But overall, that body of rep from the second tier guys 'just says nothing' to me, which is of course as much 'about me' as as it is them.

My 'pet theory' is that some who just don't care for much later music are that hungry for 'more like' that they will eagerly and happily eat up what I consider far less interesting 'second tier' composers' works, i.e. "Hey, great! More romantic and its not bad."

My appetites for the romantic and late romantics is already quite sated by the large body of works from those 'first tier' composers, ergo, I'm not at all eager or much interested in the 'more like.'

(_Vive la difference!_)


----------



## OlivierM

I don't know if it's the right term, but "hunting" music. You know those pieces with lots of horn, with horn solo parts. I'm not a big fan of wind instruments, which, I believe, are put to a better use in contemporary compositions.
I can't stand the harpsichord, and more generally that "musique de cour", in which trills are permanently added as ornamentations.
I have always found most operas and ballets uninteresting, if not ridiculous.

When I was younger and classical music was only reaching my ears through the radio, those were the types of works that were broadcast, and surely what put me away from listening to classical music for such a long time.

Time to wear a bulletproof vest, I guess


----------



## hpowders

MoonlightSonata said:


> Was that - was that a Brahms reference?


Brahms, possibly; Groucho Marx, also.


----------



## Guest

OlivierM said:


> I don't know if it's the right term, but "hunting" music. You know those pieces with lots of horn, with horn solo parts. I'm not a big fan of wind instruments, which, I believe, are put to a better use in contemporary compositions.
> I can't stand the harpsichord, and more generally that "musique de cour", in which trills are permanently added as ornamentations.
> I have always found most operas and ballets uninteresting, if not ridiculous.
> 
> When I was younger and classical music was only reaching my ears through the radio, those were the types of works that were broadcast, and surely what put me away from listening to classical music for such a long time.
> 
> Time to wear a bulletproof vest, I guess


I'll join you in a vest then. Opera and ballet were for many years occasional reminders why I didn't like classical music.


----------



## hpowders

Anything with the name Lohengrin in the title.


----------



## starthrower

Any baroque music with recorders. When i was a kid, they have us a plastic one at school. Called it a flut-o-phone.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

starthrower said:


> Any baroque music with recorders. When i was a kid, they have us a plastic one at school. Called it a flut-o-phone.


Flut-o-phone?! I think "recorder" would be easier...


----------



## trazom

starthrower said:


> Any baroque music with recorders. When i was a kid, they have us a plastic one at school. Called it a flut-o-phone.


At my elementary school we also had to play on those plastic Yamaha recorders as part of our music education program. At the end of our 4th and 5th grade school year we had to memorize a couple simple pieces and perform in front of our parents. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I dislike the "Ode to Joy" theme.


----------



## Oscarf

trazom said:


> At my elementary school we also had to play on those plastic Yamaha recorders as part of our music education program. At the end of our 4th and 5th grade school year we had to memorize a couple simple pieces and perform in front of our parents. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I dislike the "Ode to Joy" theme.


Glad to find out that the plastic recorder thing is multinational (and multigenerational, my children are going through it now after I did more than 30 years ago) I wonder if it helps anyone love music. In my case it adid not help, I love music but also hate the baroque recorder concertos


----------



## clavichorder

PetrB said:


> For me, I just cannot get why there is a fanbase for Medtner, or any number of a lot of the other mid to late 'second tier' romantics. Being 'what I am,' I certainly 'get' that they knew how to compose, that composer X was capable of some 'interesting' development within the old symphonic forms, etc. But overall, that body of rep from the second tier guys 'just says nothing' to me, which is of course as much 'about me' as as it is them.
> 
> My 'pet theory' is that some who just don't care for much later music are that hungry for 'more like' that they will eagerly and happily eat up what I consider far less interesting 'second tier' composers' works, i.e. "Hey, great! More romantic and its not bad."
> 
> My appetites for the romantic and late romantics is already quite sated by the large body of works from those 'first tier' composers, ergo, I'm not at all eager or much interested in the 'more like.'
> 
> (_Vive la difference!_)


The pet theory has no place imposing itself on the thought processes of those who like the music, but you may have it to yourself.

Poor Medtner is your scapegoat. Frankly, I believe Medtner(who did not write a single symphony and whose style is best appreciated in his piano miniatures) is more than mere 2nd tier, though he is not 1st. He is very excellent at many things, original in style and form, but suffers from dryness nonetheless, and that can be off putting. I think you are way too harsh on his music. And you are probably focusing on the pieces that you like the least too, I'm guessing.


----------



## clavichorder

starthrower said:


> Any baroque music with recorders. When i was a kid, they have us a plastic one at school. Called it a flut-o-phone.


But this music should redeem recorders for you...


----------



## starthrower

clavichorder said:


> But this music should redeem recorders for you...


Probably haven't heard the right pieces. I hear this stuff on classical radio, but most of it sounds like polite dinner music.


----------



## hpowders

Any music with the name "Traviata" in the title.


----------



## ahammel

violadude said:


> (or even neo-romantic)


I frequently get about ten minutes into a "neo-Romantic" piece and start wondering why I don't just listen to Bruckner instead.


----------



## PetrB

clavichorder said:


> The pet theory has no place imposing itself on the thought processes of those who like the music, but you may have it to yourself.


Pet is the key word, and one should never assume that others will either take care of your pet, and you never just 'spring' a pet as a gift on anyone without checking with them first 



clavichorder said:


> Frankly, I believe Medtner(who did not write a single symphony and whose style is best appreciated in his piano miniatures) is more than mere 2nd tier, though he is not 1st. He is very excellent at many things, original in style and form, but *suffers from dryness nonetheless, and that can be off putting*. I think you are way too harsh on his music. And you are probably focusing on the pieces that you like the least too, I'm guessing.


I find any and all of the basic themes he comes up with pretty banal. Call me shallow, I like that part of a piece to also have some zip or pith to it -- so regardless of 'how well he works and varies, develops' those ideas, or "has merit in style and form," I find style and form as a standard without the content more than dry, but meaningless... i.e. all pretty superficial. It is what I would call the lack of content, or the quality of the content -- running through the piece as it were, which I find off-putting, or better put, just does not pull me in at all. The craft may be very high, but the object just dull as can be.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

Any music with the phrase, "marteau sans" in the title, especially when the title begins with "le" and ends with "maître".


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Oscarf said:


> Glad to find out that the plastic recorder thing is multinational (and multigenerational, my children are going through it now after I did more than 30 years ago) I wonder if it helps anyone love music. In my case it adid not help, I love music but also hate the baroque recorder concertos


It is, I have realised it has recently replaced the 'music class' (nothing to do with proper music but just really stupid 'musical' games, some trivial definitions, learning about dead European-derived dances, listening to the teacher play his guitar, no mention of any classical music or composer, etc) in the high-schools of my country. I think whomever is in charge of the curriculum (both this one and the previous one) is an idiot undeserving of whatever income he derives from his decisions.


----------



## Chronochromie

hpowders said:


> Any music with the name "Traviata" in the title.


Replace with "Trovatore" and I agree.


----------



## Chronochromie

MoonlightSonata said:


> Any music with the phrase, "marteau sans" in the title, especially when the title begins with "le" and ends with "maître".


I've yet to find any work by Boulez remotely likeable.


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> Not really... the 'resurrection' of interest in the Medtners, et alia partially has to do with a public resistance to the more modern / contemporary, and this leads to an increased interest in 'more romantic, late romantic, please,' even if those composers are competent but not nearly as strongly appealing as the 'first tier' from the same period. The public who most prefer the romantics and can not / will not get into later music 'want more,' so it has been looked into, found worthy, and they are supplied with more 'like what they like and want,' which is also a pragmatic move on the part of orchestral programmers and recording companies -- who then boost their revenues.
> 
> Too, whether I like them or not, those 'second tier' composers from any period aren't _bad composers,_ just a bit less interesting than the ones who made the bigger and more lasting impression.


I think the main reason we are hearing more from second- and third-rate Romantic composers is that "musical archaeology" has been busy for decades digging up more second- and third-rate music of _all_ periods for our discovery and pleasure. It didn't start with Romanticism; it merely got around to the Romantic era more recently than it did earlier periods, in tandem with, and as a result of, the period/authentic performance practice movement, which began with early music and has worked its way forward in time.

Me, I think it's fantastic. Whether or not Marschner, Reinecke, Jenner, Heise, Sgambati, Thuille, Martucci, Alfano, Diepenbrock, et al. have staying power, I want to know about them, what they did, their times, and their relationship to the great composers we used to think were the real representatives of those times. So, apparently, do a lot of other people. And the way to know these things is above all to be able to hear the music itself. A lot of it is forgettable, interesting to hear once or twice. Some of it is pretty damn good or even better. And there are now great recorded performances that show it at its best.

People who wish that the classical music audience would turn its focus more to contemporary music may look askance at this enthusiasm for the past. Maybe they should remember that the present will soon _be_ the past. With so much recorded documentation, and more coming every day (to the delight of the curious), the "past" isn't what it used to be.


----------



## Woodduck

Der Leiermann said:


> I've yet to find any work by Boulez remotely likeable.


Texture. Think texture. Boulez is a genius of surfaces. He may be more than that, but that's as far as I've got with him.


----------



## aleazk

Woodduck said:


> Texture. Think texture. Boulez is a genius of surfaces. He may be more than that, but that's as far as I've got with him.


What do you think of his 2nd Piano Sonata? I find the dialogue of the gestures there to be quite "meaty" in the sense I think you refer. In particular, more than in his later pieces, which, I agree to some extent, focus more on textures.


----------



## tdc

Purcell wrote some really outstanding pieces for recorder.


----------



## Woodduck

aleazk said:


> What do you think of his 2nd Piano Sonata? I find the dialogue of the gestures there to be quite "meaty" in the sense I think you refer. In particular, more than in his later pieces, which, I agree to some extent, focus more on textures.


Yes, gestural more than textural. Perhaps I really only like Boulez when he can show how inventive he can be with instrumental colors and the nuances of surfaces (I just listened to _Derive 1_ recently and was fascinated). I hear that as his Debussy heritage. When he's reduced to the sound of a piano, as here, his material can get my attention initially but really doesn't speak to me or draw me back. I can't say I've listened to a lot of him though.


----------



## hpowders

Any music with "Polovtsian" in the title.


----------



## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> Texture. Think texture. Boulez is a genius of surfaces. He may be more than that, but that's as far as I've got with him.


Le marteau is fascinating to me in the fact that every motif and gesture is related, and I love things like the end of one of the movements (commentaire 3?) where the instruments break up the earlier melodic line amongst various registers and colors, with even the percussion taking part.

That and the gorgeous texture, of course.


----------



## tdc

starthrower said:


> Probably haven't heard the right pieces. I hear this stuff on classical radio, but most of it sounds like polite dinner music.


Just wanted to add in reference to the Purcell piece I posted above, (like a lot of Purcell's work) it uses a lot of dissonance. I find the harmonies in the work are quite edgy. From that perspective alone I don't think this piece could ever qualify as "polite dinner music". It is in fact more dissonant than most Beethoven and the majority of music in the (later) Classical era.


----------



## hpowders

violadude said:


> I didn't really have anyone in mind. I just know whenever I am told to check out some obscure Romantic (or even neo-romantic) composer I end up being pretty bored with the music. I like Rangstrom alright, Glazunov isn't bad from what I've heard but I don't often choose to listen to him. I've never heard any of Berwald's music.


Yes, which simply conforms WHY these composers are obscure. It's no accident.


----------



## isorhythm

Schumann, almost all of it. I recognize this as my own failing, but I just don't get it.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

isorhythm said:


> Schumann, almost all of it. I recognize this as my own failing, but I just don't get it.


If you haven't listened to them already, _Kinderscenen_ and the Album for the Young are very good.


----------



## hpowders

Any old-fashioned performances of Bach, Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart slow movements with slides and heavy vibrato not only bore me to tears but can literally make me ill.


----------



## aajj

Beethoven's Violin Concerto. I have tried listening several times but the first movement goes on forever and ever. Yes, a violin concerto of this scale had never been written before and he expanded the form, paved the way for others. I respect the achievement, i just don't want to sit through it.


----------



## Chronochromie

aajj said:


> Beethoven's Violin Concerto. I have tried listening several times but the first movement goes on forever and ever. Yes, a violin concerto of this scale had never been written before and he expanded the form, paved the way for others. I respect the achievement, i just don't want to sit through it.


That is exactly how I feel about Beethoven's VC.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

Vocal music with excessive vibrato. MAKE IT STOP!


----------



## elgar's ghost

Perhaps I might have an epiphany one day but I've always found Handel's chamber output fairly underwhelming.


----------



## aajj

Der Leiermann said:


> That is exactly how I feel about Beethoven's VC.


Good to know i am not alone on this!

I might as well add that i feel the same about Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto 'Emperor.' Though the length is not in question, the whole thing leaves me cold. The middle movement strikes me as completely aimless the way the writing meanders around the keyboard. I'd rather take a nap.



MoonlightSonata said:


> Vocal music with excessive vibrato. MAKE IT STOP!


I feel this way about vocals in all musical genres.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mozart Horn Concertos. Yawwn! and Brahms' Academic Festival Overture. Even the title repells me.


----------



## millionrainbows

PianoCoach said:


> I find John Cage 4'33" the most boring piece in the repertoire. (haha) Can anyone beat that.


How can it be boring? It sounds different every time it is performed, if you are listening.


----------



## hpowders

OP: La Mer by Debussy.


----------



## millionrainbows

If the criteria for "boring" means "unchanging, and without variety," then, objectively, La Mont Young wrote the most boring music with his single, unchanging sustained tone works. There is literally no horizontal dimension, or harmony; it is just a single sustained sine tone.


----------



## aajj

My idea of "boring" on this thread is completely subjective, rather than based on the properties of the music itself. I enjoy the repetition of certain Minimalist works by Glass and Reich, for example, but i have been bored senseless by many Romantic era symphonies and concertos.


----------



## Leonius

Those 19th century music and some Romantic pieces in which I just can't find the melody.


----------



## spradlig

Bravo! A fellow Brahms enthusiast! A few days ago I opined that Shostakovich is the Rodney Dangerfield of the classical world, but after reading this thread, it seems Dmitri has some competition for the title!

I find it difficult to listen to more than 20 minutes or so of almost _any_ opera. You can probably guess some of the exceptions. But I'll poke fun at Wagner here anyway (disclaimer: anyone who could compose the _Siegfried Idyll_ and the best snippets of the _Ring_ cycle that one often hears is of course a great composer. If I thought Wagner were a bad composer I wouldn't spend so much time making fun of him  :












Jeff N said:


> I couldn't make it through Tristan und Isolde. In fact, most of Wagner bores me. Brahms, however, is my favorite composer so he never bores me! I can listen to the same piece everyday for a month and not get tired of it.


----------



## hpowders

Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Literally bores me to tears. Dullest thing I ever heard.


----------



## Albert7

No classical music is boring to me honestly.


----------



## Brahmatist

Quite so. Try watching Robert Altman's "Nashville".


----------



## Brahmatist

Skilmarilion said:


> Is it even possible to be "bored to tears"?


Quite so. Try watching Robert Altman's "Nashville".


----------



## dantejones

Havergall Brian, just about anything, but especially his debut _Gothic Symphony_.......all two hours of it.

Also, the original _Turandot_ music by CMvWeber....it's comically trite


----------



## Dim7

99% of romantic era non-piano concertos

Overlong string quartets/quintets

10 minute passages of a solo flute playing bunch of whole notes in Bruckner's and Shostakovich's symphonies


----------



## hpowders

Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor.


----------



## Dim7

Dim7 said:


> Overlong string quartets/quintets


Except Schoenberg's first string quartet.



hpowders said:


> Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor.


Wrong.


----------



## Becca

I once went to a concert where there were not one but two Mozart piano concerti - I can't ever remember being so bored at a concert and swore to never go to another, a promise that I have kept.

Beyond that boredom has more to do with individual performances. Even an all-Beethoven concert can be tedious if the conductor is Walter Weller with the Philharmonia.


----------



## hpowders

The Beethoven Ninth Symphony in that awful, almost two hour, slow as molasses performance that mahlerian provided us on YouTube.

How the heck did that guy ever get his conducting license?? :lol::lol:


----------



## KenOC

There used to be a streaming version of the 9th on the web, electronically stretched to 24 hours. It repeated over and over daily. It was fun to listen and try to figure out just where in the symphony you were.


----------



## hpowders

KenOC said:


> There used to be a streaming version of the 9th on the web, electronically stretched to 24 hours. It repeated over and over daily. It was fun to listen and try to figure out just where in the symphony you were.


I think ISIS is using that on some of its captives. The lucky ones have arsenic capsules under their tongues.


----------



## hpowders

OP: Any Beethoven Piano Concerto played by someone other than Beethoven.


----------



## Itullian

hpowders said:


> The Beethoven Ninth Symphony in that awful, almost two hour, slow as molasses performance that mahlerian provided us on YouTube.
> 
> How the heck did that guy ever get his conducting license?? :lol::lol:


Learned from M Feldman


----------



## Woodduck

I'm not easily bored by classical music. I can find something interesting about almost anything, at least for a few minutes. Therefore, I don't know why the second (slow) movement of Schubert's _"Unfinished" Symphony_ begins lulling me to sleep almost from its first note. It did fifty years ago and it still does. Do you suppose he wanted us to drop off so that we wouldn't notice that he couldn't think up two more movements?


----------



## Itullian

French and Russian opera, except for a scant few.


----------



## Revel

Chopin. I've tried.


----------



## PierreN

leafman said:


> This is an interesting thread that proves that beauty is solely in the eyes of the beholder. Music and art is, by definition, a very subjective thing and one person's masterpiece can be another person's disaster.


Yes, the thread is interesting. But I thought that it proved nearly the opposite: not that beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder, but rather that most people have their eyes closed most of the time.


----------



## Arsakes

Itullian said:


> French and Russian opera, except for a scant few.


Russian is cool, but French is annoying!
Indeed German and Italian Operas are the best ones. English Operas are kinda lame...


----------



## Headphone Hermit

^^^^ so _Peter Grimes_ is 'lame'? Oh, come on! :scold:


----------



## KenOC

Peter Grimes isn't lame, but I can't work up much sympathy despite all his pretty tunes.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

hpowders said:


> The Beethoven Ninth Symphony in that awful, almost two hour, slow as molasses performance that mahlerian provided us on YouTube.
> 
> How the heck did that guy ever get his conducting license?? :lol::lol:


Youtube now has a speed button, you can set it to 2 so that it goes twice as fast. Problem solved.


----------



## BrokenFingers

Everything by Mozart and Vivaldi I've ever listened to strikes me as boring and overly simple.


----------



## sweetviolin




----------



## Sloe

New York Counterpoint by Steve Reich. It lasts only 12 minutes but it feels like an hour.






There was a piano concerto by John Cage someone linked to in another thread and I am sorry to say that was really boring too.


----------



## sosophisticated

Elizabethan consort music, the stuff with viols. It seems strange because in contrast I LOVE Elizabethan keyboard music!


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I don't think any classical music bores me to tears...Norwegian, Swedish & German "dance band" music does so...CAN'T STAND IT!!!


----------



## Klassic

Music that bores me to tears: tons of stuff by *Haydn* and *Mozart* (not all of it, but lots of it).


----------



## Blancrocher

Most of the music I've previously mentioned in the "pieces that have blown you away recently" thread, probably.


----------



## Strange Magic

Heard too many times, and the music just doesn't hold up under the strain: Dvorak 9th, Mussorgsky Pictures and Bald Mountain, Rimsky Scheherazade. Creaking under the strain: Liszt PCs 1 & 2, Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet, Symphonies 5 & 6. Yet many similar- seeming works sound fresh as a daisy to me: Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony &'PC, all Rachmaninoff, Dvorak 7th, Grieg PC, etc. No good explanation other than "some works got it and some works don't".

Separate problem: Saint-Saens piano concertos. The composer was a virtuoso player and, when he chose, a fine composer (Organ Symphony). I love piano concertos--my favorite genre--so I am very disappointed at the back seat the piano takes in the S-S concertos; endless rippling arpeggios and other space-fillers. I have the Pascal Rogé/Charles Dutoit set, and even the program notes slyly allude to the composer's "vamping 'til ready" and the trademark "civilized world-weariness" of the slow movements. S-S certainly had enough examples at hand on the place the piano is to have in a proper piano concerto, but somehow never executed (to my satisfaction) in any of his efforts. Now he's going to hate me.


----------



## Dim7

Gotta be some avant-garde drilling noise piece...


----------



## hpowders

The usual suspects:

Schubert Symphony No. 9

Schubert Trout Quintet

Beethoven Symphony No. 8

Bruckner Symphony No. 4

Debussy Preludes

Bach Brandenburg Concertos

Mozart Flute Concerto No. 1


----------



## Klassic

Strange Magic said:


> Heard too many times, and the music just doesn't hold up under the strain: Dvorak 9th,


Now this is interesting. Thinking about what you said it does occur to me that parts of this symphony are kinda gimmicky.


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit

I've never been able to figure out if it is the people who eat the spiced-up food who acquired a greater sensitivity, or if they lost it due to over-stimulation and the people who eat bland food retained it.......it's relevant because a lot of music is boring to me and I wonder if it's my fault for being over-saturated.


----------



## Klassic

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> I've never been able to figure out if it is the people who eat the spiced-up food who acquired a greater sensitivity, or if they lost it due to over-stimulation and the people who eat bland food retained it.......it's relevant because a lot of music is boring to me and I wonder if it's my fault for being over-saturated.


You could have ADHD. I do like your thought here.


----------



## brotagonist

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I don't think any classical music bores me to tears...


You took the words out of my mouth. I can be so opinionated about CM and yet, when it comes to disliking or being bored by it... No! It doesn't happen. I love hearing favourites I've heard for the past 40 years as much as pieces I've only recently discovered.


----------



## Pugg

I don't listen to music that bothers me to tears, time is to precious thank you very much :lol:


----------



## brotagonist

Luckily, teats don't bother all of us men :lol:


----------



## Casebearer

Well, they might, you know.:tiphat:


----------



## Casebearer

Music that has extramusical goals, especially Dance Music.


----------



## Pugg

brotagonist said:


> Luckily, teats don't bother all of us men :lol:


You got it in once


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit

Klassic said:


> You could have ADHD. I do like your thought here.


I don't have ADHD, I actually have OCD, so I tend to focus on the same things over and over again.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

I'd be funny if somebody came up with ABCD... a compulsion to sing the alphabet song when anxious.


----------



## hpowders

Any Bach, Haydn or Mozart orchestral performance played with excessive violin vibrato and slides in the "Romantic" manner.


----------



## 20centrfuge

There's sure plenty of Bach and Beethoven that I find quite boring (my brain craves more dissonance). But there's still enough music from them that I find absolutely sublime such that I would never knock them as composers. 

Morton Feldman generally bores me. 

Though I love Sibelius and would count his 2nd and 5th symphonies as some of the most important works I've ever heard, his Violin Concerto does absolutely nothing whatsoever for me, and I think he generally has composed more than his share of rubbish.

Truthfully, encountering works that invigorate me is becoming more and more rare, the more I listen. That's why I turn to this forum to try to get ideas of new things to listen to.


----------



## Ilarion

Pachelbel Canon - aka Pachel's Hell...

To my highly respected forum colleague(I forgot the colleagues forum handle) whose intellect I highly respect and who took issue with my denunciation of the Canon in another thread, I say: sorry, dear colleague - the canon is just too much for me to bear...


----------



## Cosmos

I've already posted here, over a year ago, but I'm surprised I didn't mention a few other big names that don't speak to me:

*Berlioz* - Every work by his that i've listened to has some programatic gimmick that's more interesting than the actual music. Though I respect his contributions to the orchestra

*Holst* - Similar to Berlioz up there. His popular Planets suite sounds too cinematic to me...a cheesey hollywood film score

*Webern* - I've tried to follow along, but I can't. Despite his brevity, 10 minutes of Webern feels thrice as long

*Hindemith* - I find no appeal in any of his major works


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Sigh - I only have to go through a few pages of this thread to find that pretty much every composer I like is claimed to bore someone else to tears.

Looks like a tremendous advert for the beneficial powers of classical music


----------



## Sloe

Cosmos said:


> *Holst* - Similar to Berlioz up there. His popular Planets suite sounds too cinematic to me...a cheesey hollywood film score


He did compose other music.


----------



## DavidA

Cosmos said:


> I've already posted here, over a year ago, but I'm surprised I didn't mention a few other big names that don't speak to me:
> 
> *Berlioz* - Every work by his that i've listened to has some programatic gimmick that's more interesting than the actual music. Though I respect his contributions to the orchestra
> 
> *Holst* - *Similar to Berlioz up there. His popular Planets suite sounds too cinematic to me...a cheesey hollywood film score
> *
> *Webern* - I've tried to follow along, but I can't. Despite his brevity, 10 minutes of Webern feels thrice as long
> 
> *Hindemith* - I find no appeal in any of his major works


Maybe the Holst Planets you listen to is different from the one I have!


----------



## Cosmos

Sloe said:


> He did compose other music.


I've tried a few other works. Nothing stuck to me.


----------



## Bulldog

20centrfuge said:


> There's sure plenty of Bach and Beethoven that I find quite boring (my brain craves more dissonance). But there's still enough music from them that I find absolutely sublime such that I would never knock them as composers.


Sounds like you just did knock them.


----------



## manyene

Any type of pop music based on three or four basic chords and played so loudly it kills conversation. Boring, boring, boring. And often with banal lyrics to match.


----------



## hpowders

Bruckner's Fifth Symphony while I'm peeling onions.


----------



## trazom

hpowders said:


> Bruckner's Fifth Symphony while I'm peeling onions.


You cook a lot of onion-based meals!


----------



## helenora

manyene said:


> Any type of pop music based on three or four basic chords and played so loudly it kills conversation. Boring, boring, boring. And often with banal lyrics to match.


it means pop music , right :lol:
I agree with you.


----------



## Weston

Today one of Vivaldi's Four Seasons came up on my iPod. I loaded it out of a sense of civic responsibility to listen to it - you know, once a decade anyway.

And, man is it boring!

Doodle-dibby doob diddle - Doodle-dibby doob diddle - 
Doodle-dibby doob diddle - Doodle-dibby doob diddle - 
Doodle-dibby doob diddle - Doodle-dibby doob diddle - 
Doodle-dibby doob diddle - Doodle-dibby doob diddle - 
Doodle-iddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dibby-diddle-diddle,

Doodle-dibby doob diddle - Doodle-dibby doob diddle - 
Doodle-dibby doob diddle - Doodle-dibby doob diddle - 
_ad nauseum . . ._

I usually let a file cycle through random play at least twice before removing it and making room for something else in my collection, but I think I'll make an exception.


----------



## themadguitarist

Vivaldi for sure. You are not wrong- they do all sound the same.


----------



## sweetviolin

Lars-Erik Larsson: Pastoralsvit, op. 19: Romance

Radio stations playing that should be put down!


----------



## Bruce

There are quite a few, but at the top (or bottom) of my list are Karamanov's Third Symphony and Third Piano Concerto, and Vladigerov's Piano Concerto No. 1. Almost makes me angry.


----------



## sweetviolin

Bruce said:


> There are quite a few, but at the top (or bottom) of my list are Karamanov's Third Symphony and Third Piano Concerto, and Vladigerov's Piano Concerto No. 1. Almost makes me angry.


Probably composed on a boring Sunday. LOL


----------



## Richard8655

Pictures at an Exhibition... snooze.


----------



## Martyn Harper

Opera.

But this answer might say more about me than the music.


----------



## hpowders

Schubert's Trout Quintet when I'm peeling bermuda onions.


----------



## Morimur

Anything and everything by the dastardly minimalists.


----------



## violadude

I have to admit, whenever I'm listening to a traditional opera, a Passion, a Cantata, an Oratorio or anything like that I get really impatient with the recitatives. I just want to get back to the music! It's especially bad if the composer sounds like they're just trying to get through the recitatives as fast as possible and barely even makes an effort to make them sound coherent (Handel). 

It's also bad if the recitatives make up the majority of the work. I listened to "St. John Passion" by Heinrich Schutz. The music was beautiful, but there was so little of it! For every measly 1 minute of great music there was like 5 minutes of boring recitatives. Blech!


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## Clairvoyance Enough

I like the fugues in Bach's solo violin music. I have also never gotten farther than halfway through any of them.


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## Pugg

Martyn Harper said:


> Opera.
> 
> But this answer might say more about me than the music.


As long as you know it yourself


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## Pat Fairlea

Richard8655 said:


> Pictures at an Exhibition... snooze.


Oh, nononononono..... Not in the original piano version, surely? Beer in hand, volume up, lights off, and let Baba Yaga get to you.


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## Fugue Meister

Pat Fairlea said:


> Oh, nononononono..... Not in the original piano version, surely? Beer in hand, volume up, lights off, and let Baba Yaga get to you.


Agreed, especially when Khatia plays it, I'm so in love with her..






I tried to find the live video of her playing "pictures..." in it's entirety but they seem to have removed it... Anyway if you don't know her look up on youtube she's quite something, and she ain't bad to look at either.


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## Richard8655

Pat Fairlea said:


> Oh, nononononono..... Not in the original piano version, surely? Beer in hand, volume up, lights off, and let Baba Yaga get to you.


I can hardly wait for Baba Yaga and Battle of Unhatched Chicks. Crank up the black light, strobe, and discoball and you're in psychedelic heaven.


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## Pat Fairlea

Richard8655 said:


> I can hardly wait for Baba Yaga and Battle of Unhatched Chicks. Crank up the black light, strobe, and discoball and you're in psychedelic heaven.


Given Mussorgsky's fondness for getting boozed out of his skull, I think we're doing justice to Pictures! Definitely not boring.


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## Richard8655

Pat Fairlea said:


> Given Mussorgsky's fondness for getting boozed out of his skull, I think we're doing justice to Pictures! Definitely not boring.


Good point. Sounds like M might have been a crackhead today. Pictures is good if you like unequivocal program music like that telling stories. I guess I'm an absolutist.


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## sweetviolin

Joseph Martin Kraus is pretty boring!


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## clavichorder

sweetviolin said:


> Joseph Martin Kraus is pretty boring!


Inflammatory foolishness.


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## DiesIraeCX

clavichorder said:


> Inflammatory foolishness.


sweetviolin's post is "inflammatory"?


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## sweetviolin

clavichorder said:


> Inflammatory foolishness.


Each to their own likings.


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## hpowders

sweetviolin said:


> Each to their own likings.


Exactly! Tolerance is a virtue and a sign of maturity.

Whatever music anyone likes, it's fine!

Listen to what you like and please leave me be to listen to what I like.

What a wonderful world it could be!


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## hpowders

sweetviolin said:


> Joseph Martin Kraus is pretty boring!


Never heard of him, but since I respect you, I will avoid like the plague!


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## Headphone Hermit

^^^ Kraus' music is well worth exploring if you like late C18 music. Much of his output has been lost and working in Sweden and dying young didn't help establish his reputation. The 'Swedish Mozart' is a bit of an exaggerated sobriquet but nonetheless, its worth an hour of your time - try one of the Naxos symphonic works CDs


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## clavichorder

It was lazy of me to be inflammatory like that; it seems I can't get away with it. But really, Kraus is a very interesting composer, his small output of recorded symphonies rivalling the best middle period Haydn but with a curiously darker and contrapuntal quality. Definitely would not dismiss him, but then again, I don't entirely dismiss Dittersdorf, Salieri, or Kozeluch(Kraus is much better than these guys).

Swedish Mozart is not exaggerated in my opinion, but it is very misleading and inaccurate. Kraus was much less prolific, and his style is so different.


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## Alfacharger

Headphone Hermit said:


> ^^^ Kraus' music is well worth exploring if you like late C18 music. Much of his output has been lost and working in Sweden and dying young didn't help establish his reputation. The 'Swedish Mozart' is a bit of an exaggerated sobriquet but nonetheless, its worth an hour of your time - try one of the Naxos symphonic works CDs


I would suggest volume 3 from the Naxos set.


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## hpowders

Headphone Hermit said:


> ^^^ Kraus' music is well worth exploring if you like late C18 music. Much of his output has been lost and working in Sweden and dying young didn't help establish his reputation. The 'Swedish Mozart' is a bit of an exaggerated sobriquet but nonetheless, its worth an hour of your time - try one of the Naxos symphonic works CDs


So much to listen to....so little time! Thanks!


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## Clairvoyance Enough

Verdi and Rossini and Bizet and some others I've forgotten. Sometimes I come away from them feeling like the human voice actually limits and prevents melody. I don't actually believe that and I trust their reputations over what I'll continue to assume are shortcomings in my own taste, but woo boy. Not for me quite yet.


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## sweetviolin

hpowders said:


> Never heard of him, but since I respect you, I will avoid like the plague!


Cheap pop music.


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## violadude

sweetviolin said:


> Cheap pop music.


Seriously? What about this is "poppy" to you? 




Or this? 




Or this? 




Compared to all the Classical composers that one could somewhat reasonably be called "pop music" I'd say Krauss is definitely a cut or two above that.


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## Stirling

I can only wonder about Feldman SQ #2. It is long, boring, and monotonous. Play Bartok, but I will tell you, the was no one interested. Even the players - No Drama was much more interesting. The is a place for a piece of this nature, but with more variation than this. This was more about musicians fellating... grow up.


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## arpeggio

Wealthy hacks who use their money to support their delusion that they are real composers.

For example:

Richard Nanes
J. William Middendorf


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## Stirling

_Wealthy hacks who use their money to support their delusion that they are real composers.

For example:

Richard Nanes
J. William Middendorf
_
Amen to that ........


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## juliante

For some reason, I have a big block with Tchaikovsky. I find his symphonies lachrymosally turgid.


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## sweetviolin

violadude said:


> Seriously? What about this is "poppy" to you?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Or this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Or this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Compared to all the Classical composers that one could somewhat reasonably be called "pop music" I'd say Krauss is definitely a cut or two above that.


Still on the first one, and it's very nice. I was a bit fast judging him. :/ Thanks for the enlightenment!


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## violadude

sweetviolin said:


> Still on the first one, and it's very nice. I was a bit fast judging him. :/ Thanks for the enlightenment!


Well...that was a lot easier than usual.


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## Sloe

arpeggio said:


> Wealthy hacks who use their money to support their delusion that they are real composers.
> 
> For example:
> 
> Richard Nanes
> J. William Middendorf


I think a hack would be someone who is making music just for the money. Then these are certainly not Hacks. Richard Nanes wanted to give the World music. Unfortunately few people appreciated it. I always wondered why people came up with other names in the worst composer thread like Tjajkovskij and Schönberg who at least made music most people can listen to even consider to be very beautiful when there is Nanes whose music only appears as dull and boring.


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## dieter

Liszt; just about anything
Elgar: Nightmare of Gerontius.
Mendelssohn: Elijah
Shostakovich: 7th, 12th Sympnonies
Mahler: Symphony 8
Sibelius: Finlandia
Tchaikovsky: 1812
Beethoven: Wellington's Victory
Schoenberg: Everything he wrote
Berlioz: Lelio
Bellini, Donizzeti and Rossini, in his case most except the Missa Solenelle and the Sins of my Old Age


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## Sloe

dieter said:


> Sibelius: Finlandia
> Schoenberg: Everything he wrote
> Bellini,


How can someone consider Finlandia to be boring. Unbelievable!
A lot can be said about Schönberg but his music is at least not boring.
Norma is one of the most unboring operas ever.


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## dieter

Sloe said:


> How can someone consider Finlandia to be boring. Unbelievable!
> A lot can be said about Schönberg but his music is at least not boring.
> Norma is one of the most unboring operas ever.


I though the question was: what music do you find boring?
I love Sibelius but every time I hear Finlandia I say to myself, Man, you were better than that.
And, pardon me, but I find Schoenberg as boring as my best friend finds Bruckner boring. Bruckner is one of the Gods, in my estimation.


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## Richard8655

Also am not understanding how Finlandia can be boring. To me it's uplifting, emotional, and patriotic, and I can only imagine how it must have felt for Finns during the 2nd world war. Need to hear it in that context more as an anthem or national hymn than a concert work of art.


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## Sloe

dieter said:


> I though the question was: what music do you find boring?
> I love Sibelius but every time I hear Finlandia I say to myself, Man, you were better than that.
> And, pardon me, but I find Schoenberg as boring as my best friend finds Bruckner boring. Bruckner is one of the Gods, in my estimation.


If everyone just list what they find boring without protests it becomes a bit boring
Whatever I do not think boring are the best words to express dislike for either 
Finlandia or anything by Schönberg.


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## Pat Fairlea

dieter said:


> I though the question was: what music do you find boring?
> I love Sibelius but every time I hear Finlandia I say to myself, Man, you were better than that..


Exactly. It was written for a specific purpose and context, without which it becomes a rather dreary piece by a composer who could do so much more.


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## dieter

Richard8655 said:


> Also am not understanding how Finlandia can be boring. To me it's uplifting, emotional, and patriotic, and I can only imagine how it must have felt for Finns during the 2nd world war. Need to hear it in that context more as an anthem or national hymn than a concert work of art.


Though I care deeply about the suffering of the Finns during the 2nd world war, I don't see how Sibelius's Finlandia is relevant to their suffering. It's the same about the so called Leningrad Symphony. To me neither stand up as great music. Great propaganda, great nationalism, but that isn't what music is about for me.
Though I'll let you in to a little secret: I love Smetana's Ma Vlast so much I have 19 recordings. This is music where art transcends patriotism. So much so, in my case, that I quite often weep and become emotional when I listen to it. Now, considering it's a piece that revolves around Czech nationalism in the face of Germanic domination might be an insight in to the kind of fellow I am.
Ma Vlast stands up as MUSIC. It's repetitive, emphatic, emotional, jingoistic, all those things, but great things happen musically. They don't in Finlandia for me.
That's all I can say.


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## hpowders

Schubert's Trout Quintet played with or without peeling onions.


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## Richard8655

dieter said:


> Though I care deeply about the suffering of the Finns during the 2nd world war, I don't see how Sibelius's Finlandia is relevant to their suffering. It's the same about the so called Leningrad Symphony. To me neither stand up as great music. Great propaganda, great nationalism, but that isn't what music is about for me.
> Though I'll let you in to a little secret: I love Smetana's Ma Vlast so much I have 19 recordings. This is music where art transcends patriotism. So much so, in my case, that I quite often weep and become emotional when I listen to it. Now, considering it's a piece that revolves around Czech nationalism in the face of Germanic domination might be an insight in to the kind of fellow I am.
> Ma Vlast stands up as MUSIC. It's repetitive, emphatic, emotional, jingoistic, all those things, but great things happen musically. They don't in Finlandia for me.
> That's all I can say.


It comes down to a basic fact. Music either strikes you or it doesn't. Both Ma Vlast and Finlandia strike me as good music. If one or both of them didn't, I wouldn't say "the composer could do better". He already did in my opinion. It's the listener who doesn't accept it and there's nothing wrong with that.

I think Ma Vlast is just as propagandistic (I prefer patriotic) as Finlandia. You say Ma Vlast is about Czech nationalism (which you like in this piece) but earlier you say great nationalism isn't what music is about for you - a little contradictory. And it's not about suffering, but rather music that's emblematic of the country.


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## dieter

Richard8655 said:


> It comes down to a basic fact. Music either strikes you or it doesn't. Both Ma Vlast and Finlandia strike me as good music. If one or both of them didn't, I wouldn't say "the composer could do better". He already did in my opinion. It's the listener who doesn't accept it and there's nothing wrong with that.
> 
> I think Ma Vlast is just as propagandistic (I prefer patriotic) as Finlandia. You say Ma Vlast is about Czech nationalism (which you like in this piece) but earlier you say great nationalism isn't what music is about for you - a little contradictory. And it's not about suffering, but rather music that's emblematic of the country.


Once again, I think the quality of the music transcends its nationalism. And, in the end, I like it more, and in the end, I find Finlandia boring.
Contadictory? Who cares.


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## Medtnaculus

Brahms.

Some Schumann too but not as much.

Sorry to those who enjoy their works but I just can't seem to listen. His concertos are alright, and I can listen to the hungarian dances, but anything beyond that bores me to tears.

I'm not a huge fan of the German school of structure and such. Always been more of a fan of the romantic Russian composers or the French's use of colour and blending. Love the British school too among many others! The Russians and French are just my favourites.


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## KetchupOnIce

I can't seem to get into Brahms either, but the most boring for me is atonal, pop, and minimalist. Also Liszt doesn't do anything for me, at least not his b minor sonata or atonal bagatelle.


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## dieter

Philip Glass. How does he get away with it?


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