# The confidence to be honest!



## isridgewell (Jul 2, 2013)

I have a friend that is very good musician who during a lecture spoke his mind honestly and said: 

"I find Bach boring, he was very clever but personally I find him boring"

The reaction to this from the gathered musicians was incredible, it was as if he had committed a heinous crime in such a forum.

Are you honest, do you listen with your ears and your own " true inner voice" or with the opinions and weight of history and with the opinions of others?

Personally I wrestle with Tristan and Isolde, deep down I do love this work, however some days it bores me senseless!

We listen with our own ears and should be honest.


----------



## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

IMHO we listen with our ears AND with the opinions of others, the weight of history, etc. (maybe the right world is "culture")
I don't believe you can appreciate (or hate) Bach or Tristan und Isolde if you have just come out from a cave.
Could it be that sometimes our ears prevail over culture? Not a bad thing...


----------



## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Different folks - different strokes. 

What's the issue here? I love Bach, but if somebody else finds him "boring" (a curious, rather non-specific adjective in the context of music) so what?

I place such a comment on the same level and in the same context as those brainless "who is better: Mozart or Beethoven?" kind of polls that are so (terribly) popular on TC. 

One's tolerence is tested - but one remains tolerant and somehow reaffirmed in knowledge that one has the right to express a personal opinion - no matter how banal or ridiculous it may be.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

isridgewell said:


> I have a friend that is very good musician who during a lecture spoke his mind honestly and said:
> 
> "I find Bach boring, he was very clever but personally I find him boring"
> 
> ...


What did your friend expect from the audience after shooting himself in the foot by making such a comment?

It's ludicrous to suggest that people like various composers, or certain well-known works, only because of the weight of history and opinions of others on these matters.

With regard to Tristan und Isolde, you say that you love it but occasionally find it boring. Why not give it a rest and try something else? There's plenty of other material to try out.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Regarding Bach, it's not a new situation. He had become 'dry' and out of fashion by the end of the eighteenth century.
Personal opinions are fine, as long as it does not lead you to ignorantly 'rubbish' someone else's taste.
It might have been more shocking if your 'good musician' friend had not listened to much or any Bach - like a teacher of literature who'd read no Shakespeare. 
Chacun a son gout!


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Regarding Bach, it's not a new situation. He had become 'dry' and out of fashion by the end of the eighteenth century.
> Personal opinions are fine, as long as it does not lead you to ignorantly 'rubbish' someone else's taste.
> It might have been more shocking if your 'good musician' friend had not listened to much or any Bach - like a teacher of literature who'd read no Shakespeare.
> Chacun a son gout!


Yes but since the time Mendelssohn revived interest in Bach he's hardly been out of fashion. Handel has caught up a great deal over the past 20-30 years but is not in the same league as Bach, as poll after poll has revealed.

It doesn't appear that the "friend" in question was attempting to rubbish someone else's tastes. We aren't told much about the context of the lecture at which this comment was made, so it's anyone's guess who the audience comprised and what else may have been said by way of qualification of the comment.

As you say, it's possible that the "good musician" in question might have very limited knowledge about Bach, e.g, some young person who is maybe clever on the violin but beyond that doesn't know much.

Mere opinions of this nature from unknown people who aren't here to elaborate or defend their opinions are not that interesting.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

After almost 30 years of listening to a wide variety of classical music, there are still plenty of acknowledged composers and master pieces I don't like at all - and by now, I'm pretty sure I never will. Tastes differ.

"I find Bach boring, he was very clever but personally I find him boring"
is a perfectly valid statement, and quite acceptable. Even though he is my favourite composer, I would not have any problem with it if it was said to me.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> What did your friend expect from the audience after shooting himself in the foot by making such a comment?


This is exactly right.

The friend can think all he wants that Bach is boring. But why stand up in front of a group of musicians and say something like this?

Thinking that? Fine.

Saying that? Um, unless very carefully done, not so fine.

Ask your friend this. If he's at a dinner party, and he thinks his hostess's dress is ugly or that the pasta is overcooked or whatever, does he announce, honestly, his opinions?

I don't think it's confidence that's at issue here. It's courtesy. Of course we should be confident about our own listening and our own tastes. But that's not what the example exemplifies. It exemplifies how to be discourteous.

As Partita says, what does he expect?


----------



## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

some guy said:


> This is exactly right.
> 
> The friend can think all he wants that Bach is boring. But why stand up in front of a group of musicians and say something like this?
> 
> ...


So, you're saying that I _shouldn't_ attend the Bayreuth Festival dressed as Papageno.
Crisis averted.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Wait a minute. Attending Bayreuth dressed as Papageno sounds like a hoot!

Do it!!


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Couac Addict said:


> So, you're saying that I _shouldn't_ attend the Bayreuth Festival dressed as Papageno.


I don't see why you shouldn't, they most likely will tell you "ah, Eva didn't mention this new idea of hers... the stage is that way, please".


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> Yes but since the time Mendelssohn revived interest in Bach he's hardly been out of fashion. Handel has caught up a great deal over the past 20-30 years but is not in the same league as Bach, as poll after poll has revealed.
> 
> It doesn't appear that the "friend" in question was attempting to rubbish someone else's tastes. We aren't told much about the context of the lecture at which this comment was made, so it's anyone's guess who the audience comprised and what else may have been said by way of qualification of the comment.
> 
> ...


Partita, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you've slightly misinterpreted my comment.

I *love* Bach - I was just pointing out that in the past he's sometimes been found boring by the world in general, so it's *not particularly shocking* if someone feels the same today.

Also, I wasn't saying that *the OP's friend* was trying to rubbish someone's tastes. I was saying there's nothing wrong with not liking major composers so long as *a hypothetical person* doesn't use that opinion in order to pour scorn on someone else.

*And* I wasn't saying that *the good musician* had limited knowledge about Bach. I was saying that there's nothing wrong with not liking Bach, but there *would be* something wrong only if a person who claimed musical knowledge had not listened to Bach.

I don't think the OP is about 'unknown people' at all. It's about whether we sometimes don't say what we like honestly for fear of receiving the scorn or other negative emotions of the people we're talking to.

In short, I was just giving my opinion on whether it's okay to be honest. I was surprised and sorry to read your 'take' on my reply, which I still in all honesty think is clear enough.

For that reason I posted this, in order to explain myself. No offence intended; I enjoy reading your posts.

:cheers: Have a good Sunday.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I am in awe of Bach as one of the most profound and moving composers in all of music history, but I confess when a Bach work comes up on random play on my iThing, I am likely to hit the skip button because I'm in an exploring phase. I feel there is little new in Bach to discover without digging deeper than I have time for. Maybe this is the context of the original brave remark.


----------



## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Nothing wrong with having strong or nonstandard opinions so long as you know your audience enough and don't throw them out there as a truculent or obnoxious challenge. In my teens/college years (60s-70s) I really didn't like much of rock music for a lot reasons. That was music my age cohort worshipped. I would listen and try to like it, take potential girlfriends to concerts and wind up having a Horrible time and eventually concluded it just wasn't me and no sense hiding the fact. But I dealt with it by listening to music I liked, remaining quiet during discussions of music I couldn't join knowledgeably, and avoiding making statements that could come across as elitist or holier the thou. My good friends knew and could engage me good naturedly, but to the rest of the world I used discretion. I'm sixty-three. There's a lot of Mozart I don't like. Much of Bruckner still leaves me 
cold. There are times I'd rather listen to Telemann than Bach. And Handel operas bore the hell out of me. So what? It's not going to change anyone else's opinion. Nor should it. I'm a big boy. ("I'm President of the United States and I don't have to eat broccoli if I don't want to."  )


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Regarding the provided example -

1) Being frank is a virtue, but being brutally frank is a discourtesy, and not a virtue.

2) Stating to a group of fellow musicians that one finds Bach's music boring is an example of frankness, but not of discourtesy - none of the group being Mr. Bach.

3) The _significant_ datum in the speaker's statement is that _he is bored by Bach's music_. The _humanist's_ reaction to that revelation must be sympathy for the speaker, because for a musician, a thorough understanding of Bach's music must be advantageous - and such understanding cannot result in boredom. The speaker has admitted to an occupational deficiency, and should be aware that the sympathy this admission causes must inevitably devolve into pity.


----------



## TitanisWalleri (Dec 30, 2012)

I believe that it is more personal taste than history. I personally cannot listen to the Baroque or Classical periods. I just hate the style, and nothing I have ever heard by Bach or Mozart has even somewhat made me lean towards liking the eras. I am a Romantic and 20th century man.


----------



## Crassus (Nov 4, 2013)

You can't adress certain (negative) adjectives to certain composers when your only support is your subjective opinion in a lecture.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

If the question is about a principle, yes, be honest; there's no need to pretend to like a composer if you don't. But try to be a little more sophisticated in framing an honest opinion.

Unfortunately, in a discussion about principle, the reference to a specific composer seems to have caused a distraction. It doesn't matter how great Bach is, if the question is, "Am I allowed to say that I don't enjoy his music?"


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

In private you can do or say anything you want.

One other person enters the room, and the rules change.

In society, it's always preferable to be sociable.

Nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty. Everything to do with compromise and sociability.

If you insult a fellow member of the TC society, for instance, you lay yourself open to receiving an infraction. Unfortunately, if you do no such thing, you also have laid yourself open to receiving an infraction. That's the danger of being in society.

And both of those things are natural results of being in society. 

It is also natural to desire to take the freedom and safety of privacy into society with you. Natural, but unfortunately misguided. You go into society, you take some risks.

You cannot diminish those risks by taking the rules of privacy with you into the public realm. That's all this is about.

Consequently, here's my answer to MacLeod's question:

You're allowed to be polite in public.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Ukko said:


> Regarding the provided example -
> 
> 1) Being frank is a virtue, but being brutally frank is a discourtesy, and not a virtue.
> 
> ...


This was incredibly insightful.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

some guy said:


> You're allowed to be polite in public.


I might go further and say, "required", but that could be overstating things!


----------



## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

There's nothing impolite about saying you find Bach boring. As said above, Mr. Bach wasn't present.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

None of us knows the exact circumstances in which the "friend" referred to in the OP made his/her remark about Bach's music. A fuller understanding of that would be essential in order to say whether or not this remark was impolite. 

In other words, it's all a matter of context. I can imagine circumstances in which such a comment would be acceptable and others in which it would not be. Without further information, which we are most unlikely to get, all speculation on this matter is a waste of time. 

This is the problem when people come on here and refer to brief comments made by others who are not available to question further on the matter, or when the OP doesn't come forward with the necessary further information.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> None of us knows the exact circumstances in which the "friend" referred to in the OP made his/her remark about Bach's music. A fuller understanding of that would be essential in order to say whether or not this remark was impolite.
> 
> In other words, it's all a matter of context. I can imagine circumstances in which such a comment would be acceptable and others in which it would not be. Without further information, which we are most unlikely to get, all speculation on this matter is a waste of time.
> 
> This is the problem when people come on here and refer to brief comments made by others who are not available to question further on the matter, or when the OP doesn't come forward with the necessary further information.


I don't see the problem. The simple OP illustration has already been enough to establish that most posters so far think that honesty, tempered with civility, is the right approach.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Vesuvius said:


> This was incredibly insightful.


I am an incredibly insightful person... which makes my analysis credible.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I'm all for people expressing their opinions, whatever those may be and however much I disagree with them. If someone says "I find Bach's music incredibly boring" (some of my friends on this site and elsewhere would agree with this statement), I am not personally offended, although I cannot quite understand their point of view.

On the other hand, if someone says "Bach's music is boring and I think that people only pretend they like it because of its cultural cache", I find that somewhat offensive. The former is a statement of personal opinion, while the latter makes assumptions about others' motivations.

Enjoying classical music at all, I've had to put up with a fair amount of incomprehension from people who don't understand why I enjoy the things I do and not the things they do (or not as much), but enjoying music that's specifically unpopular _within_ the small subset of the population that listens to classical music, I've had to put up with numerous iterations and reiterations of the second kind of statement.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I don't see the problem. The simple OP illustration has already been enough to establish that most posters so far think that honesty, tempered with civility, is the right approach.


Sorry but we clearly do not know whether the OP's "friend" gave his opinion that Bach is boring in a manner tempered with civility.

Therefore we can't say whether or not his comment was impolite.

All that we can infer on the limited information available is that if he got a frosty reception it may not be surprising.

What you've come up with is a truism, that if the comment was tempered with civility then it is not impolite because it is civil.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Enjoying classical music at all, I've had to put up with a fair amount of incomprehension from people who don't understand why I enjoy the things I do and not the things they do (or not as much), but enjoying music that's specifically unpopular _within_ the small subset of the population that listens to classical music, I've had to put up with numerous iterations and reiterations of the second kind of statement.


If that experience seems annoyingly persistent, then you're simply keeping company with far too many a**holes. 
:tiphat:


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> Sorry but we clearly do not know whether the OP's "friend" gave his opinion that Bach is boring in a manner tempered with civility.
> 
> Therefore we can't say whether or not his comment was impolite.
> 
> ...


The OP didn't ask about the specifics of his friend's case but, "Are you honest" etc, so it doesn't matter about the missing details. I'm answering the OP, and I see nothing wrong in repeating a truism in this instance.


----------



## isridgewell (Jul 2, 2013)

A bit more info:

The good friend of mine is studying for a Masters in Composition at Leeds University and he made the comment during a lecture on chromatic harmony. The other musicians were fellow students. I think it is ok to make a statement like this in such a forum, in fact I admire him for being honest, he was not disrespectful just honest. I suspect that there were probably one or two others that possibly agreed to a certain degree but were afraid to voice their opinions about one of the musical "giants" in such a forum.

As far as my taste goes I actually really enjoy Bach! 

My Tristan comment however is interesting, I have in the region of 4000 classical cds now that span the entire repertoire so I have plenty of listening experience. However I am partly driven by the huge debate that Tristan provokes, it is truly an awesome achievement at so many levels. It is a work that I feel I want to know well and understand and part of this desire is because of the "culture" that surrounds it.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> The OP didn't ask about the specifics of his friend's case but, "Are you honest" etc, so it doesn't matter about the missing details. I'm answering the OP, and I see nothing wrong in repeating a truism in this instance.


I can't see any purpose in basing a moral statement on a truism but which you say you find acceptable. A truism is a statement that is so obvious or self-evident that is scarcely worth making.

The "friend" referred to in the OP may have been honest in saying that he thinks that Bach is boring but if he wasn't asked for his opinion and simply blurted it out to an assembled group of Bach admirers, albeit in a civil manner manner, it could still be impolite. As I said earlier, we do not know enough about the facts in this case, and each case is circumstance-driven.

The mere expression of an opinion in a civil manner may be a necessary condition for politeness but it is not a necessary and sufficient condition, as you evidently believe.

On your reckoning, if say a strongly minded Orthodox Jew were to go into a GayLib meeting and speak out loudly center-stage in a critical but civil manner against the assembled peoples' sexuality that would be consistent with polite behaviour, would it?


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

isridgewell said:


> A bit more info:
> 
> The good friend of mine is studying for a Masters in Composition at Leeds University and he made the comment during a lecture on chromatic harmony. The other musicians were fellow students. I think it is ok to make a statement like this in such a forum, in fact I admire him for being honest, he was not disrespectful just honest. I suspect that there were probably one or two others that possibly agreed to a certain degree but were afraid to voice their opinions about one of the musical "giants" in such a forum.


You mean your friend was simply one among a group of students and during a lecture given by someone else happened to comment, casual like, that he thought that Bach is boring?

No problem. Give the man a 5* rosette. I couldn't less about that kind of innocent remark. Complete storm in a tea-cup.

I thought perhaps your friend might perhaps have been giving a Bach recital to something like the Swaffham Ladies Guild and immediately after playing some work they had requested sat down and responded to the applauding crowd something like "_... well I'm glad you folk like it but I sure don't, I reckon Bach's boring and this especially, and can't wait to perform something decent like a piece by Mozart ..._"

I trust you might agree that something along the latter lines, had it been made, would not have been polite, even if said in a civil manner?


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> I can't see any purpose in basing a moral statement on a truism but which you say you find acceptable. A truism is a statement that is so obvious or self-evident that is scarcely worth making.
> 
> The "friend" referred to in the OP may have been honest in saying that he thinks that Bach is boring but if he wasn't asked for his opinion and simply blurted it out to an assembled group of Bach admirers, albeit in a civil manner manner, it could still be impolite. As I said earlier, we do not know enough about the facts in this case, and each case is circumstance-driven.
> 
> ...


I think, given our recent tart exchanges, I'll let this one go.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Said speaker lecturing was clearly trying to be provocative. It's not what s/he said that matters as much as how s/he responded to any reactions.

I've learned and enjoyed more by trying things I thought I didn't like than otherwise.

Boredom is often prelude to fascination and then ensuing obsession.

Let us know when your friend achieves obsession.

Oh btw was it JS or CPE? I find CPE a bit dull I must admit.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> I can't see any purpose in basing a moral statement on a truism but which you say you find acceptable. A truism is a statement that is so obvious or self-evident that is scarcely worth making.
> 
> The "friend" referred to in the OP may have been honest in saying that he thinks that Bach is boring but if he wasn't asked for his opinion and simply blurted it out to an assembled group of Bach admirers, albeit in a civil manner manner, it could still be impolite. As I said earlier, we do not know enough about the facts in this case, and each case is circumstance-driven.
> 
> ...


If he were open to repudiation of his perceptions and willing to go hang out and schmooze at a gay bar afterwards, it might turn into a fun evening. Or vice versa: GayLib Saturday next weekend at the Orthodox Temple.

The problem is when people start hitting each other instead.


----------



## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Partita, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you've slightly misinterpreted my comment.
> 
> ...
> 
> I was surprised and sorry to read your 'take' on my reply, which I still in all honesty think is clear enough.


I understood all your points actually. I've seen dozens if not hundreds of discussions very similar to this one, and all the points that you made, and have now clarified further, I have seen before and fully agree with. I was your using post, not to argue with you, but to use it as a basis on which to make a further point about Bach's return to popularity in the wake of Mendelsson's enthusiasm, and to further my main point that we don't know (or didn't know at that time) enough about the circumstances of the comment about Bach's music to decide whether or not it was impolite. I think I have now made it clear that the actual comment appears to be completely innocuous (who cares what's said amongst a group of students mulling over the virtues of any composer during a lecture?), and it's a pity that this information wasn't offered earlier, because if it was it surely wouldn't have made as much of a swirl.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Partita said:


> I understood all your points actually. I've seen dozens if not hundreds of discussions very similar to this one, and all the points that you made, and have now clarified further, I have seen before and fully agree with. I was your using post, not to argue with you, but to use it as a basis on which to make a further point about Bach's return to popularity in the wake of Mendelsson's enthusiasm, and to further my main point that we don't know (or didn't know at that time) enough about the circumstances of the comment about Bach's music to decide whether or not it was impolite. I think I have now made it clear that the actual comment appears to be completely innocuous (who cares what's said amongst a group of students mulling over the virtues of any composer during a lecture?), and it's a pity that this information wasn't offered earlier, because if it was it surely wouldn't have made as much of a swirl.


 Ahem, Partita - you still don't seem to understand that I was making a *general *point in reply to the OP's *general query*. So I don't think you *did* understand, actually, since in subsequent posts you dissect the circumstances of the OP's friend's remark and I wasn't talking about that *at all*! And I wasn't engaging with you at all, only with the OP.

Neither is it relevant that you've seen 'hundreds of discussions very similar to this one'. It's better to read *each new post* carefully rather than just assume you know the meaning based on your vast experience.

That would seem to be the prudent and courteous thing to do. 
Enjoy your week.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I think, given our recent tart exchanges, I'll let this one go.


Probably a wise move. I'm off now too. 
I think we all agree - anyone is allowed to express a dislike even for a major composer, so long as they do it politely in a context where it is not likely to be misunderstood or cause offence.
End of story.


----------



## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Yeah, some people ought to stop believing that he is the Bachbone of classical music.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

This site seems to have a higher collective intelligence and integrity than many other forums I've frequented in my time. It's refreshing.
:tiphat:


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

isridgewell said:


> I have a friend that is very good musician who during a lecture spoke his mind honestly and said:
> 
> "I find Bach boring, he was very clever but personally I find him boring"
> 
> ...


I agree with what many have said on this thread. Its okay to be honest, and I actually prefer honesty to dishonesty (or even worse, chicancery or subterfuge). However, the way we express things is very important. There has to be a level of respect, to not only others but also yourself. If I am rude then ultimately its not good for me, for my own reputation.

The other things someone said, about the wieght of history, that's something I think is revelant here too. There's many things with classical music, not only the music itself. There is ideology and how we interpret certain facts. There is the issue of consensus on some things, and grey areas and debate on others. There are more or less settled things and other areas that are controversial. Don't forget that many experts on music, including composers themselves, have in hindsight gotten it totally wrong when evaluating the music of others (including Bach, as people here have pointed out - in his time he was seen as being in third place, after Telemann and Handel).

I think that with communication though, its a two way street. If there is openess in the dialogue, some sort of acceptance of diversity of opinion, well I think that's the best thing. Its very hard to achieve though, one thing is you have to feel confident and have trust in others to let your guard down. There has to be a feeling that you can speak and not be attacked.

So there's all these things. I try to be easy on people as much as possible. Its all just opinion when it boils down to it. A lot of it is based on emotion too. As people have said, these composers are dead anyway (well, most of what is listened to today). So its not open slather but neither do we have to be too precious about these things. I'm more worried about the bitchiness between classical musicians - and fans too! - today than in the past. Changing the extremely entrenched patterns of the past, the divide and conquer type of games, well that's a thing that I think is overlooked in classical music. Its a recurring problem.


----------



## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

some guy said:


> Ask your friend this. If he's at a dinner party, and he thinks his hostess's dress is ugly or that the pasta is overcooked or whatever, does he announce, honestly, his opinions?


I don't think that simile works.


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Probably a wise move. I'm off now too.
> I think we all agree - anyone is allowed to express a dislike even for a major composer, so long as they do it politely in a context where it is not likely to be misunderstood or cause offence.
> End of story.


Exactly--though if you're charismatic enough, you can probably get away with just about anything. In any case, if you say Bach is boring during a lecture, you'd better be giving an extraordinarily entertaining lecture! :lol:


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Ahem, Partita - you still don't seem to understand that I was making a *general *point in reply to the OP's *general query*. So I don't think you *did* understand, actually, since in subsequent posts you dissect the circumstances of the OP's friend's remark and I wasn't talking about that *at all*! And I wasn't engaging with you at all, only with the OP.
> 
> Neither is it relevant that you've seen 'hundreds of discussions very similar to this one'. It's better to read *each new post* carefully rather than just assume you know the meaning based on your vast experience.
> 
> ...


I will ignore the uncalled-for innuendo in the above and merely say that of course I understood you were making a general point. As stated, there was nothing to disagree with in your post, as clearly people are free to express opinions on composers provided it's done politely in appropriate circumstances. This is not disputed, as it's so obvious. The point is however that we weren't given enough information about the circumstances in this case to enable any assessment of whether the comment was made in "appropriate circumstances". Member "someguy" made the same point later in the thread.

May I suggest that you re-read what I wrote with this in mind, and I trust you will see that I was not challenging anything you wrote but suggesting that we need more facts which I thought would not be forthcoming given that the person who made the alleged comment is not here to elaborate on his/her intended meaning.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

When something that has long been considered "a great work," whether of music or literature or art, does not strike me as great, I usually take it as a challenge to myself. My task as a student, as someone who aspires to appreciate and share in the Western cultural tradition, is to at least figure out why so many other knowledgeable, thoughtful people have experienced the work as great. Even if I personally never reach the point of experiencing it that way myself, I hope that at least I'll understand why others have. 

That's usually how I approach works that are somewhat less esteemed as well. I'd like to understand both why they're loved by some and denigrated by others. Which is why I don't shy away from exploring "middle-brow" music and literature. I don't want to miss that part of my self-education.


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Partita said:


> Yes but since the time Mendelssohn revived interest in Bach he's hardly been out of fashion. Handel has caught up a great deal over the past 20-30 years but is not in the same league as Bach, as poll after poll has revealed.
> 
> It doesn't appear that the "friend" in question was attempting to rubbish someone else's tastes. We aren't told much about the context of the lecture at which this comment was made, so it's anyone's guess who the audience comprised and what else may have been said by way of qualification of the comment.
> 
> ...


This is the sort of stuff that worries me. What is this " might have very limited knowledge about Bach? "
I don't need knowledge about Bach to find him boring and I do,but I know that many don't and I most certainly wouldn't "rubbish" their taste.
But nobody should tell others that they should like a composer and if they don't they should acquire knowledge regarding that composer.
One's reaction to a composer is the only knowledge necessary.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

moody said:


> .. I don't need knowledge about Bach to find him boring and I do,but I know that many don't and I most certainly wouldn't "rubbish" their taste.


By "knowledge of Bach" I obviously meant his music. If you are saying that you can decide that the music of J S Bach is boring without having any knowledge of his music that's quite remarkable. I wonder how you managed that?



moody said:


> .. But nobody should tell others that they should like a composer and if they don't they should One's reaction to a composer is the only knowledge necessary.


This part of your of your post is baffling, assuming it is addressed to me. Nowhere in this thread have I stated that anyone who doesn't like any particular composer should acquire knowledge regarding that composer. All that I have said is that it is possible that the "friend" in question may have found Bach "boring" if he is generally unfamiliar with his music. They can do whatever they like to rectify this for all I care. If you can find anything that I have written which suggests anything different perhaps you would quote the relevant text.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

shangoyal said:


> Yeah, some people ought to stop believing that he is the Bachbone of classical music.


Yeah, some people don't like it much when their cosy misconceptions are questioned by someone who might know rather more than they do about the subject.


----------



## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Partita said:


> By "knowledge of Bach" I obviously meant his music. If you are saying that you can decide that the music of J S Bach is boring without having any knowledge of his music that's quite remarkable. I wonder how you managed that?


the question is, how many musical pieces by a composer "should" one have to listen before being "allowed" to decide they don't like said composer? I'd venture to say pretty much everybody posting on this site has heard a fair share of Bach and if they decided they did not care for his music why are you taking this so personally?


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Partita said:


> By "knowledge of Bach" I obviously meant his music. If you are saying that you can decide that the music of J S Bach is boring without having any knowledge of his music that's quite remarkable. I wonder how you managed that?
> 
> This part of your of your post is baffling, assuming it is addressed to me. Nowhere in this thread have I stated that anyone who doesn't like any particular composer should acquire knowledge regarding that composer. All that I have said is that it is possible that the "friend" in question may have found Bach "boring" if he is generally unfamiliar with his music. They can do whatever they like to rectify this for all I care. If you can find anything that I have written which suggests anything different perhaps you would quote the relevant text.


Certainly, "the 'good musician' in question might have very limited knowledge about Bach". Knowledge = comprehension, understanding .
Maybe it's your choice of words and you actually meant he had limited familiarity with Bach's music ???
So what you've actually said implies that if he had that knowledge he would like Bach -------please clarify and we can pass on.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

Partita said:


> I was your using post, not to argue with you, but to use it as a basis on which to make a further point


Wait a minute! Why, you DO understand what I was doing with your post on that MVC thread!!

(I feel a lot better now, I assure you. Truly. I mean it.)


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

deggial said:


> the question is, how many musical pieces by a composer "should" one have to listen before being "allowed" to decide they don't like said composer? I'd venture to say pretty much everybody posting on this site has heard a fair share of Bach and if they decided they did not care for his music why are you taking this so personally?


I think the question is quite other. This business of being "allowed" is a red herring, for one. There is no "allowed" or "not allowed" in this context. (Disagreement, yes. Disagreement being turned into "not allowed" is what's happening.)

Another red herring is the "decide they don't like." Again, for the umpteenth time, no one anywhere has ever cared whether or not anyone likes or dislikes anything. The liking or disliking is not the point.

So here's the question: how much of a composer's output should one know before *expressing* an opinion? If the opinion is positive, probably not very much. One piece, maybe. If the opinion is negative, however, then it better be quite a bit more than one piece. And even then.

The value of a positive opinion is self-evident. The value of a negative opinion is not. A negative opinion, because it's negative, has to be supported by evidence in order to be useful, in order to be palatable.

(There is another red herring in this post: "taking this so personally." That's a kind of concealed ad hominem and should probably be discarded. I.e., best to leave off the speculations--they can be no more than that--about the inner reality of one's fellow posters.)


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

some guy said:


> The value of a positive opinion is self-evident. The value of a negative opinion is not. A negative opinion, because it's negative, has to be supported by evidence in order to be useful, in order to be palatable.


The _validity _of an opinion, either positive or negative, ought to be based on an equal minimum familiarity.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

It's true that an opinion should be valid. I agree.

And the best way to validate it is to provide support for it.

What I would say is that a positive opinion doesn't need as much validation. That it contains some validation already simply by being positive.

That is, I don't think that positive and negative are equal. Opposites, but not equal.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

some guy said:


> It's true that an opinion should be valid. I agree.
> 
> And the best way to validate it is to provide support for it.
> 
> ...


There is no logical way to validate the _opinion_ "This music bores me". It may be possible to evaluate the opinion.


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Ukko said:


> There is no logical way to validate the _opinion_ "This music bores me". It may be possible to evaluate the opinion.


There is too much psycho-babble, if I hear some composer a couple of times and don't like him I'm not going to work at it---I laugh because there are plenty more fish in the sea. Life's too short and music is there only for enjoyment.
I will hear that composer from time to time and who knows,he may grow on me , but probably not from my experience.


----------



## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

I think that negative opinions tend to be down-played in the world today. That being said, you certainly have the right to say you don't like something or disagree with another opinion, but you _should_ do it sensitively and with respect for the other person/people involved in the conversation.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

deggial said:


> the question is, how many musical pieces by a composer "should" one have to listen before being "allowed" to decide they don't like said composer? I'd venture to say pretty much everybody posting on this site has heard a fair share of Bach and if they decided they did not care for his music why are you taking this so personally?


I'm not taking anything personally. Why are you trying to personalise it? All this is water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned. I'm just making a simple point that a second-hand report of someone's friend's dismissive opinion on Bach is not a topic of much interest when that "friend" is not here to clarify upon his views. I have mainly been replying to mis-representations or misunderstandings of what I actually said or clearly implied.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

moody said:


> There is too much psycho-babble, if I hear some composer a couple of times and don't like him I'm not going to work at it---I laugh because there are plenty more fish in the sea. Life's too short and music is there only for enjoyment.
> I will hear that composer from time to time and who knows,he may grow on me , but probably not from my experience.


 It must not be easy to avoid Bach's music, at least on classical music radio. Personally, some of it I enjoy, some of it I don't, and some of that depends on who is performing what. Hell, I can say the same about anyone else's music (that I've heard).

If I hadn't decided to 'work at it', Bartók's string quartets would not occupy several inches of space in my collection. The only work actually involved was passive listening anyway, and I made time for it. Eventually, I stayed awake.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Partita said:


> I'm not taking anything personally. Why are you trying to personalise it? All this is water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned. I'm just making a simple point that a second-hand report of someone's friend's dismissive opinion on Bach is not a topic of much interest when that "friend" is not here to clarify upon his views. I have mainly been replying to mis-representations or misunderstandings of what I actually said or clearly implied.




58 posts is an indication that some folks were interested, eh? BTW the problem with 'clearly implying' is that the quick scan method often employed in these discussions tends to sail over implications. Italics - or even bolded italics - may be required to get a pause in the scan.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

moody said:


> music is there only for enjoyment.


Some of the responses in the is music important thread tell another story.

Besides, have you never enjoyed working at something? Never enjoyed the challenge of overcoming initial difficulties? I'm gonna guess that you have.


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

some guy said:


> Some of the responses in the is music important thread tell another story.
> 
> Besides, have you never enjoyed working at something? Never enjoyed the challenge of overcoming initial difficulties? I'm gonna guess that you have.


Of course but I was in the army at fifteen then when I came out I was in management /sales for Transworld Publishers (Bantam ,etc) Rank Hotels, Saga records, Mary Quant and I had three children. The music kept me sane and I didn't want to make it part of the war as well.So every where I went including the army in Germany then the USA,Austria, etc. it was waitng for me in a different world.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

moody said:


> Of course but I was in the army at fifteen then when I came out I was in management /sales for Transworld Publishers (Bantam ,etc) Rank Hotels, Saga records, Mary Quant and I had three children. The music kept me sane and I didn't want to make it part of the war as well.So every where I went including the army in Germany then the USA,Austria, etc. it was waitng for me in a different world.


Ah, I see where you're coming from, and that's wonderful. But you must understand that the view is very personal, it just won't apply to everyone. That's the beautiful thing about music... Like water, it has no initial form, but it can serve the shape of any personal projection while still maintaining it's formless nature.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

Regards the question posed earlier about how much experience is required before a negative comment about composer or piece of music may be considered valid, I recall a T-C thread some while ago when a long-standing member argued that people shouldn't cast negative opinions on these topics until they have reached a minimum age of 25! I won't mention that member's name in case my recollection is not 100% correct. 

I consider that the amount of experience is not a fixed thing in regard to negative comments. It mainly depends on the context in which a negative comment is made. There are two extremes. 

i. If a negative comment about a composer or piece of music or type of music is made by an individual among a group of friends, or during a lecture by one of the students, then it doesn't matter how much experience they may have. This covers all posts on this Forum made by the general mass of members. As far as I'm concerned, they can say whatever they like about whichever composer, or genre etc they happen to dislike. I won't feel in the least bit offended or concerned. After all, it happens all the time on this Forum, and can't be stopped.

ii. At the other extreme if it is made by someone who purports to be qualified in music and is giving a formal assessment of that composer's works then one would expect that person to have a good knowledge of the subject. Indeed, looking at the OP this latter scenario was a possibility but as it turns out by the additional information subsequently made available the true scenario was the former, students merely chatting among themselves informally with a lecturer.

I'm not going to attempt to outline all the possible intermediate categories, but suffice to say that the more formal the circumstances in which a negative opinion is expressed the greater the amount of knowledge one would expect from whoever makes the claim.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Which reminds me of what Aaron Copland was purported to have said when people asked him how he knew whether his compositions sounded good, or not: "little children and dogs like them."

I have a long-standing resistance to accepting any limited set of criteria as sufficient to distinguish best from better; on the other hand, I also have impatience with strong and absolutist expressions of opinion based completely on illiteracy and ignorance.

People like what they're familiar with, and are intimidated by the unknown; the smarter ones have the patience to cope with the unknown and unfamiliar and to continue to investigate to make it known and familiar. And then, it's the impatience with the familiar and known that take over. :cheers:


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Copperears said:


> Which reminds me of what Aaron Copland was purported to have said when people asked him how he knew whether his compositions sounded good, or not: "little children and dogs like them."


I've seen this attributed to 13 or 14 composers, I think! :lol:


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

some guy said:


> It's true that an opinion should be valid. I agree.
> 
> And the best way to validate it is to provide support for it.
> 
> ...


I agree that the best opinions are those that are supported, not merely asserted. But I'm not sure why a positive opinion can have a lower threshold of support than a negative one. If I say that "Bach is boring/Bach is wonderful" based on listening to only three of his Fugues, why is the positive more valid?


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I agree that the best opinions are those that are supported, not merely asserted. But I'm not sure why a positive opinion can have a lower threshold of support than a negative one. If I say that "Bach is boring/Bach is wonderful" based on listening to only three of his Fugues, why is the positive more valid?


The positive tends to cary a loving feeling with it, one that most people quite enjoy. It satisfies the heart and the mind. The negative only satisfies the mind as an intellectual perspective.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> I agree that the best opinions are those that are supported, not merely asserted. But I'm not sure why a positive opinion can have a lower threshold of support than a negative one. If I say that "Bach is boring/Bach is wonderful" based on listening to only three of his Fugues, why is the positive more valid?


I agree with someguy in part, but I see your point as well.

The problem is that negative reactions tend to carry with them the idea that "I don't like anything by Bach because I haven't liked anything I've heard", while positive reactions tend to resemble "I love what I've heard of Bach so far, and I want to hear more".

The former makes a far more sweeping judgement than the latter.

On the other hand, if it takes the form of "Bach is one of the best composers ever!" when all the person has heard is the Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the Air from the third orchestral suite, then there is equally as little basis for such a judgement.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> The problem is that negative reactions *tend to carry with them* the idea that "I don't like anything by Bach because I haven't liked anything I've heard", while positive reactions tend to resemble "I love what I've heard of Bach so far, and I want to hear more".
> 
> The former makes a far more sweeping judgement than the latter.


I understand your point, and think it is probably true. However, that's more because people make an assumption (the words in bold) about the first that is no more valid than any assumption made about the second. Only by elaboration on the simple opinion (which I deliberately kept simple for the purposes of comparison) can such assumptions be tested.

To misquote Kipling,



> If you can meet with compliment and criticism
> And treat those two impostors just the same


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I tend to be very interested in positive and negative judgments about composers (or their works, or recordings) that run counter to received wisdom (as I understand it) and my own opinion. The more surprising it is the more I'd hope for something in the way of justification. If it's not forthcoming, however, no matter--to each his own!


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

moody said:


> ... Mary Quant and I had three children.


Now that's quite something.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I understand your point, and think it is probably true. However, that's more because people make an assumption (the words in bold) about the first that is no more valid than any assumption made about the second. Only by elaboration on the simple opinion (which I deliberately kept simple for the purposes of comparison) can such assumptions be tested.
> 
> To misquote Kipling,


That's a great quote. It's been said that the tendency to have strong expectations and preferences can lead to many unnecessary discomforts... as life normally isn't too concerned with one's personal projections; it leaves many unsettled.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Partita said:


> Now that's quite something.


Jeez, that indicates a pretty serious reading problem, eh?


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Partita said:


> Regards the question posed earlier about how much experience is required before a negative comment about composer or piece of music may be considered valid, I recall a T-C thread some while ago when a long-standing member argued that people shouldn't cast negative opinions on these topics until they have reached a minimum age of 25! I won't mention that member's name in case my recollection is not 100% correct.
> 
> I consider that the amount of experience is not a fixed thing in regard to negative comments. It mainly depends on the context in which a negative comment is made. There are two extremes.
> 
> ...


What you say makes sense to me, however the thing that puts a spanner in the works no matter of a person's expertise or knowledge in music is ideology or bias. This is what I was saying before. The game of one upmanship has been played in classical music for time immemorial.

Often, or most often, its the negative comments of these experts (including composers) - mainly of an ideological kind - that causes the most problems. I can cite many examples, for example Hanslick's "music that stinks in the ear" comments about Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, or Boulez's "Schoenberg is dead" speech instigating the Webern cult, or what one ultra-nationalist composer, Cesar Cui, said of Rachmaninov's First Symphony, that listening to it was like going through the plagues of Egypt. These comments and opinions that most people would now see as unbalanced to say the least, well they talk to this problem that kind of tends to underground when its all happening. But fast forward a generation or two and things change and go more towards balance.

In terms of classical music, clearing the cobwebs of ideology, and confronting this kind of baggage, well that's what I see as the biggest challenge. Experts can get it wrong in music, as in any other field. Probably not even right to say they're wrong, just in the heat of the moment. By the 1970's for example, Boulez had reversed his position, and ended up conducting the most tonal and Romantic composer of the Viennese triumvirate, premiereing Berg's Lulu.

So nothing is set in stone. I know I have said things here, and in real life about other things, that I have realised where dodgy. That's life. But if we are not able to express these opinions in the first place, how can we ourselves analyse them? That's why I don't like lock downs on certain opinions, be they good or bad, right or wrong. If we want to have a real dialogue about music, here or elsewhere, there has to be some freedom to be honest. But its never easy, and of course in some situations or with some topics, some things are indeed better left unsaid. But its up to the individual to judge what that exactly is, not others lording over him or her.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ukko said:


> Regarding the provided example -
> 
> 1) Being frank is a virtue, but being brutally frank is a discourtesy, and not a virtue.
> 
> ...


Occupational deficiency, cobnuts and codswallop! To discern that Bach, Teleman, Vivaldi, and all those who wrote in an era where even the greatest of composers wrote daily -- thousands of pieces over the course of years -- a voluminous output in basically the same style throughout their careers, as artisans, and that some of that music is extremely well-made but not "inspired," is a professional asset.

Do toadily swoon over Bach because of some accretion of romantic era sentiment, attaching some quaint notion of holy geometry and the mathematical truth of the music of the spheres is less than professional, and I consider those factors which stuff the listener's ears with what amounts to reverential cotton made of holy communion wafers -- protestant style, is less than admirable, whether professional musician or not -- for this too, is what it takes to "thoroughly understand Bach's music," -- that whatever there is of it, it is perfectly made, while some of it, other than the mechanics, is thoroughly uninteresting.

That roomfuls of lay people or professional musicians gasp at such a statement is proof of a de facto indoctrination which is nothing but romanticized and glamorized falsehoods, the sort of falsehoods or synthetic beliefs which need a healthy bashing to slap cold water in the face of the deceived believers.

Next: "Music does not tell stories." LOL.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I agree that the best opinions are those that are supported, not merely asserted. But I'm not sure why a positive opinion can have a lower threshold of support than a negative one. If I say that "Bach is boring/Bach is wonderful" based on listening to only three of his Fugues, why is the positive more valid?


It seems intuitively obvious to me that it is likely to take more time for most people to decide that they do not like a style of music or composer than it does to say they like it. Of course, a quick judgment can be made, which could be negative, but it is hardly going to be a robust one as many people often warm to new styles after further exposure.

The "experts" sometimes get it wrong, change their minds etc, because of badly pre-conceived ideas. History is full of mistakes by such people in terms of making "false negatives" with regard to their initial assessments of anything new in classical music.

Against this what chance does somebody with far less knowledge have in hoping to reach conclusions that may be expected to serve them for any length of time into the future when it's only based on very limited familiarity with the subject? While of course they are free to express negative opinions based in limited experience if they wish, those opinions don't interest me and the question about whether or not they are "impolite" in these circumstances is not a particularly fruitful discussion area.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Partita said:


> It seems intuitively obvious to me that it is likely to take more time for most people to decide that they do not like a style of music or composer than it does to say they like it. Of course, a quick judgment can be made, which could be negative, but it is hardly going to be a robust one as many people often warm to new styles after further exposure.


It doesn't seem obvious to me, but perhaps I'm not intuitive. If I like the first piece of work I hear by x, I think I can claim to like that piece. It would, IMO, be premature to generalise from that to a liking of that composer as a whole. The threshold is surely the same for disliking. It seems to me that it is the defenders of a composer who want to insist that you have to have listened to a large body of a composer's work before you can conclusively offer a valid negative response. I don't accept that this is so.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Occupational deficiency, cobnuts and codswallop! To discern that Bach, Teleman, Vivaldi, and all those who wrote in an era where even the greatest of composers wrote daily -- thousands of pieces over the course of years -- a voluminous output in basically the same style throughout their careers, as artisans, and that some of that music is extremely well-made but not "inspired," is a professional asset.
> 
> Do toadily swoon over Bach because of some accretion of romantic era sentiment, attaching some quaint notion of holy geometry and the mathematical truth of the music of the spheres is less than professional, and I consider those factors which stuff the listener's ears with what amounts to reverential cotton made of holy communion wafers -- protestant style, is less than admirable, whether professional musician or not -- for this too, is what it takes to "thoroughly understand Bach's music," -- that whatever there is of it, it is perfectly made, while some of it, other than the mechanics, is thoroughly uninteresting.
> 
> ...


No way to edit that quote without diminishing its dramatic presentation of the phenomenon known as "Throwing the baby out with the bath water". Surely it is obvious that there is no need to swallow Bach's complete works whole...?


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> It doesn't seem obvious to me, but perhaps I'm not intuitive. If I like the first piece of work I hear by x, I think I can claim to like that piece. It would, IMO, be premature to generalise from that to a liking of that composer as a whole. The threshold is surely the same for disliking. It seems to me that it is the defenders of a composer who want to insist that you have to have listened to a large body of a composer's work before you can conclusively offer a valid negative response. I don't accept that this is so.


I have no particular axe to grind on behalf of any composer. I like a lot of them and my favorites schedule is quite flat.

If I may ask, for how long have you been taking a serious interest in classical music, and how many of the major composers' works are you familiar with?

Among these composers are there any whose works you generally find "boring"? Assuming there is at least one, which is the most boring and do you think that you will continue to think this way even as you approach old age?

When I started, I liked Baroque, Classical and Romantic. I was not keen on impressionist composers but after a while I became a tiny bit tired of the Romantic era, and found a new interest in the works of Debussy and Ravel especially. Early "boredom" can easily turn into "enthusiasm" given the passage of time.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ukko said:


> No way to edit that quote without diminishing its dramatic presentation of the phenomenon known as "Throwing the baby out with the bath water". Surely it is obvious that there is no need to swallow Bach's complete works whole...?


But that is what many do, even those who have not listened to a bundle of it, or read through, at least, the 24 preludes and fugues, the Partitas, or some significant body of his works, period.

Holy Bach, musical master of the Universe, (rather like Emperor Ming of Flash Gordon) gets daily reverence from some, at least those who drank that Kool-Aid.

The only reaction is then against those who have so intensely over-reacted to the glories and brilliance _of just one composer from just one era_, and if you have not noticed, they are legion


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Partita said:


> If I may ask, for how long have you been taking a serious interest in classical music, and how many of the major composers' works are you familiar with?
> 
> Among these composers are there any whose works you generally find "boring"? Assuming there is at least one, which is the most boring and do you think that you will continue to think this way even as you approach old age?


I've 'bored' other members with my listening history at least twice on this forum, so I don't want to rehearse it again in detail here. Besides, I'm not sure its relevant to the principle in dispute, and you've already expressed an (IMO, ill-chosen) opinion about the quantity of music you think I should be familiar with in another thread. Suffice to say that I bought my first classical albums when I was 11 (Holst, Grieg) and am most familiar with some of the works of some of the "major" composers from the Classical, Romantic and Modern periods. Beethoven, Haydn, Satie and Debussy are my favourite composers (to the extent that I think I'm sufficiently familiar with some of their key works to make such a claim!)

"Boring" is not a term I tend to use about much of anything I do. I try to be a little more considered in deciding not to pursue a particular composer, but, for shorthand's sake and for illustrative purposes only, the small amount I've heard of (let's say) Wagner has not endeared me to him, and it may be I will never listen to him again, even unto death! On the other hand, I may one day find my tastes change and I'll embrace his work in the same way that over the past year, I've been embracing Haydn's London Symphonies.


----------



## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Something New?*

I have stated the following before in other threads so sorry for repeating myself.

For everything I know about music there are a hundred things I do not know.

One of my motives for participating in forums is to expand my knowledge of music.

I very rarely learn anything new about music when I read a negative comment. Such observations are normally the refections of a person's biases.

Even if it is true, reading that some people consider Bach "boring" has not expanded by knowledge of Bach or changed my views toward his music.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> I have stated the following before in other threads so sorry for repeating myself.
> 
> For everything I know about music there are a hundred things I do not know.
> 
> ...


Thank you. 9 times out of 10 it's not the music that's the problem... it's the listener. Criticism based on clouded personal-biases helps no one.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I've 'bored' other members with my listening history at least twice on this forum, so I don't want to rehearse it again in detail here. Besides, I'm not sure its relevant to the principle in dispute, and you've already expressed an (IMO, ill-chosen) opinion about the quantity of music you think I should be familiar with in another thread. Suffice to say that I bought my first classical albums when I was 11 (Holst, Grieg) and am most familiar with some of the works of some of the "major" composers from the Classical, Romantic and Modern periods. Beethoven, Haydn, Satie and Debussy are my favourite composers (to the extent that I think I'm sufficiently familiar with some of their key works to make such a claim!)
> 
> "Boring" is not a term I tend to use about much of anything I do. I try to be a little more considered in deciding not to pursue a particular composer, but, for shorthand's sake and for illustrative purposes only, the small amount I've heard of (let's say) Wagner has not endeared me to him, and it may be I will never listen to him again, even unto death! On the other hand, I may one day find my tastes change and I'll embrace his work in the same way that over the past year, I've been embracing Haydn's London Symphonies.


Thanks for the above. Very interesting. I hope one day that you'll begin to enjoy Wagner.

You say that you still do not accept the principle under dispute (raised by "someguy" at post #52) concerning relative amounts of listening experience. Let's try this slightly more statistical approach:

If a listener "A" stumbles across a few examples of a composer's work for the first time and generally likes those works it would seem obvious that he is entitled to say that on the basis of what he has heard he likes that composer, or is not "bored" (conclusion A).

If another new listener "B" stumbles across the same number of that composer's work for the first time, but possibly different examples, and generally dislikes them it would seem obvious that he is also entitled to say that on the basis of what he has heard he dislikes that composer's works, or is bored by them (conclusion B).

So far all seems equal. However, if it can be reasonably assumed that a typical person's classical music tastes are likely to broaden as they age and acquire further listening experience, then there is a difference in the confidence level at which these two different conclusions can be held if each is to be used to provide a prediction now of the likelihood of that person continuing to hold the same views well into the future.

On this assumption, the confidence level for conclusion A could well be larger than it is for conclusion B for any given sample size of works that have been listened to. This follows from the fact that, by assumption, the present "dislike" may vanish of its own accord in the future, so that we would be looking for a bigger sample now of material on which to base a negative assessment that may be expected to remain robust in the future. Therefore in order to achieve what statisticians call the same "power", i.e. the probability of not making a "false negative" conclusion, and thus to equalise the confidence levels between the two samples, a bigger sample size would be required to support conclusion B than conclusion A.

This reasoning, I think, is sufficient to validate the assertion that more information is required to be confident about a negative assertion than a positive assertion, in the context of a newcomer's assessment of the works of a composer whose work is new to that listener. How much more information may be required is difficult to determine, as it is a personal matter depending on the degree of aversion that exists now and the likely speed of progression towards appreciating a wider-embracing set of composers.

Hopefully then:

Q.E.D.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

deggial said:


> the question is, how many musical pieces by a composer "should" one have to listen before being "allowed" to decide they don't like said composer? I'd venture to say pretty much everybody posting on this site has heard a fair share of Bach and if they decided they did not care for his music why are you taking this so personally?


How many raw oysters should you eat before deciding whether you love 'em or hate 'em?


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> Thank you. 9 times out of 10 it's not the music that's the problem... it's the listener. Criticism based on clouded personal-biases helps no one.


Sure it does--it gives you a sense of someone's general tastes in music, and whether or not you can trust their particular recommendations down the road.

In any case, if you can express negative opinions with knowledge, wit, and fury--I want to read it! The occasional mention of Flash Gorden can be helpful for this purpose.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> Sure it does--it gives you a sense of someone's general tastes in music, and whether or not you can trust their particular recommendations down the road.
> 
> In any case, if you can express negative opinions with knowledge, wit, and fury--I want to read it! The occasional mention of Flash Gorden can be helpful for this purpose.


Constructive criticism is one thing, but criticism based on clouded personal-biases helps no one... It can be entertaining, as watching a monkey swing in a tree can be.... How long will you be entertained by a monkey though?

That doesn't mean you can't joke around... humorous and satirical involvement is a joy. But you can tell when someone is jammed too far up their own a**. And no, that helps no one.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> But you can tell when someone is jammed too far up their own a**.


Sounds fun! (I'm pretty sure that _I_ am.)


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> Constructive criticism is one thing, but criticism based on clouded personal-biases helps no one... It can be entertaining, as watching a monkey swing in a tree can be.... How long will you be entertained by a monkey though?
> 
> That doesn't mean you can't joke around... humorous and satirical involvement is a joy. But you can tell when someone is jammed too far up their own a**. And no, that helps no one.


If nothing else, biased and negative judgments of recordings can sometimes save me a little money! :lol:


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

As a former, erstwhile New Historicist this thread interests me, as it's ultimately about the problems of both interpretation and evaluation, which are rich subjects in the history of music (as well as literature and everything else).

Evaluative categories of what is "good," "better," "best" are often, surprisingly, founded purely upon personal bias and politics. Someone slept with someone else's wife and so Composer X is railed against early in their career, and then a reputation is developed they have to struggle with for the rest of history. Or, the opposite; some Composer Y is generous in nature to someone, or has lots of kids (Bach) and then ends up being arbitrarily hypostatized (like that? oh, the ancient post-modern ring of it!) as "great," and then hundreds of years of hero worship of the absolute perfection of the artist's work ensue.

I exaggerate slightly simply to emphasize the potential historical factors in the reputation of various works. The same thing can be held true, obviously, of musical styles, eras, movements. There are periods of strong rejection of past tradition as an attempt to break free of it, and the treatises, rants, formal theorizations occurring as a result tend to produce judgments of a period of work or musical history that are in fact there simply to set up a contrast to allow a next generation to assert itself and its new approach. This is standard practice in philosophy, in fact, except that it (mostly) tends to take the part of more nuanced, reasoned discourse over thousands of pages of a philosopher's work to establish the argument.

I think in classical music in particular, and in my own experience with it, there is a hugely personal component in the transmission of aesthetic and evaluative perception and technique. I can't even begin to remember how many conversations while I was seriously studying music involved a lot of things along the lines of, "oh, he was a student of Honegger," or "he studied conducting under Bernstein [sometimes quite literally, ahem....]," etc. As with blues and traditional African folk music practice, there has been a living tradition of passing the music along, from one generation of musicians and composers to the next; and in such traditions, the personal relationships, assessments, all come to bear on determining "greatness" or "failure."

This is not all to say taste is completely arbitrary; in the interim, science has begun to isolate phenomena of perception and their neurological effects, and there are probably (scientists always say probably, not certainly) associations of consonance and dissonance with certain biological and neurological reactions. Flocks of birds flee at a loud sound. Cats purr when they are comfortable. In music, there are probably relatively universal biological reactions to certain kinds of excitation and soothing, and the dynamics of same, that all contribute to an overall assessment as to the appeal of the experience.

Outside the biological, though, we're very heavily, and mostly unconsciously, influenced by musical habits of mind, made all the more unconscious by their successful and extensive mass reproduction. Taste, since the 20th century first started recording music, has been produced on a scale and across borders of time and space in ways that never occurred in all of previous human history. The result is that a lot of people at the mass level never rise above this unconscious training, and stay stuck with the "I know what I like" level of evaluation. Is that good? Bad? Who is to say? But I feel that at a certain level, it is un-free. You have been handed a tonal and rhythmic language that you have been trained into thinking is natural and universal, and it has frozen you away from exploration of alternatives to this mass-produced aesthetic. And worse, you grow hostile towards anyone who suggests that might be the case.

You can take control of your own training, though, and that is called education, most of which is self-generated and simply leverages the means available to pursue. The means are more extensive than they've ever been before, and I'll end this screed by saying that it is unadulterated laziness if you don't make use of them to free yourselves from the banalities of mass taste.

And, once you do so, you can freely indulge and enjoy mass taste perceptions by choice instead of by necessity, and then even things other people will crap on as "it's not good music" will be of interest. Because everything has a context, a meaning, and a place in relationship to everything else.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> Sounds fun! (I'm pretty sure that _I_ am.)


I'm sure you are. 



Blancrocher said:


> If nothing else, biased and negative judgments of recordings can sometimes save me a little money! :lol:


Touche'


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> I very rarely learn anything new about music when I read a negative comment. Such observations are normally the refections of a person's biases.





Vesuvius said:


> Thank you. 9 times out of 10 it's not the music that's the problem... it's the listener. Criticism based on clouded personal-biases helps no one.





Vesuvius said:


> Constructive criticism is one thing, but criticism based on clouded personal-biases helps no one... It can be entertaining, as watching a monkey swing in a tree can be.... How long will you be entertained by a monkey though?


Funny how positive judgement isn't also based on "clouded bias".

And stating your opinion twice in successive posts does not make it more valid!



Partita said:


> If a listener "A" stumbles across a few examples of a composer's work for the first time and generally likes those works it would seem obvious that he is entitled to say that on the basis of what he has heard he likes that composer, or is not "bored" (conclusion A).
> 
> If another new listener "B" stumbles across the same number of that composer's work for the first time, but possibly different examples, and generally dislikes them it would seem obvious that he is also entitled to say that on the basis of what he has heard he dislikes that composer's works, or is bored by them (conclusion B).


I'm with you so far (and probably no further) though it's time to dispense with 'bored' as the example of criticism: it's lame.



Partita said:


> So far all seems equal. However, if it can be reasonably assumed that a typical person's classical music tastes are likely to broaden as they age and acquire further listening experience, then there is a difference in the confidence level at which these two different conclusions can be held if each is to be used to provide a prediction now of the likelihood of that person continuing to hold the same views well into the future.
> 
> On this assumption, the confidence level for conclusion A could well be larger than it is for conclusion B for any given sample size of works that have been listened to. This follows from the fact that, by assumption, the present "dislike" may vanish of its own accord in the future, so that we would be looking for a bigger sample now of material on which to base a negative assessment that may be expected to remain robust in the future. Therefore in order to achieve what statisticians call the same "power", i.e. the probability of not making a "false negative" conclusion, and thus to equalise the confidence levels between the two samples, a bigger sample size would be required to support conclusion B than conclusion A.
> 
> This reasoning, I think, is sufficient to validate the assertion that more information is required to be confident about a negative assertion than a positive assertion, in the context of a newcomer's assessment of the works of a composer whose work is new to that listener. How much more information may be required is difficult to determine, as it is a personal matter depending on the degree of aversion that exists now and the likely speed of progression towards appreciating a wider-embracing set of composers.


The problem with your 'proof' is that it starts taking the future into account. Mine was a simple observation about criticism or complement at any particular point in time. "I like Wagner" means that is my opinion now, not for evermore.

The secondary problem with your 'proof' is that I found it hard to follow from the second para onwards. But don't worry about trying to explain again. I think we should agree to differ (and hardly anyone else round here cares one way or t'other, except those with clouded biases!)


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Funny how positive judgement isn't also based on "clouded bias".


I never said it wasn't. Funny how assumptions require little insight. We were talking about the stench of negativity.

I can do without any disingenuous statement, but if I had to hear one, I'd much rather hear one with a bit of positivity.... I can work my way around that a little easier.


----------



## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Copperears said:


> As a former, erstwhile New Historicist...


Is a former, erstwhile New Historicist once a new New Historicist, then subsequently a historical New Historicist and now a newly historical New Historicist?

In summery: is the best whether.

Don't mind me.


----------



## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

I find this thread boring. It is very clever, but personally I find it boring.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

isridgewell said:


> Are you honest, do you listen with your ears and your own " true inner voice" or with the opinions and weight of history and with the opinions of others?


A false dichotomy, for sure. One can "be honest" and still value the opinions of others. In music, I might hear Bartok's quartets and dislike them. But since other people, obviously well-versed in art music, enjoy them, I would want to know why. In short, I want their views and opinions, since that might lead to an increased pleasure in this music for myself (and often does).

To say "I find Bach boring" is of course fine, but without further elaboration it says nothing about the music, only about the speaker. In that sense, it's probably over-sharing!


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Wood said:


> I find this thread boring. It is very clever, but personally I find it boring.


How dare you say that!

This is the greatest thread ever. No other thread has contributed so much to the understanding and appreciation of fine wine as this one has.

Ah. Music. Sorry. To the understanding and appreciation of the kind of music that winos like....

Oh bugger.

I'll start again.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition blah blah blah blah blah.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> The problem with your 'proof' is that it starts taking the future into account. Mine was a simple observation about criticism or complement at any particular point in time. "I like Wagner" means that is my opinion now, not for evermore.
> 
> The secondary problem with your 'proof' is that I found it hard to follow from the second para onwards. But don't worry about trying to explain again. I think we should agree to differ (and hardly anyone else round here cares one way or t'other, except those with clouded biases!)


Nah, it's simple. In a "nutshell" you need a bigger sample now to offset the likelihood that you'll finish up liking Wagner (or whoever) at some future time anyway. That is, in order to be pretty sure that you won't like Wagner in the future you need a bigger sample of his works now on which to base a negative assessment that you expect will remain permanently a negative assessment. Hence the asymmetry. I'm sure that if you reflect on this a little further the penny will drop.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> I never said it wasn't.


You're right. You didn't. I'm just observing that this thread seems to be weighted against the idea that negative criticism is valid, and in favour of the idea that it is alright to say, "I love..." on the flimsiest of evidence, but to say, "I dislike..." requires evidence beyond all reasonable doubt.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

No one has actually said that it's "alright" to say you like something "on the flimsiest of evidence." (Evidence, in any event, is for the support, not for the liking itself.) And no one has said that saying you dislike something requires evidence "beyond all reasonable doubt."

And no one that I've seen has claimed that negative criticism is invalid.

Here's how I see it: positive is better than negative. (Good is better than bad.) They are called opposites, so it's easy to argue that they must therefore be equivalent. They're not.

Loving something implies engagement. It implies that a dynamic and positive relationship has been set up.

Hating something implies disengagement. It implies rejection; the breaking of any positive relationship.

I would say that to love something is to have already gone quite a ways past "flimsy." And that's why, possibly, so many people contributing to this thread feel less inclined to question a positive assessment than they do a negative one. Since the negative assessment is negative, it seems to call for proof in a way that a positive assessment does not. 

Support in either case may be equally flimsy, it's true. And one would like support to be, um, supportive. But now we're talking about expressions of love or hate, not the love or hate themselves. And since love is better, expressions of it are going to appear, at the very least, to need less support than hate. That's all.


----------



## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Anybody who says "Bach is boring" is just out of their mind.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

shangoyal said:


> Anybody who says "Bach is boring" is just out of their mind.


Some recordings of the WTC are seriously boring. So there.


----------



## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Ukko said:


> Some recordings of the WTC are seriously boring. So there.


Of course, that's not the same thing.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

some guy said:


> And since love is better,


Now there's an interesting assertion, worthy of challenge. But if this thread is boring people, I'll not pursue it.

The odd thing is, when I want to know whether to go and see a movie, I will be swayed by the weight of both positive and negative. I find Metacritic a helpful gauge. I will also be more interested in actually reading the adverse reviews than the positive ones, since I don't need to read a succession of 'marvellous' and 'splendid', but would find a 'the plot was improbable' more useful. When I read the post-course evaluations at the end of training I've run, I pay more attention to the one person who has taken the trouble to offer criticism (as long as it's not just, "I was bored") than to the 10 who've just ticked, "very good".


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Back to Bach!


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

some guy said:


> No one has actually said that it's "alright" to say you like something "on the flimsiest of evidence." (Evidence, in any event, is for the support, not for the liking itself.) And no one has said that saying you dislike something requires evidence "beyond all reasonable doubt."
> 
> And no one that I've seen has claimed that negative criticism is invalid.
> 
> ...


Is the opposite of love hate, or apathy?

It looks to me like you're implicitly equating hate and apathy. I think they're different. I hate some music (such as most "new country"); I'm apathetic about other music (such as most rap). Of course neither one of those are "love." Maybe both of them are the opposite of hate, just opposite in different ways.

Whether love is better than hate or apathy depends on the object of the emotion, I'd probably argue. Some things probably ought to be hated by reasonable, ethical people (I'd say "new country" if I could be sure people would take it as a joke)... but perhaps music isn't among them.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

science said:


> Is the opposite of love hate, or apathy?


I believe the opposite of love is fear.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> So here's the question: how much of a composer's output should one know before *expressing* an opinion? If the opinion is positive, probably not very much. One piece, maybe. If the opinion is negative, however, then it better be quite a bit more than one piece. And even then.
> 
> The value of a positive opinion is self-evident. The value of a negative opinion is not. A negative opinion, because it's negative, has to be supported by evidence in order to be useful, in order to be palatable.


I think people can express opinions on composers whether they've heard one work or many more, but I agree with you about the value of those opinions. I generally view the issue this way. If I listen to a single work by composer A and enjoy the work, I will want to hear more. If I then listen to composer B and don't like a work, I will still probably want to explore at least a little more before deciding to move on (and even then may come back to that composer later). If my own opinion of composer B after one work won't deter me from further listening, clearly another person's negative opinion has less weight. On the other hand, a positive opinion from another person makes me excited to listen to that composer.

There's clearly an asymmetry as long as one generally expects to like a reasonable number of composers. One "wants" to like an unknown composer (otherwise why listen to new composers). The information value might be essentially the same, but I think for many of us it will effect us differently.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Partita said:


> So far all seems equal. However, if it can be reasonably assumed that a typical person's classical music tastes are likely to broaden as they age and acquire further listening experience, then there is a difference in the confidence level at which these two different conclusions can be held if each is to be used to provide a prediction now of the likelihood of that person continuing to hold the same views well into the future.
> 
> On this assumption, the confidence level for conclusion A could well be larger than it is for conclusion B for any given sample size of works that have been listened to. This follows from the fact that, by assumption, the present "dislike" may vanish of its own accord in the future, so that we would be looking for a bigger sample now of material on which to base a negative assessment that may be expected to remain robust in the future. Therefore in order to achieve what statisticians call the same "power", i.e. the probability of not making a "false negative" conclusion, and thus to equalise the confidence levels between the two samples, a bigger sample size would be required to support conclusion B than conclusion A.
> 
> This reasoning, I think, is sufficient to validate the assertion that more information is required to be confident about a negative assertion than a positive assertion, in the context of a newcomer's assessment of the works of a composer whose work is new to that listener. How much more information may be required is difficult to determine, as it is a personal matter depending on the degree of aversion that exists now and the likely speed of progression towards appreciating a wider-embracing set of composers.


I loved this Bayesian approach to predicting whether a listener will enjoy a particular composer in the future. I still agree with Macleod that you are discussing a different situation. He was concerned with the present - does one like or dislike a work or composer. You are concerned with the future probability of liking that composer. One is self evident (ignoring the issue of what it means to like or dislike a composer having heard a small number of works). One knows whether she enjoys that music. The prediction is a probabilistic assessment based on present information.

Your conclusion assumes that one is more likely to like a composer's work in the future given that one enjoys one or two works in the present than to continue disliking a composer's works given that one dislikes one or two works in the present. I suspect you are correct so the uncertainty of prediction is larger when one dislikes a work or two compared to the situation when one likes a work or two. One will then need more information to predict future dislike than to predict future liking at the same confidence level. That may be somewhat complicated, but if true, it shows that a present like gives more information about the future than a present dislike.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

science said:


> Is the opposite of love hate, or apathy?
> 
> It looks to me like you're implicitly equating hate and apathy. I think they're different. I hate some music (such as most "new country"); I'm apathetic about other music (such as most rap). Of course neither one of those are "love." Maybe both of them are the opposite of hate, just opposite in different ways.
> 
> Whether love is better than hate or apathy depends on the object of the emotion, I'd probably argue. Some things probably ought to be hated by reasonable, ethical people (I'd say "new country" if I could be sure people would take it as a joke)... but perhaps music isn't among them.


I wouldn't think it's wise to hate anything that's discretionary. It seems like a ridiculously unproductive way to use your energies. I don't understand when people say things like "I hate this music...." Do you really? Why are you waisting your time giving energy to something that is completely discretionary and is there for enjoyment? Does that make any sense at all? If I don't like something like that then I simply remove my attention from it... not feed it with hate and drain my resources.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Copperears said:


> Back to Bach!


...or forget that highbrow stuff and over to The Sound of Music, to paraphrase Maria von Trapp as sung by the immortal Julie Andrews:

_I have confidence in Scriabin
I have confidence in Rachmaninov
I have confidence that the Spring Sonata will come again
Besides which you see I have confidence in me

Strength doesn't lie in musicological discussions
Strength doesn't lie in the number of recordings of Beethoven's 5th you've got
Strength lies in nights with the music of Wagner
When you wake up -- Wake Up!...to the fat lady who sings at the end...

It tells me all I trust I lead my heart to
All I trust becomes my own
I have confidence in confidence alone
(Oh help!)

*I have confidence in confidence alone
Besides which you see **I have confidence in me!*_


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Vesuvius said:


> I wouldn't think it's wise to hate anything that's discretionary. It seems like a ridiculously unproductive way to use your energies. I don't understand when people say things like "I hate this music...." Do you really? Why are you waisting your time giving energy to something that is completely discretionary and is there for enjoyment? Does that make any sense at all? If I don't like something like that then I simply remove my attention from it... not feed it with hate and drain my resources.


This would be a good point if someone really invested time or emotional energy in hating some music. I never thought of it before, but it does seem like some among us do so with certain traditions, perhaps the Second Vienna School, or Wagner, or anything "weird" from like Cage or Stockhausen, or even the warhorses. But there are all kinds of things that could be going on there - reaction against the pressure they might feel to appreciate that music, or reaction against people who promoted that music in a snobby way, or a desire to distinguish themselves from other people who react negatively to such music without much engagement, or whatever. Human minds are way too complex even for one to understand oneself, and all we can do is guess at what would be going on in others', though I do enjoy such guessing very much - the guessing is also a part of being human.

But what I had in mind is more of an effortless, visceral reaction to hearing something. It happens to me, it's not something I have to do or work at or engage in. When I hear most contemporary pop music my reaction is basically apathetic but a touch negative: "Why, in a world that includes Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash and Bjork and Nina Simone and Brahms and Palestrina, would someone choose to listen to that?" Sometimes I even feel sadness that people listen to it. But when I hear music that strikes me as unselfconsciously sentimental, or perhaps "unintelligently manipulative" would be a better description, I feel something closer to anger: "Why am I in a situation where I have to encounter this crap?" Or, "Why don't people respect each other enough not to play this crap in public?" Though I feel disappointed that large numbers of people can get worked up over "Don't Take the Girl," I don't actually mind as long I don't have to hear it. But when I have to _hear_ it, I feel something analogous to moral disgust.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

science said:


> This would be a good point if someone really invested time or emotional energy in hating some music.


How's this? "It is one's duty to hate with all possible fervor that which is empty and ugly in art; and I hate Saint-Saens the composer with a hate that is perfect." --J. F. Runciman


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

science said:


> This would be a good point if someone really invested time or emotional energy in hating some music. I never thought of it before, but it does seem like some among us do so with certain traditions, perhaps the Second Vienna School, or Wagner, or anything "weird" from like Cage or Stockhausen, or even the warhorses. But there are all kinds of things that could be going on there - reaction against the pressure they might feel to appreciate that music, or reaction against people who promoted that music in a snobby way, or a desire to distinguish themselves from other people who react negatively to such music without much engagement, or whatever. Human minds are way too complex even for one to understand oneself, and all we can do is guess at what would be going on in others', though I do enjoy such guessing very much - the guessing is also a part of being human.
> 
> But what I had in mind is more of an effortless, visceral reaction to hearing something. It happens to me, it's not something I have to do or work at or engage in. When I hear most contemporary pop music my reaction is basically apathetic but a touch negative: "Why, in a world that includes Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash and Bjork and Nina Simone and Brahms and Palestrina, would someone choose to listen to that?" Sometimes I even feel sadness that people listen to it. But when I hear music that strikes me as unselfconsciously sentimental, or perhaps "unintelligently manipulative" would be a better description, I feel something closer to anger: "Why am I in a situation where I have to encounter this crap?" Or, "Why don't people respect each other enough not to play this crap in public?" Though I feel disappointed that large numbers of people can get worked up over "Don't Take the Girl," I don't actually mind as long I don't have to hear it. But when I have to _hear_ it, I feel something analogous to moral disgust.


Many people do invest time and emotional energy into hating such things, and I truly believe it's out of ignorance. You hate when you don't find fulfillment of your misguided projections... and hate never leads to lasting fulfillment... so the cycle goes on.

I enjoyed your write-up though.


----------



## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*You can do better.*



MacLeod said:


> And stating your opinion twice in successive posts does not make it more valid!


And I have also heard the assertion that Bach is "boring" many times before. Repeating it does not make the "boring" remark valid either.

People are constantly repeating themselves in these various discussions.

I have also lost count on how many times I have heard the "Repeating something does not make valid" remark.

MacLeod, you are one of the sharper contributors here. If you disagreed with my entry you could have come up with a better comeback than that.


----------



## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> And I have also heard the assertion that Bach is "boring" many times before. Repeating it does not make the "boring" remark valid either.
> 
> People are constantly repeating themselves in these various discussions.
> 
> ...


Well, thanks for the compliment arpeggio. And my apologies for the lame comeback.

We're both tiring of the value-less jibes that 'Bach is boring' represents; partly because it's a vacuous thing to say about Bach, and partly because it undermines the critics' right to say what he wants (on an equal basis with the right for the enthusiast to compliment), a right which I've been trying to assert here with little success.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bach is most certainly NOT boring! Except for the boring parts, of course. :lol:


----------



## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I loved this Bayesian approach to predicting whether a listener will enjoy a particular composer in the future. I still agree with Macleod that you are discussing a different situation. He was concerned with the present - does one like or dislike a work or composer. You are concerned with the future probability of liking that composer. One is self evident (ignoring the issue of what it means to like or dislike a composer having heard a small number of works). One knows whether she enjoys that music. The prediction is a probabilistic assessment based on present information.
> 
> Your conclusion assumes that one is more likely to like a composer's work in the future given that one enjoys one or two works in the present than to continue disliking a composer's works given that one dislikes one or two works in the present. I suspect you are correct so the uncertainty of prediction is larger when one dislikes a work or two compared to the situation when one likes a work or two. One will then need more information to predict future dislike than to predict future liking at the same confidence level. That may be somewhat complicated, but if true, it shows that a present like gives more information about the future than a present dislike.


The interpretation in your second paragraph is interesting but it is not quite what I meant. Your approach might also work but it seems to be rather more complex than what I have in mind.

My approach is indeed a "Bayesian", as you say. I'm saying in this context that the future is important and cannot be swept aside. The "prior" in my approach is that as people in general get older and acquire more listening experience of classical music they will naturally come to embrace a wider range of [great] composers. I'm referring to people in general as there will clearly be variation among individuals.

Given this "prior", a bigger sample of material by a composer is required to achieve the same confidence level that a person who now dislikes what he has heard of that composer will continue to dislike that composer in the future, compared with the sample size of material used to form a positive view of that composer.

It's no more than a question of needing more data now to confirm the continuation of a negative opinion as opposed to a positive, in the face of an underlying trend towards the positive across a range of composers. A very simple point indeed.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Partita said:


> The interpretation in your second paragraph is interesting but it is not quite what I meant. Your approach might also work but it seems to be rather more complex than what I have in mind.


Perhaps I didn't express myself properly or perhaps I'm not quite understanding your point, but to me it appears as though we are saying the same thing. I believe I agree with you completely. To me the two statements below do say the same thing. And as far as I can tell, my reason for believing that is similar to yours.



Partita said:


> It's no more than a question of needing more data now to confirm the continuation of a negative opinion as opposed to a positive...





mmsbls said:


> One will then need more information to predict future dislike than to predict future liking at the same confidence level.


----------



## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> Perhaps I didn't express myself properly or perhaps I'm not quite understanding your point, but to me it appears as though we are saying the same thing. I believe I agree with you completely. To me the two statements below do say the same thing. And as far as I can tell, my reason for believing that is similar to yours.


That's fine if we are saying the same thing. It's good to have your agreement with the validity of the point.

I accept that Macleod is focusing on the present, as several others have also done, but I believe that in this instance ignoring the future is too restrictive, and to do so could give a misleading result. What we can reasonably say about the future should be incorporated into the reckoning.

The future is uncertain but in the case of classical music it seems reasonable to assume that most peoples' taste generally broaden as they age. Interest in some composers may fade somewhat but usually there is a net widening overall. Once this factor is incorporated into the reckoning, the non-symmetry of required sample sizes falls out to achieve equal confidence in the results.

This is not a point that I first raised, but was suggested by "someguy". I'm merely trying to lend some statistical credence to that proposition.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> I wouldn't think it's wise to hate anything that's discretionary. It seems like a ridiculously unproductive way to use your energies. I don't understand when people say things like "I hate this music...." Do you really? Why are you waisting your time giving energy to something that is completely discretionary and is there for enjoyment? Does that make any sense at all? If I don't like something like that then I simply remove my attention from it... not feed it with hate and drain my resources.


I've found in my own evolution that "hate" usually derives from not being familiar enough with the thing hated to be able to identify, and identify with, its different nature. To see it as threat rather than opportunity. This instead of that, not this as well as that.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes.


----------

