# Your musical interests changing over time?



## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Ok, so my entrance and primary interest in classical music has always been 20th century classical (especially 40s onward) and early music but lately I've felt a little bit more drawn to some older styles (late baroque, classical and early romantic.)

I don't quite know why, it's never been something that appealed to me.

Now this isn't a case of "oh, he's seeing the light and listening to real, god-given music", I don't know what it is. Through my life I've had a broad scope of music, often on the edge of genres. I'm attracted to the avant garde, you know? it's awesome and highly beneficial for me.

Metal? Prog metal? Death metal? industrial metal? thrash metal? hell yes
Jazz? Bebop? ragtime? avantgarde jazz? hell yes
Progressive rock? Psychedelic rock? indie rock? alternative rock? stoner rock? hard rock? hell yes
Blues? yes please
Indian classical music? sign me up
Electronic music? Idm? Edm? Ambient? Hell yes
Hip hop? Trip hop? rap? gangsta rap? concious hip hop? hell yes
Broadway musicals? if it's not too cheesy or serious, yes
Funk? hell yeah!
Progressive pop? Art pop? I'll take it

the list goes on.

Classical music has been a weird genre for me over time. I simply didn't relate to much of the older stuff. The first pre-20th century piece that I ever fell in love with was Bach's _Art Of Fugue_ (possibly because of how dense it is at times).

So going back to the topic, it feels weird for me putting on an early Beethoven piano sonata, a Boccherini quintet, a Haydn symphony, etc and really enjoying it. What's happened to me?

It's not that I'm praising it and hailing them as masterpieces either, but there is something I am starting to see in it. As they are essentially periods with a heavy rotation of the circle of fifths, sometimes I feel like "should I actually be taking this seriously? it's literally the circle of fifths with a melody"

But in other cases, like some of the Beethoven early sonatas it's like: lets get in a dressing gown, get a wine and relax by the nice warm fire and think about things. Or is that just me?

Radiance, warmth, tension + release. I can hear a lot of that. Some of the stuff is hard to perceive as anything but chord progressions but I'm working on it.

Anyone have any comments or want to share how their musical interests have changed over time? :tiphat:


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Was that too cryptic or something? :lol:


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

My general music experience: as I broadened the scope of my musical taste over the decades, I did not drop anything out. Even chart hits from my youth (early 70s) I still like to play.

Some general observations wrt classical music:

1. I came in via orchestral music, organ works and vocal works (especially Lieder).
2. Chamber works took longer (but reached the same high level of appreciation).
3. Operas and piano works lagged behind and never reached the same level of appreciation apart from a few exceptions.
4. I started out with the big names of baroque, classical period and romantic. Venturing into 20th century music took a few years and was a bit of a stumbling block - which I'm glad to have overcome.
5. With over 30 years of listening to classical music, I've heard most of the key works of the major few dozens of composers. More and more I've also probed into the less known names, especially from the (late) romantic and 20th century periods.

Uhhhh... what was the question again?


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

ST4 said:


> What's happened to me?


Resistance is futile.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Art Rock said:


> My general music experience: as I broadened the scope of my musical taste over the decades, I did not drop anything out. Even chart hits from my youth (early 70s) I still like to play.
> 
> Some general observations wrt classical music:
> 
> ...


I don't know either :lol:

But with the first thing you said, I noticed an interesting thing which happened to me.

1. I liked [artist] as a kid
2. In my teens I disowned it and fell in love with classical (not solely but for relevance)
3. Then as an adult, I just embrace/d all I've liked and the stuff that fascinates or inspires me that is new to me

Man, those teen years covered a lot musical ground


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Art Rock said:


> Uhhhh... what was the question again?


I guess you can take what you understand from it.

The main interest is the comparison of the way or variety of music you listen to has changed/or stayed the same over time.

One of the key things that prompted me to make this thread is my sudden liking of some late baroque/classical era/early romantic composers, which is very 'out of the ordinary' for me.

In the past it's generally been early music up to mid-baroque and mid-romantic up to living composers, without much in between


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

My evolution is kind of subtle. I am coming from a love of symphonic music towards a passion for chamber music. I am moving from the high classical and romantic and edging ever closer to some of the more "modern" music.

As for non classical music - I have moved from the pop stuff that was the background music to my childhood, through the seemingly important FM album rock of the 70s, and extended guitar solos of the 80s. And now I am enamored of instrumentals. Not too interested in the mostly lame lyrics (granting some exceptions).

In my playing life, I have moved from Quebecois and New England fiddle tunes, hard core Irish Traditional fiddle tunes, to Southern Appalachian old time fiddle music, with some dabbling in Western Swing, bluegrass, and old country music. I don't listen as much as I play it, on mandolin.

The main evolution for me, however, is not in the type of music but the depth of my appreciation, emotionally and intellectually. I am digging deep, deeper than I ever have in the past, in all the genres I like.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Since marriage, I've found that I prefer listening to quieter music.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

ST4, my classical music journey has been the opposite of yours: I've gradually moved away from an exclusive focus on common-practice music, slowly widening my horizons to encompass more contemporary styles.

In my teens and early twenties, I was obsessed with 18th and 19th century music, and I strongly disliked all contemporary classical music. Even Debussy was too much for me at that point, and anything atonal was out of the question. At that time, my listening habits revolved around tracking the development and resolution of themes. Contemporary music didn't give me the type of melodic structure that I desired. 

However, my tastes gradually became more inclusive. My mid-to-late twenties were a period of classical exploration and growth for me, a period during which I developed an appreciation for a number of 20th-century composers (I'm not quite there yet with the 21st century). Contemporary music will probably never be my favorite genre - I'm still primarily drawn to 18th and 19th century music. However, I'm enjoying it more and more as my understanding of it continues to deepen; I now see that the common-practice style is not the only meaningful way of structuring a piece of music.


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## juliante (Jun 7, 2013)

Simple - you are getting sentimental in your mid life


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

One thing about classical music in particular is, it constantly keeps my musical interests changing. There's over 1,500 years of a continuous stream of Western classical music, and one era picks up from a previous one as it discards another, so it invites an interesting journey. 

I had studied music for a time in college and was into jazz and classical, then for 20 years I was out of music completely as something for serious study. But I heard a piece by Erik Satie on the radio, and that sucked me in to that composer. Then because I was listening to classical music again, I got back into Beethoven. From Beethoven, his late quartets looking back to the Renaissance got me studying Renaisssance polyphony. And when I learned that this music inspired Webern, it got me into the 2nd Viennese School. Of course, Webern's sparse textures got me from orchestral and into chamber music. And it's been back and forth ever since.

I should add, TalkClassical has a nonclassical listening thread, and from there I've picked up on a lot of new nonclassical interests as well.


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## Annied (Apr 27, 2017)

No real changes of taste here over the years. I've always liked a bit of this and a bit of that without ever getting completely caught up in any one particular genre. There's been more of a change in my listening habits in that opera is what I most often listen to nowadays


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## Jacred (Jan 14, 2017)

I'm like Bettina. I started in the "middle" and "spilled out" to both earlier and more modern works.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

As a kid and young adult, I used to like the big orchestral works; now I'm into the more introspective works of Bach: Solo Keyboard Partitas, Solo Cello Suites, Solo Organ Works, Solo Unaccompanied Violin Sonatas & Partitas plus the late Piano Pieces and Clarinet Sonatas of Brahms; even the Schoenberg Piano Concerto-more for haunting beauty than for any bombast.

I've changed a lot.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

It's like a galaxy with a black hole at its center. No, really! 
The galaxy represents my journey through music. I'll never be able to explore it all, but along the way I encounter a lot of wonderful and beautiful music. My preferences and interests in the music change and evolve slowly over time, like the cycle of birth and death of the stars. However, once in a while, I like the music so much that is added to a slowly expanding core of eternally favorite music. The black hole at the center: once it gets in, it never gets out.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

DeepR said:


> It's like a galaxy with a black hole at its center. No, really!
> The galaxy represents my journey through music. I'll never be able to explore it all, but along the way I encounter a lot of wonderful and beautiful music. My preferences and interests in the music change and evolve slowly over time, like the cycle of birth and death of the stars. However, once in a while, I like the music so much that is added to a slowly expanding core of eternally favorite music. The black hole at the center: once it gets in, it never gets out.


_"Every man and every woman is a star. Every number is infinite; there is no difference."_ 

I agree, we as humans (and composers) are both simultaneously disparate entities working towards our own individual goals yet unavoidably following the same thing in the bigger scheme of things.

So when it comes to the way you see it, it's quite real on a literal (or metaphorically accurate?) level :tiphat:


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

hpowders said:


> As a kid and young adult, I used to like the big orchestral works; now I'm into the more introspective works of Bach: Solo Keyboard Partitas, Solo Cello Suites, Solo Organ Works, Solo Unaccompanied Violin Sonatas & Partitas plus the late Piano Pieces and Clarinet Sonatas of Brahms; even the Schoenberg Piano Concerto-more for haunting beauty than for any bombast.
> 
> I've changed a lot.


I like both extremes but I certainly have become more interested in chamber music over the past few months


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## T Son of Ander (Aug 25, 2015)

No real change in tastes for me. I've always been really open to different kinds of music. The thing is that there are so many kinds of music, so many styles, that I go through phases. And of course, there are things I discover, so my interest piques for a while, then on to something else. For example, recently I have really been getting into organ music, especially baroque. Of course, I've heard organ music before, and it's not that I didn't like it, it just didn't grab me like it has lately. I don't consider that a change in taste as much as for whatever reason I'm more open to it now.

So much of music is mood. There are things I heard in the past that didn't do anything to me, then heard many years later and my jaw dropped. I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood for it the first time around, or I had to have the experience of other music in order to appreciate it.

Of course, there are things we grow tired of. There are pieces that I played to death when I was younger and don't care now if I ever hear them again.

So, I guess that doesn't answer anything. :lol:


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