# Openness to New Music



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I came across a reference to research showing that people over the age of 35 have a vastly lower chance of being open to new music styles. The actual article is by a neuroscientist, Robert Sapolsky, published in the New Yorker in 1998 called "Open Season", but I don't have access to it. Here is a brief article giving some of the details.

Based on this link the results do not seem scientific but rather anecdotal (although there may be significant anecdotal evidence). The basic result is:



> if you are more than thirty-five years old when some new popular music is introduced, there's a greater than 95 percent chance that you will never listen to the stuff.


So this "study" seems focused on popular music, but I wonder to what extent it might be relevant to classical music. In particular:

Does the likelihood of enjoying classical music decrease significantly if one is exposed after 35?

Does the likelihood of enjoying a new classical music genre (Renaissance, Serialism or other modern styles, Opera, etc.) decrease significantly if one is exposed after 35?

_Just remember 95% does not equal 100%._


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2015)

I'm always skeptical of the age thing, but that's maybe because I have gotten more and more adventurous the more years I accrue.

Indeed, if someone asks me how old I am, I usually say "no idea." I can do math, and I know when I was born, so I can come up with 63 years, but what does that mean? Far as I can tell, it means exactly nothing. Each year that goes by finds me more eager to learn new things, more willing to explore new things.

I'd like to know if pop music listeners tend to be more or less conservative than classical listeners, but I suspect that 95% of all listeners to any type of music are pretty conservative, age notwithstanding. And that conservatism is more a function of personality than of age.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I'm pretty sure Albert7 a while back started a thread on a similar topic, but I'm damned if I'm going to put in the effort to find it...

Presumably, mmsbls, you'd prefer an _actual discussion_ of the idea, rather than everyone telling you what age they are and how conservative they aren't?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I hope not! But it's already happening to me with pop music, and I'm only 30.

In classical music, the time when I was most voraciously discovering new (to me) styles was college. So there may be some truth there, too.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I was more open to new music in the classical realm back in my early 20s and listened to a program on radio that had a variety of classical works. I think that was what put the lid on my classical listening for about 25 years. I got bored with much of the music. Now I am very selective and concentrate on works that I like a lot, and my classical listening is much more enjoyable.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> Presumably, mmsbls, you'd prefer an _actual discussion_ of the idea, rather than everyone telling you what age they are and how conservative they aren't?


Yes, I always prefer discussions, but of course, people are free to give specific examples if they wish. I've been familiar with the general idea that people focus on the popular music of their youth, but I don't have a good sense of how people approach classical music with age.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I can see this being mainly a pop music thing. 

From my personal experience, my pop/rock listening has big nostalgia thing going on, and newer music can't offer me that. And I don't a social circle that pushes me to listen to new pop. When I was younger, I couldn't help but hear it.

My Classical listening tends to be more "progressive." The newer music often builds upon the older (not "improves upon," but is influenced by) so want to see what's next. I'm way more interested in what Classical music might sound like in 25 yuears than in what Rock might sound like.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> I'm pretty sure Albert7 a while back started a thread on a similar topic, but I'm damned if I'm going to put in the effort to find it...


OK, it turns out I'm damned! http://www.talkclassical.com/37985-article-wrong-my-tastes.html


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> Presumably, mmsbls, you'd prefer an _actual discussion_ of the idea, rather than everyone telling you what age they are and how conservative they aren't?


Haha, do you not see how my remarks constitute a response to the idea, my idea being that age is not as much a factor as personality.

Too busy some guy bashing?


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> I'm pretty sure Albert7 a while back started a thread on a similar topic, but I'm damned if I'm going to put in the effort to find it...
> 
> Presumably, mmsbls, you'd prefer an _actual discussion_ of the idea, *rather than everyone telling you what age they are and how conservative they aren't?*


How fortunate that I read this before committing the very solecisms adumbrated therein.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> OK, it turns out I'm damned! http://www.talkclassical.com/37985-article-wrong-my-tastes.html


Thanks for finding that. It looks like most people simply described their experience rather than the phenomenon. The data from that study seems more detailed than what Sapolsky did (although again I don't have the original), and that study did focus on popular music as well.

So is there a reason to believe that classical listener openness is different than popular listener openness?


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2015)

Without some kind of data to explore, there's not much that can be said about the 35 year-old bar that _isn't _anecdotal. My instinct is to say that listening habits (not so much the what, but the how) are fixed relatively early, assuming an 'average exposure' to music in the first place. And I would add that early exposure (the what rather than the how) might also determine the later 'what'. But I have no evidence to support that other than my own experience - not enough to back any figures. 
Of course, just because there may be a queue forming to tell how we're all past 35 and yet still experimenting, doesn't get us very far: TC members may not be typical of the population about whom the theory has been formulated.

If my early exposure is anything to go by, I can see how, even though I too (like the blogger in the OP) didn't start enjoying Radiohead until I was well into my 40s, it's the kind of music that I might have turned to anyway. Not new, not 'popular', so it doesn't fit the criteria that I might claim to have breached. Similarly with classical. I only discovered Messiaen last year, but I think it fits within the broad parameters that might be used to describe the type of music I'm inclined to listen to.

In short, I'd probably agree with the hypothesis.


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2015)

Dr Johnson said:


> solecisms adumbrated therein.


Ouch...adumbrating solecisms...can you get a cream for that? :devil:

(I love it really! :kiss


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> Ouch...adumbrating solecisms...*can you get a cream for that?* :devil:
> 
> (I love it really! :kiss


Probably, but I might have to go into tedious personal detail to explain to the pharmacist what I required.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Difficult to generalize, but I find that that most people are very conservative in the sorts of music they listen to, and become more so with advancing age. I find no one my age (75) who enjoys rock and pop as I do; those who shared my interests in our youth now treat those genres as fodder for nostalgia only. But it is true that, despite my fairly wide spectrum of musics that please me, they are typified by having shared attributes that I have held since youth. At least two of our old friends, melody, harmony, and rhythm, must be very strongly present in any music I appreciate, whether it be old or new to me. I had a resurgence of interest in rock and pop in the 1990s, in African pop somewhat later, then in Middle Eastern and Asian music somewhat later, but that is an artifact of and throwback to listening to Radio Cairo on the shortwave back in the 1960s. But in my case, the patterns were set early on, and my subsequent expansion of musical tastes has been incremental always, and not revolutionary. It may be true for others, and I would be interested in others' analyses.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> So is there a reason to believe that classical listener openness is different than popular listener openness?


I think the social factors are important here. As has been stated above, popular music styles are often marketed at a younger demographic, and it is that demographic's expectations, tastes, and aspirations which are pandered to. Styles come and go as quickly as one generation changes into the next.

With classical music, the audience is already accustomed either to listening entirely to older music or to a mixture of the old and the new, and even today, the rate of change in style moves much more slowly than in popular music. Even if one stops finding new contemporary styles to appreciate, there will still be new music written in an older style by others.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> With classical music, the audience is already accustomed either to listening entirely to older music or to a mixture of the old and the new, and even today, the rate of change in style moves much more slowly than in popular music. Even if one stops finding new contemporary styles to appreciate, there will still be new music written in an older style by others.


I think that's a good point that classical listeners can quickly be accustomed to listening to a very wide range of styles. In a sense one's style can be much of classical music which varies enormously. So something new may not strike such a listener as different from _their style_.

I also wonder if the advent of new venues for listening such as youtube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. all with an extremely wide range of music easily available could make a difference. When I was young, I listened to AM radio in the US and heard Top 40s music. I still prefer popular music of the late 60s, 70s, and a smattering of 80s. Today people can hear anything they wish. and although some music is certainly more popular, marketed more strongly, and perhaps more "visible", it's very easy to broaden one's range. So I wonder if people 40-50 years from now will still exhibit the same preference for music of "their time".


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> I think that's a good point that classical listeners can quickly be accustomed to listening to a very wide range of styles. In a sense one's style can be much of classical music which varies enormously. So something new may not strike such a listener as different from _their style_.
> 
> I also wonder if the advent of new venues for listening such as youtube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. all with an extremely wide range of music easily available could make a difference. When I was young, I listened to AM radio in the US and heard Top 40s music. I still prefer popular music of the late 60s, 70s, and a smattering of 80s. Today people can hear anything they wish. and although some music is certainly more popular, marketed more strongly, and perhaps more "visible", it's very easy to broaden one's range. So I wonder if people 40-50 years from now will still exhibit the same preference for music of "their time".


You are paraphrasing the post I was working on.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm going to agree with the line that most people's tastes are fairly conservative, even if they like music that we usually wouldn't regard as conservative. For example, it would be really surprising if I suddenly became that obsessed with new country. Not that I have particularly conservative tastes in terms of the music that I listen to, but the tastes that I do have are unlikely to change radically.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I also wonder if the advent of new venues for listening such as youtube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. all with an extremely wide range of music easily available could make a difference.


This is a bit of a digression, but I find it easier exploring classical music than pop on Youtube. The suggested "up next" options tend to be more varied: while a lot of things will be from the same composer or era, there are often some things that only have a soloist or instrument in common, or even just come from the same eclectic channel. I often end up with really weird mixtures of things from the Renaissance to the present. With pop music I tend to get trapped in a narrow generic loop unless I force myself out of it by deliberately searching for something different.


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

The study is based mainly on Spotify data. Perhaps people above 33-35 are buying more CDs or using other services like YouTube or iTunes to hear their new pop music. I find Spotify to be a good option for discovering older music but dislike the ad intrusions enough that it is hardly my only source for listening to new-to-me music.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> Haha, do you not see how remarks constitute a response to the idea, my idea being that age is not as much a factor as personality.
> 
> Too busy some guy bashing?


That honestly wasn't a dig at you! I agree with your point (ETA: though I don't think it's the whole story).
But the OP's question is exactly the sort of thing where it's very easy (and I include myself here) to talk about our own open-mindedness but forget that most of us are likely to be outliers (ie, in the 5% mmsbls alludes to in the final sentence).


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

I agree with Mahlerian that most pop or contemporary music is written for a younger demographic. I do know some older people who enjoy it though. I know 50 year old women at my work who listen to what their kids listen to. I myself do not enjoy it but I do find some newer music upon occasion that reminds me of older music that I do like. 

I have never stopped exploring all different kinds of music but I do have a general idea of musical styles that I enjoy and tend to stick with those most frequently.

As far as relating to classical. I personally do try listening to new composers I haven't heard before but in general I still prefer the composers and works I am familiar with so in a sense I guess I have become conservative as I've gotten older. I like what I think of as straight ahead, typical classical music from Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, Chopin, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, etc. I try to listen to Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Bartok, Ives, Carter, Ligeti, etc. at times but just don't find them as enjoyable. I never tire of hearing J.S. Bach but can only take small intervals of Bartok for instance. It doesn't stop me from trying new works or composers though. I will probably always expand my listening but it will also probably always remain dominated by the composers whose works I generally enjoy listening too most.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> I think that's a good point that classical listeners can quickly be accustomed to listening to a very wide range of styles. In a sense one's style can be much of classical music which varies enormously. So something new may not strike such a listener as different from _their style_.


 I think this may be true if the listener is young enough; I'm not so sure it applies to those whose preference have been set for an appreciable period of time. I began my interest in classical with then-newish pieces like Le Sacre (which I loved immediately because it overflowed with melodies), things by Hovhaness, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. The subsequent expansion of my tastes has been to go backward in date of composition, rather than post-Bartok. So I am comfortable within the temporal and musical span Bach-Bartok, but find little beyond those boundaries to hold my interest.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

People might be becoming more careful with their spare time as they age, and this might translate into a new, more closed-minded attitude.

I'm used to pushing my boundaries, but I'm starting to lack the will-power I once had, now that I'm slowly approaching the fateful figure of 35.

Just to add some substance to this message... The first experience I had with completely reversing my taste was with Children of Bodom, the album Hatebreeder, which had vocals that I first considered distinctly unpleasant, but after a while of hanging out with the wrong kind of people, started to tolerate it, even appreciate it. The latest experience is probably with learning to appreciate serialism, involving not only more experience with the music, but also a change of attitude with regards to what I expected of music (I used to expect more beauty, less existential horror, but now I'm happy to have it the other way around).

I might be less interested in expanding the sphere of my taste if I already had too many beloved favorites, but I have too few, so I prefer to keep doing it. I think some amount of self-improvement is a duty that too few try to fulfil, but I've been lucky in not having a particularly busy life so it's easy for me to say.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

GreenMamba said:


> From my personal experience, my pop/rock listening has big nostalgia thing going on, and newer music can't offer me that. And I don't a social circle that pushes me to listen to new pop. When I was younger, I couldn't help but hear it.


I think this is true of most people, me for sure, and it speaks a lot of the difference between pop and classical, the former being more of an emotional thing, the latter being more of an intellectual thing. Sure there is some of both in each, but predominantly the one is emotional, the other intellectual--so it seems to me.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Florestan said:


> I think this is true of most people, me for sure, and it speaks a lot of the difference between pop and classical, the former being more of an emotional thing, the latter being more of an intellectual thing. Sure there is some of both in each, but predominantly the one is emotional, the other intellectual--so it seems to me.


I agree. 
I was actually going to write a very similar comment


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> I began my interest in classical with then-newish pieces like Le Sacre (which I loved immediately because it overflowed with melodies)


Indeed. My uncle and I used to listen to music together back in the long, long ago, in the before time, and we were quite bemused by the difference between the reputation of Le Sacre--pounding rhythms--and the equally prominent but never mentioned overflowing with melodies aspect.



Strange Magic said:


> The subsequent expansion of my tastes has been to go backward in date of composition, rather than post-Bartok.


Interesting. I almost immediately went a little bit backwards, to Stravinsky's Les Noces (magic!!) and to Varese's stuff from the twenties. But, since it was Varese, I was able very quickly jump ahead to the fifties. And then there was all the rest of the electroacoustic music from that time and the sixties. What fun that was. What fun that is, I should say. While straight, composed electroacoustic is not as gripping to me personally as live electronics and turntable shenanigans and laptop mayhem, and so forth, there are still a lot of people still doing it, people I love and admire. What I skipped was the second Viennese school, which, when I got to it, was really lovely and old-timey sounding. I just spent all my free time today listening to various Schoenberg recordings I have. Heart-stoppingly gorgeous music, I must say.

Well, it's been fun. I hope I get another fifty or sixty years. I feel like I'm just getting started.

https://erikm.bandcamp.com/album/st-me-2008


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I must confess to stopping at Bartok / earlier Stravinsky. There is just so much great music to listen to I just can't waste my time on discordant stuff that jangles the nerves. I'm not saying it is without merit - it may be. But not for me thanks.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

GreenMamba said:


> From my personal experience, my pop/rock listening has big nostalgia thing going on, and newer music can't offer me that. And I don't a social circle that pushes me to listen to new pop. When I was younger, I couldn't help but hear it.
> 
> My Classical listening tends to be more "progressive." The newer music often builds upon the older (not "improves upon," but is influenced by) so want to see what's next. I'm way more interested in what Classical music might sound like in 25 yuears than in what Rock might sound like.


Ditto (to all of it!)



Strange Magic said:


> ...[D]espite my fairly wide spectrum of musics that please me, they are typified by having shared attributes that I have held since youth..... in my case, the patterns were set early on, and my subsequent expansion of musical tastes has been incremental always, and not revolutionary.


I also agree with this. I was exposed to and developed a liking for a wide variety of music as a youth (Western Classical and Middle Eastern Classical, Far Eastern Classical and Indian Classical). While I don't actively follow these non-Western traditions, they have remained enduring interests. Likewise, the non-Western musics I had little interest in as a youth are still not interesting to me: I have remained focussed on developed art traditions and not on primitive styles. The pop genres I liked/disliked have also remained pretty much the same and I have not followed them over the years.

I don't find the classical music of today to be all that foreign to the music I listened to as a youth (Xenakis, Schoenberg, Stockhausen...). I don't feel challenged or out of my element listing to new works. My greatest shift, over the years, has been my willingness to embrace the Common Practice. As a youth, it had to be strange to capture my interest, while, now, I am able to become enraptured in more mainstream classical music, too.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Of course, just because there may be a queue forming to tell how we're all past 35 and yet still experimenting, doesn't get us very far: TC members may not be typical of the population about whom the theory has been formulated.


Yes, I was going to say just that. But I am in that queue...



mmsbls said:


> I also wonder if the advent of new venues for listening such as youtube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. all with an extremely wide range of music easily available could make a difference.
> [...]
> Today people can hear anything they wish. and although some music is certainly more popular, marketed more strongly, and perhaps more "visible", it's very easy to broaden one's range.


...and this, of course, is what has made it possible, really. Which is wonderful. I have bought so much in the last couple of years after 'previewing' things on Spotify or YouTube.

I have to say that I agree with Some Guy about conservatism being more a function of personality than of age. This is certainly borne out in fields other than music appreciation.


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## hagridindminor (Nov 5, 2015)

I have a problem regarding this, I usually have a phase of having a favorite artist where I can't listen to anything but them. I try to give other composers a chance but its just hard to feel, it may not even be about the actual music itself.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

hagridindminor said:


> I have a problem regarding this, I usually have a phase of having a favorite artist where I can't listen to anything but them. I try to give other composers a chance but its just hard to feel, it may not even be about the actual music itself.


At least you have phases. Other people listen to the same music all their life. I have phases too and am happy that I can appreciate different kinds of music.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

hagridindminor said:


> I have a problem regarding this, I usually have a phase of having a favorite artist where I can't listen to anything but them. I try to give other composers a chance but its just hard to feel, it may not even be about the actual music itself.


An honest statement that I can relate to. I have the same doubts about whether it's about the music or not. Maybe I'm not a music lover first, just a fact and category lover who likes to look up to historical figures, and then music finds it's outlet in me after all that unnecessary processing.


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## hagridindminor (Nov 5, 2015)

clavichorder said:


> An honest statement that I can relate to. I have the same doubts about whether it's about the music or not. Maybe I'm not a music lover first, just a fact and category lover who likes to look up to historical figures, and then music finds it's outlet in me after all that unnecessary processing.


Yeah the fact that those artists have become historical figures adds a bit more reality to the music, plus after knowing alot more about the composer, its easier to empathize. It could also be due to the fact that you have to really be familiar with their style of playing to truly understand their work. Classical especially, its easy to listen to a piece and think its just a compilation of notes stuck together unless you truly know your composer and you can understand and appreciate the more subtle musical aspects.

For example if you were to show me a song by a certain composer, I might thinkwell dang thats good and then move on, but theres a difference between thinking that and feeling dumbstruck that person put each note at that exact time to create that effect. And imo you can only really do that if you're really familiar with that composer. Might also be a reason why most people don't appreciate classical


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I don't agree with the paper because acceptance or not of whatever music (new or old) has more to do with taste/preference and perception of musical values.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mmsbls said:


> I also wonder if the advent of new venues for listening such as youtube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. all with an extremely wide range of music easily available could make a difference. When I was young, I listened to AM radio in the US and heard Top 40s music. I still prefer popular music of the late 60s, 70s, and a smattering of 80s. Today people can hear anything they wish. and although some music is certainly more popular, marketed more strongly, and perhaps more "visible", it's very easy to broaden one's range. So I wonder if people 40-50 years from now will still exhibit the same preference for music of "their time".


The existence of recordings, today's technology for reproducing and distributing music, and the adventurous and accelerating exploration of obscure repertoire, make the very notion of what is "new music" more fluid, varied, and personal. My grandparents could not have heard a mass by Ockeghem and would probably have found it weird and unpleasant if they had. Now we can listen to old music so different from what we've considered "traditional" that it becomes, for us, something new - as much an experiment in listening as a lot of music being composed now. This must have an effect on the receptivity of serious listeners to music which is actually new in the full sense of the word.

In popular music, I think contemporaneity will always be a dominant value, even with the availability of recordings of older music. In classical music there's just too much richness from the past, too easily available, for this to be the case. I suppose no one but an aspiring composer hoping to be heard needs to regret this.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I can definitely relate to that. My youth was all avantgarde and through it I became increasingly interested in what led up to it. Now, I find myself burning the candle at both ends, trying to fill in both the past and forge ahead to the present day.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'm 53, and orchestral and chamber music is the final frontier in my case. I used to listen to all kinds of jazz, rock, blues, and folk, but these days it's 70 percent classical, 25 percent jazz, and 5 percent everything else. I'm still not very receptive to a lot of old classical, but that's more a matter of taste, than a lack of adventure.


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