# Musical "Satisfaction?"



## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Why do we have different opinions on classical music? Does childhood exposure to classical music influence that, or do you think it could possibly be something neurological or the like? Or would this be more psychological, with patterns and references? In short, what do YOU THINK lets us love different types of music, with our different opinions?


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

I would like to know your reasons for such an excursion.

My short answer would be: I like music because it is imaginative, I find it beautiful and well put together by an intelligent mind.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

mstar said:


> Why do we have different opinions on classical music?


The answer is simple and straightforward. Some of us have excellent taste and are highly discerning -- I and those who agree with my views fall into this category. Others of us are coarse and buffoonish, of doubtful taste, or very possibly mind-slaves of the Krell.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I don't think it's neurological or psychological. Before the advent of the recording industry, everyone heard classical music. Cities and towns, large and small, major and by the wayside, had concert halls and opera houses. Great performers, often from Europe, would tour far and wide to perform. They were huge celebrities.

Satisfaction for me is typically dictated by the utilitarian value of music, sort of like a personal Gebrauchsmusik. I consume music mostly only at home. The music has to be useful to me in my home environment. I have to be able to read or surf the web or relax while listening. Music that does not fulfil my utilitarian needs does not satisfy. This is why I prefer instrumental music: lyrics distract from what I am doing. Popular music tends to be demanding, hence it only works when I am not trying to think. As a result, I choose classical music. I am very open to different types, from ancient to contemporary.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

mstar said:


> Why do we have different opinions on classical music? Does childhood exposure to classical music influence that, or do you think it could possibly be something neurological or the like? Or would this be more psychological, with patterns and references? In short, what do YOU THINK lets us love different types of music, with our different opinions?


You ever hear the saying... "There's no accounting for some people's taste?"  and many if not most people feel their opinion is the only one that matters.

Well, the fact that humanity is so diverse and the influences we are exposed to by others, or by ourselves, determines much of what we like or don't like. It's an interesting psychological phenomena though that on most any subject in the world people devolve into an "us vs. them" mentality. We call them camps or schools.

In Christianity for instance the only group that's right is probably the one you're attached to and even if you can elevate yourself to embrace all Christians openly you still disdain Muslims, Buddhist, Hindus etc., and even if you can somehow embrace a whole world worldview you will likely hypocritically exclude those who are not so tolerant and open as your enlightened mind. I've seen the same thing in art, science, philosophy, music etc. etc. All of us have preferences and pre-dispositions. The challenge is to learn to accept them, embrace them and somehow rise above and overcome them. This is the way to real growth in my opinion. Have I been very successful at it? I've failed miserably many times but I keep working on myself setting new challenges and subjecting myself to other ways of seeing (or hearing to keep on topic).

I am not the same listener I was 40 years ago when I first started listening to classical music. I'm not even the same listener I was a year ago. I still have my personal tastes and preferences and probably always will but I hope I have grown enough to be willing to push the boundaries of those tastes and preferences and experience music I would never know otherwise.

And you will always also find those who take up a cause like it's some kind of crusade. That's not necessarily wrong but more often than not those persons usually do more harm to their cause than good because of their pushiness and militant mindset. They just cannot possibly conceive why people do not like so and so or such and such. And I have to say that in my opinion those type of people give classical music a bad name and perpetuate the stereotype that classical music listeners are snobs.

Sorry for going on so long!

Kevin


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

I agree with most of your post, Kevin Pearson. However, I wouldn't automatically equate people who try to promote or support a certain composer's music (for example, I guess I do this with J. Haydn) to snobs - I don't think I'm a snob, personally. I try to share my enthusiasm about Haydn but if some people don't like his music as much as I do, I don't insist on anything. Everyone has their own tastes. But I think it's necessary for some to promote the music of others - for example, how Mendelssohn promoted Bach's music - if he hadn't done so, would so many people be enjoying Bach's music today? I think this has more to do with supporting something which you believe has a high qualitative value, and I don't think this has anything to do with snobbery.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

KenOC said:


> . . .very possibly mind-slaves of the Krell.


There's an obscure cultural reference I have not heard in a while. Nice.

For my part, I don't think science has yet discovered what causes taste differences. I have tried to analyze what moves me the most and I have noticed a trend. I tend to favor a simple thing that happens in music when it stays mostly in the common practice, but defies the usual chord and harmonic structures we expect. We expect I - IV - V - I, and that's okay, but when the composer throws in something very remote, the more suddenly the better, I get a big thrill. I guess I'm easy to thrill, because most folks don't seem to care that much, but that's my goose bump moment when the composer sets up an expectation and then defies it.

If this thrills me more than it does others it is puzzling, but it is not a threat to me if others have a "so what?" reaction. I say "vive la différence." If we ever do find a truly universal taste in the arts we may as well lie down and become extinct as a species, our usefulness ended.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I like consistent musical quality within a piece, not where the inspiration slackens a great deal at points, and individual and interesting musical ideas.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

mstar said:


> Why do we have different opinions on classical music? Does childhood exposure to classical music influence that, or do you think it could possibly be something neurological or the like? Or would this be more psychological, with patterns and references? In short, what do YOU THINK lets us love different types of music, with our different opinions?


Given that the only things we use to listen to music and to form opinions are our brains, then fundamentally it has to be neurological.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

mstar said:


> Why do we have different opinions on classical music? Does childhood exposure to classical music influence that, or do you think it could possibly be something neurological or the like? Or would this be more psychological, with patterns and references? In short, what do YOU THINK lets us love different types of music, with our different opinions?


The http://www.talkclassical.com/28307-religion-politics-musical-taste-8.html thread had a good look at it. Wrong forum, I know, but best answer - "God only knows!"


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> But I think it's necessary for some to promote the music of others - for example, how Mendelssohn promoted Bach's music - if he hadn't done so, would so many people be enjoying Bach's music today?


Of course people would still enjoy Bach's music without Mendelssohn. That's just fashion, it comes and goes.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I really don't like the comparision with religion, that shouldn't be relevant to music. Religion is a whole world view, it is indeed strongly conditioned by surroundings and I expect it's hard to change. Music is music, we have many options now outside of what we may have grown up with and it is perfectly possible to add to what you first liked without changing your whole outlook on life. Those who see music as more than simply music could be quite narrow in what they listen to and find that very hard to change through their life, which in my opinion wouldn't be that productive.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> I agree with most of your post, Kevin Pearson. However, I wouldn't automatically equate people who try to promote or support a certain composer's music (for example, I guess I do this with J. Haydn) to snobs - I don't think I'm a snob, personally. I try to share my enthusiasm about Haydn but if some people don't like his music as much as I do, I don't insist on anything. Everyone has their own tastes. But I think it's necessary for some to promote the music of others - for example, how Mendelssohn promoted Bach's music - if he hadn't done so, would so many people be enjoying Bach's music today? I think this has more to do with supporting something which you believe has a high qualitative value, and I don't think this has anything to do with snobbery.


I probably could have worded my last sentence better because I was not saying that people who promote certain composers are all snobs, but what I meant is that the militant, pushy, and often arrogant way the promotion is done is "perceived" by others as snobbery. Especially by those not as enthusiastic about classical music. I certainly see nothing whatsoever wrong with the promotion of certain composers, but the way it's done often comes across as snobbery whether the promoter intended it to be so or not.

Kevin


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

starry said:


> I really don't like the comparision with religion, that shouldn't be relevant to music. Religion is a whole world view, it is indeed strongly conditioned by surroundings and I expect it's hard to change. Music is music, we have many options now outside of what we may have grown up with and it is perfectly possible to add to what you first liked without changing your whole outlook on life. Those who see music as more than simply music could be quite narrow in what they listen to and find that very hard to change through their life, which in my opinion wouldn't be that productive.


I used religion as a comparison because I see parallels in the behavior of many classical music fans as very similar to religious people and I would even go far as to say that for many music *IS *their religion. It's not mine but I certainly know of people that music is their whole life and it is or becomes a form of idolatry.

Kevin


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

I think it is quite simple, we are all different and we are attracted to different things. I like early 20th century music because it engages my intellect, I'm not the most emotional person and that is why I don't much like romantic music much.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

Piwikiwi said:


> I think it is quite simple, we are all different and we are attracted to different things. I like early 20th century music because it engages my intellect, I'm not the most emotional person and that is why I don't much like romantic music much.


But just because a piece has emotion and beauty in it does not mean it is not intellectual as well. Most of the romantic period composers were all intellectuals. Besides 20th century music is emotional as well. It just stirs up other kinds of emotions. Ones many consider to be negative emotions but they are there just the same.

Kevin


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Kevin Pearson said:


> But just because a piece has emotion and beauty in it does not mean it is not intellectual as well. Most of the romantic period composers were all intellectuals. Besides 20th century music is emotional as well. It just stirs up other kinds of emotions. Ones many consider to be negative emotions but they are there just the same.
> 
> Kevin


I was generalising, of course I feel emotion when I listen to music and I do listen to romantic music but I was proving a point. I don't like chopin for example because I find it overly emotional. Please try to see the bigger picture of what I'm trying to say instead of focusing on the details.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

A combination of experience and personal preference. There are certainly things in music that people in general gravitate towards and away from, although this too is variable.

I believe that there is a certain level of craft involved that affects people whether they realize how it's working or not.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Satisfaction is also derived from familiarity and nostalgia. I feel nostalgia for the music I enjoyed long ago, such as Stockhausen, Kagel, Nono, Xenakis, Varèse... so the meaning of the music goes beyond the music itself and comes to evoke the familiar. Most rock and popular musics also fall into this mode of enjoyment.

Conversely, there is also satisfaction in the shock of the new. This is not necessarily modern music or shocking music, but simply music that I am hearing for the first time.

I don't listen to free sources of music, so my listening actually costs me money. This is yet another satisfaction I derive from classical music: my classical purchases have real value that endures for my lifetime, while popular musics have listening value that rarely lasts longer than a few months.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I agree on pleasure of both familiarity and the new. But popular music can give longer pleasure than you might be giving it credit for.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Well, I don't know. I guess that's one of the dilemmas with classical music - it's backed by 'objective' quality criteria, but even within the realm of the canon there is much difference in opinion with regards to which composers people prefer. Every composer has their own particular language, we have to choose which we like most. There is no 'ultimate composer', that's why I'm not a fan of the 'adoration' of the Bach, Beethoven and Mozart trinity, since there are realms of quality music outside of these composers (notwithstanding the fact that they did write a lot of excellent music).


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The classical music that I like - *baroque* - has both surface & in-depth *pattern* & that is what I value - though I like any sort of music that has a _tune_, and also less melodic music with _beautiful chords or atmosphere_. But what interests me is that if I look at my friends, I can see reasons why I like some of them, but with others the attraction is deep and immediate, but much less explicable. I know that when I listened to *Lully *for the first time, I felt that immediate rapport, and though I like Rameau, he just doesn't have that zing. With Lully, I almost feel that I knew him in another life!


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> I'm not a fan of the 'adoration' of the Bach, Beethoven and Mozart trinity, since there are realms of quality music outside of these composers...


Like the adoration of Haydn 

Seriously, yes, I agree. In the modern era, I listen to a wider range of _both more and less famous_ composers. I think this is because there hasn't been enough time to allow the main forces to distil to the top, so I have been forced to experiment more on my own. Hence my famous purges, that I sometimes regret, but never completely.

In my own case, because I listen to my own CDs and virtually no free services, there is the distinction between what I like enough to buy and what I don't like enough to buy, but _do_ like, but pretty well never get around to hearing, simply because my collection keeps me overwhelmed. I have my friends around me all of the time. If I were not purchasing, my composer listening choices would likely be much broader, but, truth to tell, I like the old friends and don't continually need new ones (despite my oftentimes insatiable appetite for more)


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

brotagonist said:


> In the modern era, I listen to a wider range of _both more and less famous_ composers. I think this is because there hasn't been enough time to allow the main forces to distil to the top, so I have been forced to experiment more on my own.


Me too, though I don't necessarily agree that's because time hasn't filtered things yet so much as that there are so many styles and also the quality is shown more globally and among more composers.


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