# Most Difficult Compositions to Enjoy (For You!)



## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

I am curious what you believe are the *most difficult works to comprehend/understand/appreciate* -- and namely, *enjoy*?

I will likely procure disdain and criticism for such an inquiry. But I am genuinely curious what the _individual _finds, well, to put it simply, _difficult_ to appreciate or listen to.

More importantly: do you know why? Does it frustrate you? Maybe you know, and you can speak precisely to the aural mutation you hear. Maybe you do not have any idea why you take offense to the work, and you try and try and try again to pacify the struggle. Maybe you have some anecdote that explains your opinions.

Accordingly, I hope you relay.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I'll start with the Boulez Second Sonata, having just confessed my incomprehension in the other thread.

One of my biggest difficulties is with the pitch content. Specifically, I can't hear what it is. I'm curious how many of you can.

Without pitch, I'm left with gestures, characterized by rhythm, attack, volume, density, degree of dissonance, register and voicing. I can hear how certain gestures recur here and there, but don't know why. I can hear how some parts sound vaguely like earlier parts - "development," I guess - but don't know why they are developed this way and not some other way.


----------



## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

What an excellent topic. I think Schoenberg's piano music requires an advanced appreciation for harmony. 

But let me try to be more uniform to the question, what did I struggle to comprehend and then come to appreciate after the struggle? Very early on I listened to Schoenberg's Transfigured Night. I remember the impression I had the first time I heard it, 'this sounds ugly, but serious.' I kept on listening, now all I hear is beauty.


----------



## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> One of my biggest difficulties is with the pitch content. Specifically, I can't hear what it is. I'm curious how many of you can.
> 
> Without pitch, I'm left with gestures...


This seems have become a standard brief against Boulez and Carter, and probably some other people. To which the obvious reply seems to me to be, "What's wrong with gestures?"



isorhythm said:


> why... this way and not some other way.


Well, why does a particular Mozart work have this tune and not some other tune as its second subject?

-----

re the OP - I get sort of anxious from listening for an extended period of time to Schönberg in what I'd sort of like to call his art deco period (commonly known as the 12 tone period); likewise Philip Glass, maybe especially in his most respectable, pre-_Satyagraha_ period - possibly because both sound to me like cases of what Charles Rosen called "music with a thesis" in reference to Gluck, except after Romanticism made it okay to be ugly.

In a different way, I find Elliott Carter and all "Downtown" music makes me feel kind of dirty for (different) ideological reasons (not meaning that stupid CIA canard) (as Wagner, for example, doesn't, simply because his ideology is too far removed in time).


----------



## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

Harold in Columbia said:


> ...
> 
> In a different way, I find Elliott Carter ... music makes me feel kind of dirty for (different) ideological reasons ...


Eliot Carter, S.Q. #3, the opening measures: exemplify the feeling. Or, at least, how I often feel first hearing his works.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I really don't have much "difficulty" listening to anything really. I usually find something I can enjoy about most Classical Music styles and genres/sub-genres. 

There's certain classical-crossover crap that is absolutely cringe worthy to me though. No, not the kind of crossover that, say, the Kronos Quartet does by blending their string quartet techniques with musical traditions from across the world. That s***'s awesome. 

No, I mean the kind of crossover that sounds like an overproduced pop ballad. The type that they usually play on tv and often turn the camera to people in the audience bawling their eyes out. I usually bawl my eyes out at this type of music too, because the sheer cheesiness of it all is overwhelming. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

Karl Jenkin's music often strikes me as this type of music, which is why I dislike his music so much.


----------



## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

I still struggle with Bruckner's symphonies and I don't know why. Maybe I wasn't genetically programmed to like them.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I agree that this is a great topic! I am sure it could go for eons.

I guess there is a difference between not liking something and finding something difficult to enjoy? But, they are kind of the same thing, too.

I just started scanning my collection database, when I realized that that would not likely get me far :lol: I pretty much like everything I have purchased, from a platonic like to an ecstatic love  Maybe my You Tube listening history will turn up something... Wait! I just thought of something 

A year or so ago, I listened to all of William Schuman's Symphonies at least once, if not twice. I really spent time on them, getting down on the living room floor with my eyes closed to concentrate on the music.

I felt that the music was all wrong. One 'phrase' (I'm not musically trained, so I don't speak eloquently about musical architecture) would lead to another and I could tell that this was silly, ridiculous, even. I found myself snickering at the absurdity of the composer's ideas. No composer would do anything like he did. It just didn't go. These things should not lead to where they were going. The music was harsh and seemed to lack refinement in instrumentation. It was crass. Everything about it was just not right. I concluded that all of it was nothing more than cheap kitsch.

Just a few weeks ago, I was thinking that I ought to revisit a few of these Symphonies to see if I still felt as I had about them.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Oh, wait, I thought of something else. I find many of Penderecki's late style works to be a little difficult to listen to because he seems to rely on a handful of very obvious figurations and tricks.


----------



## Le Peel (May 15, 2015)

I have trouble enjoying, I don't know what else to call it, "atonal" music.

However, I have been slowly warming up to this:








trazom said:


> I still struggle with Bruckner's symphonies and I don't know why. Maybe I wasn't genetically programmed to like them.


You could try listening to individual movements, such as the 3rd movement from his 8th.


----------



## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> A year or so ago, I listened to all of William Schuman's Symphonies at least once, if not twice. I really spent time on them, getting *down on the living room floor with my eyes closed* to concentrate on the music.
> 
> ...that I ought to revisit a few of these Symphonies to see if I still felt as I had about them.


Obviously, I did not "like" your post for the opinion. I greatly enjoy *Schuman's *music.

But I loved your placement and thought about his works. (1) I often "get down on the living room floor" and close my eyes, but I am not always listening to music when I do; (2) I do not disagree with your comments on his music. I too find that phrases are abruptly connected -- i.e., one motive just runs into the other, or they may connect technically and structurally, but they do not connect _cleanly_, in an aural sense. But I love this! His _Third_ is full of strict phrasing and distinct sets of themes, yet the narrative is still compelling and very much impressing for me.

My point being: I enjoy how people can view the music similarly -- in structure -- but feel so differently about it emotionally. Objectivism is crap!


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

^ Interesting! Thanks, Avey. That put what I am hearing in a more comprehensible form—and it might even help me get over my dislike.

And violadude, I think I know what you mean about Penderecki's later works. While I do enjoy this period, he does seem to have sort of run out of ideas and makes up for it by reusing a lot of material. Still, I think there is some nice music there.

Oh, Le Peel, that Webern work is ravishing  Thanks for pointing it out. I haven't heard it for so long and am now enjoying Gould's interpretation.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I will answer the question based on appreciation and enjoyment. I don't feel I truly understand any music so not understanding a work is not a problem for me. There are many works I do not presently enjoy, but based on progress made during the past few years, I can see myself coming to enjoy some of those works in time. There is one genre that I have made essentially no progress in enjoying works - electronic. I occasionally listen to a selection of these works, and sometimes I find them interesting. But I can't say that I enjoy them as music. 

I suspect that at least part of the problem is that I don't hear the works as music. I hear them as sounds that seem divorced from music. I don't have much experience listening to such works, and perhaps with more listening I would gradually hear more similarities with works that do sound musical to me. There are still many non-electronic works that I'm working on so electronic work are a lower priority for now (and maybe always).


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Avey said:


> Obviously, I did not "like" your post for the opinion. I greatly enjoy *Schuman's *music.
> 
> But I loved your placement and thought about his works. (1) I often "get down on the living room floor" and close my eyes, but I am not always listening to music when I do; (2) I do not disagree with your comments on his music. I too find that phrases are abruptly connected -- i.e., one motive just runs into the other, or they may connect technically and structurally, but they do not connect _cleanly_, in an aural sense. But I love this! His _Third_ is full of strict phrasing and distinct sets of themes, yet the narrative is still compelling and very much impressing for me.
> 
> My point being: I enjoy how people can view the music similarly -- in structure -- but feel so differently about it emotionally. Objectivism is crap!


Speaking of subjective impressions, I find the late symphonies, especially the slow sections, exceptionally fluent - to the extent that a more typical sort of music seems to have a sort of manufactured and artificial shape to it in comparison. Perhaps the strange musical logic that you talk about is partly responsible for creating this impression in me, though I haven't thought of it before. I suppose it could be that paradoxically, by being more unpredictable, it starts sounding less contrived and more genuine and "right".

At any rate, I find his use of harmony and polyphony masterful, and I like his unique voice. I've tried playing music in that style on the piano, and though I lack familiarity with his idiom, I suspect he makes his compositions sound "easier" than they are.

By the way, I think "Judith" belongs in the same class and category with his late symphonies. Anyone who enjoys those symphonies should also give a hearing to that ballet.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

the most difficult piece to enjoy for me would be without a single doubt La legend d'eer composed by Xenakis. I really like some of his works (yesterday I was listening with great pleasure again to his Metastasis) but everytime I've tried listen to La legend I have a terrible headache after few minutes, and not in a figurative sense. That piece makes me feel real physical pain.


----------



## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Elliot Carter. Why? I don't know.


----------



## Guest (Jan 11, 2016)

I assume this thread is for things we find difficult whilst perceiving value all the same, not just things we don't enjoy because we find that they suck.

In those circumstances, the most prominent example for me is some of the works of *Robert Ashley*. I really love _Automatic Writing_, and I've found enjoyable moments in _Atalanta_, but on the whole I'm still sort of waiting for a breakthrough.


----------



## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Over the past two and a half years, since I've been a TC member and have been deliberately trying to widen my exposure to 'serious' music, two recordings / works stand out as having been especially difficult to enjoy. I suppose in both cases this was because I did not manage to experience the sounds as music at all (unlike, say, Spectralists like Gerard Grisey or Tristan Murail, or indeed some Boulez compositions, which I found difficult but musical, so I could eventually get some 'purchase' on what I was hearing). 

Those were free improvisation group AMM's 1996 release "Before Driving to the Chapel We Took Coffee with Rick and Jennifer", and La Monte Young's The Second Dream of The High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China (1962) in which the performers play "long sustained tones that beat against each other on four pitches in frequency ratios which can be isolated in the harmonic structures of the sounds of power plants and telephone poles. The buzzing drones move from side to side like a shamanistic evocation as the tunings change over the nearly 90-minute duration". I failed to get beyond about 20 minutes. When I said to my son that I could not experience these sounds as 'music' , he simply said "Why not?", so I guess he could. Anyway these are at present beyond my capacity to enjoy. I suppose that some (many?) would argue that this isn't really classical music though, and the AMM piece is improvised, not composed.

At an earlier point in my life I got a bit stuck at Schoenberg and Britten's later string quartets, having found Berg, Webern, Bartok and Hindemith not just enjoyable but exciting, and then with, yes, Carter and Boulez. So I guess it is possible for one's personal barriers to move, and to find something hitherto unlistenable, enjoyable and musical.

I'll just add as an afterthought that because of progressive hearing loss over the past 20 years I have had to (have been helped to?) focus less on pitch, melody and harmony, and more on Isorythm's "rhythm, attack, volume, density, degree of dissonance, register and voicing". I wonder if this is related to the shift in my musical taste.

This is an interesting idea for a thread, Avey, by the way.


----------



## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

I guess I'll have to add that I struggle with a lot of 20th century serialism, or other kinds of music from the past 150 years or so that is atonal, in a way that I don't have the musical vocabulary to describe. While I can appreciate some works, by Schoenberg or Varese, I'm almost never in the mood for them. But I keep trying to see if I'll change my perspective, because it has happened before with other composers and works.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Harold in Columbia said:


> In a different way, I find Elliott Carter and all "Downtown" music makes me feel kind of dirty for (different) ideological reasons (not meaning that stupid CIA canard) (as Wagner, for example, doesn't, simply because his ideology is too far removed in time).


Wait, why are you lumping Carter in with Downtown music?


----------



## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

string quartets.
especially some by Beethoven.


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Where do I start?

There are lots of pieces that I find difficult to enjoy .... and yet I enjoy many pieces that others find 'difficult'. Quite why I like some pieces but not others is difficult for me to explain. I suspect that some of Lutoslwaski's (for instance) work might be recognised as 'difficult' and I don't enjoy it ... but I have no difficulty in loving much of Messaien's work (which also can be seen as 'difficult').

Alternatively, I have difficulty in enjoying some pieces that are often regarded as 'not difficult' (for example much of Ravel or Gershwin) even though I can recognise that these are significant composers.

I would imagine that 'difficult to enjoy' might be similarly perplexing for a number of other TC-ers too?


----------



## Guest (Jan 11, 2016)

I gave up trying to listen to Bruckner. I succeeded in liking the 4th and 2nd symphonies, but haven't gotten at all into the rest. I tried with the 6th, 8th and 9th, and gave up. I think you need to be in a particular kind of Zen mindset to enjoy it. I decided I would save it for live performances. Same for Sibelius' symphonies. 

I have also so much music to listen to that I honestly don't find the time to get into something like Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano. Listening to it once was enough. 

Likewise, I enjoyed the live performance I attended of Charles Ives' 4th symphony last fall (and listening to it once before on my own), but it was more a once-in-a-lifetime experience than music I will revisit over and over again.


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

DoReFaMi said:


> I gave up trying to listen to Bruckner. I succeeded in liking the 4th and 2nd symphonies, but haven't gotten at all into the rest. I tried with the 6th, 8th and 9th, and gave up. I think you need to be in a particular kind of Zen mindset to enjoy it.


Only if you listen to Celibidache's Bruckner recordings. 

And don't give up on Ives' 4th! It's his best work imo.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Sometimes I have trouble listening to recordings (especially of chamber music) where one or more instruments seem significantly quieter than others, even when they have important parts. I have the Naxos recording of Schoenberg's Serenade and most of the time I can barely hear the viola part at all and it really frustrates me.


----------



## Guest (Jan 11, 2016)

I'll try again with Bruckner! With Ives I think the 4th is really something to experience live. I did enjoy it a LOT, but I don't think I will be listening to the recording. I also don't expect to have a chance to hear it live again anytime soon!


----------



## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> Wait, why are you lumping Carter in with Downtown music?


I'm not. They each seem to me to stand for things I dislike, but not the same things.


----------



## dsphipps100 (Jan 10, 2016)

I usually do not care to listen to atonal music, regardless of who/what instruments it's for. All great music is worthy of analysis, of course, tonal or atonal, but when the music's atonalism has the effect that analysis is more comprehensible than listening, then Houston, we have a problem.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Harold in Columbia said:


> I'm not. They each seem to me to stand for things I dislike, but not the same things.


What things you dislike?


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

norman bates said:


> the most difficult piece to enjoy for me would be without a single doubt La legend d'eer composed by Xenakis. I really like some of his works (yesterday I was listening with great pleasure again to his Metastasis) but everytime I've tried listen to La legend I have a terrible headache after few minutes, and not in a figurative sense. That piece makes me feel real physical pain.


This made me curious so I had to check it out.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Oh God, It really plucks the optical nerve


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

norman bates said:


> everytime I've tried listen to La legend I have a terrible headache after few minutes, and not in a figurative sense. That piece makes me feel real physical pain.


Sold! Just added it to my queue.

p.s.

...

Oh boy, you guys weren't kidding.

...

pps. The first 6 minutes were rough, but I'm warming up to it.


----------



## Le Peel (May 15, 2015)

kartikeys said:


> string quartets.
> especially some by Beethoven.


If you don't enjoy string quartets then you should definitely listen to Haydn's "Emperor" string quartet.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Another composer, mentioned above, that has been difficult for me is Gershwin. On a pop level, I can listen to him (although I would much prefer other pop music), but when I want to hear classical music (which is most of the time), he just sounds too popular/populist/pops for me.


----------



## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Excluding the stuff that I didn't enjoy at all, maybe the mediocre stuff of great composers if there is any.

Glazunov in general, takes too much to appreciate. Maybe because either his works are very similar to each other or not impressive enough. His symphonies are good tho.


----------



## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Also from my #1 composer: Dvorak

String Quartet #2, 3 and 4
They're simply are not as good as the rest.

Also Brahms' symphony #2 has quite weak movements.

Mahler and Bruckner ... their works takes a long time to be liked too. But finally you'll love them!


----------



## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

norman bates said:


> the most difficult piece to enjoy for me would be without a single doubt La legend d'eer composed by Xenakis. I really like some of his works (yesterday I was listening with great pleasure again to his Metastasis) but everytime I've tried listen to La legend I have a terrible headache after few minutes, and not in a figurative sense. That piece makes me feel real physical pain.


The first 6 minutes can even be bad/dangerous for your hearing...


----------



## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

I am struggling with Finnissy's The History of Photography in Sound. Any clue to "get it"?


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Blancrocher said:


> pps. The first 6 minutes were rough, but I'm warming up to it.


Yeah, I had to stop about 20 minutes in to go to bed, but it was kind of drawing me in. I will listen again.


----------



## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I have a lot of problems with total serialists, it's quite difficult for me to understand and follow how such composers employ the musical material for their artistic purposes, even if (I think) I grasped the general rationale of this "method".


----------



## TwoPhotons (Feb 13, 2015)

I find it very difficult to get into Brahms. There's only one piece of music I heard from him which I enjoyed, which was the ending of his 4th Symphony which I caught on the radio. But anything else I've listened to gets me really bored I'm sorry to say.


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

TwoPhotons said:


> I find it very difficult to get into Brahms. There's only one piece of music I heard from him which I enjoyed, which was the ending of his 4th Symphony which I caught on the radio. But anything else I've listened to gets me really bored I'm sorry to say.


I felt like that for years. Just couldn't 'get' it. Listened repeatedly to his symphonies and to large chunks of his chamber works. Nope ... a blank. After a rather long gap, tried again after I'd picked up a copy of his symphonies by Mengelberg (on Naxos' 'historical' label) and .... BINGO!!!

Joy and wonder - I'm sure that Mengelberg's interpretation helped (I think he was a pupil of Brahms) but suddenly the gates were opened and since then I have found lots and lots of enjoyment in his orchestral, chamber, piano, choral and song works.

Maybe leave it for a while and come back to it when you fancy another 'go'? :tiphat:


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Le Peel said:


> I have trouble enjoying, I don't know what else to call it, "atonal" music.
> 
> However, I have been slowly warming up to this:
> 
> ...


I was playing one of GG's recordings of this years ago. My young son came in and said, "That's funny music, dad!" Out of the mouths of babes......


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I listen to music for enjoyment. If I find music difficult to enjoy simply don't listen to it. I've plenty I enjoy to get on with.


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I find many concertos difficult to enjoy since I think they sound uneven.
I also find vocal music by many contemporary composers difficult to enjoy. I can like their instrumental music but with vocals I think it just sounds ugly.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I listen to music for enjoyment. If I find music difficult to enjoy simply don't listen to it. I've plenty I enjoy to get on with.


I cold not agree more, I once heard Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony in a concert hall, right in the middle so when that horrible instrument Ondes-Martenot begone to play I though I was going mad.
Tried it a home twice................. but never again


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Pugg said:


> I cold not agree more, I once heard Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony in a concert hall, right in the middle so when that horrible instrument Ondes-Martenot begone to play I though I was going mad.
> Tried it a home twice................. but never again


Same work same result here!


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Pugg said:


> I cold not agree more, I once heard Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony in a concert hall, right in the middle so when that horrible instrument Ondes-Martenot begone to play I though I was going mad.
> Tried it a home twice................. but never again





DavidA said:


> Same work same result here!


If I had your guys' attitude, I wouldn't even be here right now.


----------



## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> What things you dislike?


Elliott Carter's music seems to me fatuously impressed with its own modernism ("this disaster that's gone on ever since" he Jokes in an interview - 



).

Downtown is kitsch by people who think they're too good for popular music.


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Pugg said:


> I cold not agree more, I once heard Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony in a concert hall, right in the middle so when that horrible instrument Ondes-Martenot begone to play I though I was going mad.
> Tried it a home twice................. but never again


I think the ondes are a beautiful instrument, funny the different ways people can see the same thing.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

The ondes is...not my favorite thing about Messiaen's music.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

^ ...but I think it sounds 'cool'  I really love his liberal use of percussion and the ondes martenot adds to the otherworldly sound.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> ^ ...but I think it sounds 'cool'  I really love his liberal use of percussion and the ondes martenot adds to the otherworldly sound.





isorhythm said:


> The ondes is...not my favorite thing about Messiaen's music.


That's cool if you like it, enjoy as long I as never ever have to hear it again


----------



## Medtnaculus (May 13, 2015)

Brahms. Hungarian dances are nice and there's one or two piano Intermezzos or waltzes which are pleasant, but I find myself so bored when listening to his works.


----------



## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Fabulous thread idea - Congrats to the originator:tiphat:

Finnissy - I have heard a lot of his works and they get under my skin so bad that they make me want to jump out of my skin


----------



## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Stravinsky - Concerto in D for string orchestra
Berg - Violin concerto
Martin - Petite Symphonie
Martinu - Double Concerto
Bruckner symphonies: 1,2, 5,6
Elgar symphony 1
Bax - all symphonies
mahler - Symphony 3,
Roussel Symphony 3
Scriabin - symphony 1
Miaskovsky Symphony 6
Prokofiev - Symphony 5
Roy Harris - Symphony 3
Copland - symphony 3
Hartmann - Symphony 6
Shostalovich - 4,5
Luoslawski - symphony 3
Bernsteiin - sym 2
Berlioz - le carnival romain
Suppe - the beautiful Galathea
Torke - Ash
Biber - Batalia
Balakirev - Tamara
tchaikovsky - Francesca da rimini
Villa-Lobos - Choros No. 10
Varese - Arcana
Honneger - Pacific 231
Messiaen - Et especto...
Rautavaara - Cantus Articus
Stockhausen - Gesang der Junglinde
Penderecki - Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima
Andriesen - Der Stijl
Bryars - Jesus' Blood
Rameau - les boreades
Glazunv - from the middle ages
Stenhammer - Serenade on F Major
Alban Berg - Three Orchestral Pieces


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

For the record (no pun intended), I love the Schuman symphonies and find them a relatively "easy listen". I've learned to love dissonance. Similarly, the Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 and Ives Concord Sonatas are not effortful for me despite their many dissonances.

What I do struggle with is the Schoenberg Violin Concerto. I "get" some of it, but find much of it a struggle. No problem with his Piano Concerto however, which I love.

I find it difficult to enjoy Bach's Art of the Fugue. I find it better suited for performers than for listeners.

I also do not enjoy Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. I appreciate the genius behind it, but I don't leave a performance humming it, if you catch my drift.


----------



## anthonycwein (Jan 20, 2016)

I am a huge Mahler fan, but never really found Symphony no. 8 (although perhaps his most critically acclaimed) to be my style. I prefer 6 & 7 which were far less popular (at least in Mahler's time).


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

anthonycwein said:


> I am a huge Mahler fan, but never really found Symphony no. 8 (although perhaps his most critically acclaimed) to be my style. I prefer 6 & 7 which were far less popular (at least in Mahler's time).


Mahler considered the work to be his best, but the Eighth is more likely the most critically maligned of his works. Some Mahler commentators such as Adorno have spurned it more or less entirely. It's less harmonically adventurous than the works around it, but brilliant in form and development.


----------



## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Mal said:


> Stravinsky - Concerto in D for string orchestra
> Berg - Violin concerto
> Martin - Petite Symphonie
> Martinu - Double Concerto
> ...


Specific! ________________


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

If we limit ourselves to classical music, the only thing that can make music hard for me to enjoy is when it gets too sappy. I usually like it more the wilder it gets. Don't be too predictable or too naive: that's all I need.

Sorry: I just realized that I'd dodged the question by not mentioning specific compositions. The truth is, classical music almost never does that to me. The exceptions are mostly relatively recent (the past four decades or so) works that are too conservative: Tavener, Whitacre, Jenkins.... But "light music" is often hard for me too. But none of that is as bad for me as a typical pop song! 

The thing is, I really don't want to dump on those guys because no one is treated worse here than their fans. In fact, I'd really like to like that music because I don't like the way people who don't like that music (my side of things) treat the people who do. I just can't pull it off very easily!


----------



## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Anything by the minimalists and Bruckner. I respect the latter but listening to his work is a bit of a chore. Perhaps I'll grow to like it...or not.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

This is hard to answer, since when I don't enjoy something I don't tend to think of that as a difficulty. Life presents enough real difficulties to overcome that I'm not inclined to regard not liking some piece of music as yet another one. If I don't like what I hear I don't worry about it; I might come back to it later and like it better, or it might not seem worth bothering with. There's more than enough music around to discover and actually enjoy, rather than struggle with and blame myself for some imagined shortcoming. 

I suppose, though, that if I were unable to enjoy something that 95% percent of classical music lovers adored and considered a sublime masterwork I might wonder if there was something missing upstairs, and consider seeing a music psychiatrist. Do they have those?


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

science said:


> Whitacre, !


I can say I find it difficult to enjoy choral music regardless if the composer is Whitacre or someone else.
I find it also difficult to enjoy music were they play the instruments in a way that they sound ugly, music with lots of pauses some music sounds like tone pause tone pause and it just goes on like that, minimalist music and George Gershwin.


----------



## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I have a love/hate relationship with baroque era keyboard music. Baroque orchestral suites and concerti grossi contain probably my favorite orchestral texture in classical music, partly because the variety of instruments makes everything easier to understand. It's a very Bach centric problem for me; I feel like I've always failed to connect with his keyboard music because I'm literally not perceiving what's happening in it most of the time.

I took hpowder's advice and switched to harpsichord recordings, which I do find a little clearer, but it's still very hazy to me. My ears seem to be getting slightly better at hearing counterpoint but I can tell I'll never reach the comprehension I'd like without some proper education.

Come to think of it I don't know why I single out the baroque era. I have this problem with most solo piano music.


----------



## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I already replied that my biggest problem is total serialism.
However I also have hard time with Berlioz. I don't hate him (maybe he does), but I find his music generally too lush and pompous and my mind blows (not in a positive sense).


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Hi Stavrogin ... have you tried _les nuits d'ete_ by Berlioz?

It might not be what is typically thought of as 'Berlioz' - it can be performed in a tender, sensitive and light-touch manner that is different from the stereotype of cannons, bass drum and an orchestra of a thousand. The Victoria de los Angeles set is especially lovely :tiphat:


----------



## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Hi Stavrogin ... have you tried _les nuits d'ete_ by Berlioz?
> 
> It might not be what is typically thought of as 'Berlioz' - it can be performed in a tender, sensitive and light-touch manner that is different from the stereotype of cannons, bass drum and an orchestra of a thousand. The Victoria de los Angeles set is especially lovely :tiphat:


Thanks for the hint. I'll try that asap!


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Stavrogin said:


> Thanks for the hint. I'll try that asap!


Also try the Véronique Gens recording!


----------

