# Any guides to classical that list pieces by their listening difficulty?



## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

I'm thinking like how there are different grades of pieces for people studying an instrument, are there any guides that organize the classical canon by degrees of listening difficulty? The TC lists here typically start with impenetrable and highly sophisticated pieces like the Matthäus Passion or the Mass in B or Wagner's Ring cycle and other guides like the Penguin Guide are alphabetically organized (in other words - useless to the dilettante), while some entry level classical lists on the Internet list too few works to be considered anything close to exhaustive of all the music that is mandatory.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I suspect that there would be a good deal of subjectivity to such assignments, such that it might make it problematic. (Much of the music from Wagner Ring, for example, is hardly impenetrable.)

I further suspect that there would be resistance from the more modern camps, who might look at it as a guide for a general audience of "what is not worth listening to" (much to their detriment).


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Boychev said:


> I'm thinking like how there are different grades of pieces for people studying an instrument, are there any guides that organize the classical canon by degrees of listening difficulty? The TC lists here typically start with impenetrable and highly sophisticated pieces like the Matthäus Passion or the Mass in B or Wagner's Ring cycle and other guides like the Penguin Guide are alphabetically organized (in other words - useless to the dilettante), while some entry level classical lists on the Internet list too few works to be considered anything close to exhaustive of all the music that is mandatory.


I think it's hard to pin down "listening difficulty". As a relative newcomer to classical, I very quickly fell in love with Wagner's Ring, so as far as I'm concerned it's far from "impenetrable". I know others have remarked about how comfortable they were with their first exposure to 20th-century avant-garde music. So I'm not sure if there could be widespread agreement on how such a list could be organised, aside from general and fairly trivial distinctions based on length and the presence of a "good tune". Maybe that's enough?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Boychev said:


> ...are there any guides that organize the classical canon by degrees of listening difficulty?


If you'd like to start such a list, I'd be glad to help.

Starting with "Most Difficult," I submit:

Boulez 
Barraque
Ferneyhough
Birtwistle


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> If you'd like to start such a list, I'd be glad to help.
> 
> Starting with "Most Difficult," I submit:
> 
> ...


For what it is worth, I would not disagree with these choices.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

...and, holding a _dual status _in both "difficult" and "easiest," Philip Glass.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

There is a book called _Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music_ by Robert R. Reilly (2002), which does make some attempt of this sort, specific to the period defined.

It has been some time since I went through it, but as I recall, my mixture of agreement and disagreement demonstrates the inherent problem with the idea.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

JAS said:


> For what it is worth, I would not disagree with these choices.


But I would! Boulez is actually very easy to listen to once you have the language (I'd say the same of mature Mozart) and Birtwistle isn't really that difficult for the most part.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> But I would! Boulez is actually very easy to listen to once you have the language (I'd say the same of mature Mozart) and Birtwistle isn't really that difficult for the most part.


So I have heard, but not actually experienced myself. The point demonstrates the inherently subjective nature of the proposed project. (I might suggest that requiring a listener to learn a new musical language is, by definition, a difficulty.)


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> But I would! Boulez is actually very easy to listen to once you have the language (I'd say the same of mature Mozart) and Birtwistle isn't really that difficult for the most part.


What do you mean by "have the language"? How do you study the language?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Boychev said:


> What do you mean by "have the language"? How do you study the language?


What he means (I assume) is that Boulez's music uses patterns of organization that is not familiar to most listeners of classical music, but your brain is a pattern seeking machine and will eventually start detecting the patterns and ways Boulez organizes music.

I wouldn't call music a "language" per se, but the feeling of "clicking" with a difficult composer's music is not too dissimilar to the feeling of when you study an actual language and over time what once sounded like a bunch of random noise is completely intelligible.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

Eh, when it comes to language you have grammar, and once you learn the rules the rest is just praxis and cramming. With music... everyone seems to be making up their own rules, it's like listening to a completely foreign speech without any context where you can sort of make something of the inflection and gesutres but the real and precise meaning is lost on you. Either that or you're supposed to study it the same way composers and musicians study it in order to appreciate it but then that would mean the entire music scene is a lie, which... I don't know, I refuse to believe.

That's why I think it would be useful to put off listening to the really important and exciting works for some years and focus on listening to more boring and formulaic pieces where the rules are somewhat clear - I feel like I'm trying to read Ulysses with the level of English and cultural background of a toddler who struggles with reading fairy tales. Complete waste of time!


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Boychev said:


> Eh, when it comes to language you have grammar, and once you learn the rules the rest is just praxis and cramming. With music... everyone seems to be making up their own rules, it's like listening to a completely foreign speech without any context where you can sort of make something of the inflection and gesutres but the real and precise meaning is lost on you. Either that or you're supposed to study it the same way composers and musicians study it in order to appreciate it but then that would mean the entire music scene is a lie, which... I don't know, I refuse to believe.
> 
> That's why I think it would be useful to put off listening to the really important and exciting works for some years and focus on listening to more boring and formulaic pieces where the rules are somewhat clear - I feel like I'm trying to read Ulysses with the level of English and cultural background of a toddler who struggles with reading fairy tales. Complete waste of time!


You don't need to learn any "rules". Rules are only useful for people attempting to replicate a similar sound.

My purpose wasn't to say that music is exactly like a language, I was just making the comparison that when you spend time with something that is at first unintelligible, your brain will eventual start searching for the patterns and it will transform into something recognizable as your brain becomes more familiar with the patterns. The only reason you have to study and not music is that actual language conveys concrete music, and music does not. But the sense of unrecognizable patterns becoming familiar is the same or similar.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

I don't understand how repeatedly listening to something unintelligible will make it intelligible. It doesn't work in any other area, what makes music different?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Boychev said:


> I don't understand how repeatedly listening to something unintelligible will make it intelligible. It doesn't work in any other area, what makes music different?


have you ever tried to understand a mathematical formula such as the Dirac equation? You really have to work very hard to make that formula understandable to yourself.


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## zxxyxxz (Apr 14, 2020)

Try a wide range of works, revisit works that contain more moments of things you enjoy. Eventually you will either come to appreciate the rest of the piece or you won't. If you don't like a piece move on or try a different recording of the same piece.

Music is first and foremost about enjoyment.

I don't know what you listened to before classical but for me it was a big change from heavy metal of all stripes to classical. Curiosity had me exploring opera in particular Wagner and slowly I went from loving a few moments and appreciating the rest to loving all of it.

I find as the brain like patterns the second and future listens are where the magic happens.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

Jacck said:


> have you ever tried to understand a mathematical formula such as the Dirac equation? You really have to work very hard to make that formula understandable to yourself.


No, I come from a background in law, but I imagine the process is the same as everywhere else: break it down into smaller and smaller bits, analyze them one by one, see how they fit together, and reconstruct the whole thing. (That's given that you have the years of background to even begin to do that, of course.) I don't understand how to do that with music though, as you're not supposed to pause it every five seconds, or go to concerts with a printout of the score or something. That leads me to the conclusion that it's supposed to take some time getting accustomed to working with basic shapes and movements (like when you learn to play an instrument and you spend the first few months just making your fingers move the correct way) and then combining those into more complex processes. But I'm stuck, beyond hearing movement from and towards the tonic and subdominant I can't make out any of the more complex patterns, it all just blends together into one giant incomprehensible movement. I don't know how other people get it.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

A good joke may withstand a certain amount of scrutiny, and a really good joke may push you to think about something in way you may not have before, but if you have to think a lot just to get the joke, it probably isn't a good joke. As Johnny Carson often said, usually to a certain amount of laughter, if you have to explain a joke, it failed.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Boychev said:


> I don't understand how repeatedly listening to something unintelligible will make it intelligible. It doesn't work in any other area, what makes music different?


The key to an answer here is what you mean by unintelligible (and intelligible). Music is not like prose or poetry or formulae. Its meaning is mostly assigned by the listener.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Boychev said:


> No, I come from a background in law, but I imagine the process is the same as everywhere else: break it down into smaller and smaller bits, analyze them one by one, see how they fit together, and reconstruct the whole thing. (That's given that you have the years of background to even begin to do that, of course.) I don't understand how to do that with music though, as you're not supposed to pause it every five seconds, or go to concerts with a printout of the score or something. That leads me to the conclusion that it's supposed to take some time getting accustomed to working with basic shapes and movements (like when you learn to play an instrument and you spend the first few months just making your fingers move the correct way) and then combining those into more complex processes. But I'm stuck, beyond hearing movement from and towards the tonic and subdominant I can't make out any of the more complex patterns, it all just blends together into one giant incomprehensible movement. I don't know how other people get it.


much of the work to appratiate music can be done subconsciously. I read that the brain derives pleasure from music, if it can predict it. Some music is more complex and the brain needs to process it and store it into memory before it can appreciate it. So you do not need consciously study the scores, but some music needs repeated exposure to "get" (ie to enjoy)


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> The key to an answer here is what you mean by unintelligible (and intelligible). Music is not like prose or poetry or formulae. Its meaning is mostly assigned by the listener.


While I think that it is true that music is not _entirely_ like prose or poetry, it is also not _entirely_ different. Any prose or poetry writer relies on a body of shared experience to communicate, as does a composer. While the receiver of any product (including a reader) brings much to the process, there must be, I think, intent on the part of the creator/composer and connection to the receiver for any kind of meaningful transaction to take place. Any writer of prose who created his own language is going to have a very limited market. (Here, by language, I mean that a writer cannot just make up his own words and grammar, with an expectation that an audience will bother to learn it before the work can be read. Yes, a writer can make up _some_ words, as Lewis Carroll did, but here there is usually still context and similarity to existing words at work.) Art may make demands of a receiver, but any art that depends _wholly _on the receiver is offering nothing, and not worth the effort. (And yes, I fully realize that this is something of a philosophical statement that you are not bound to agree with, just as I am not bound to agree with yours.)


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I was merely talking about the _meaning_. If the meaning of music could be expressed in words - even by a most gifted poet - then we wouldn't need music.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> I was merely talking about the _meaning_. If the meaning of music could be expressed in words - even by a most gifted poet - then we wouldn't need music.


I fully understand. And I am talking about connection, which is not quite the same as meaning but similar. (Other than direct quotation, there is usually something more abstract than the function of words going on with music.)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Boychev said:


> I don't understand how repeatedly listening to something unintelligible will make it intelligible. It doesn't work in any other area, what makes music different?


To a large extent, I agree.

There are certain modern serial works that are, for all intents and purposes, "unintelligible," or a better word might be "opaque."

With tonality, the structural layers are evident to the ear, because the structural principles are based on harmonic relationships which are immediately perceived by the ear, with little forethought or cognitive effort; it's instantaneous, almost a "knee-jerk" reaction, and sensual more than cognitive.

With serial works, like Babbitt or Barraque, the structural means by which the music was formed are "invisible" to the sense of hearing, because permutating tone-sets is an abstract cognitive process which does not reveal the process, but only results in sound (the pitches). The serial process itself is "opaque" to the senses, because it is not based on harmonic principles which have a one-to-one correspondence to the sound, as tonality does.

The way serial ideas CAN be made "intelligible" is if they are formed into themes or motives, after the fact. This is an abitrary process which must be imposed onto the material by artistic intent. Or if they are dressed-up in beautiful colors and gestures, like Boulez' later works (not early failures like "Structures").

So, basically, what I am saying is that it is misleading to say serial music is "just as intelligible" as tonal music. These are two completely different worlds, and involve different modes of thought and listening. To make serial music "just as intelligible" as tonality would involve an understanding of how it is constructed, and even then, it would not be evident upon listening to it.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Boychev said:


> I don't understand how repeatedly listening to something unintelligible will make it intelligible. It doesn't work in any other area, what makes music different?


Well, have you ever stared at a cloud or a funny mark on your wall and started seeing shapes of actual things in them? It's kinda like that. Your brain is a machine of sorts that desires to categorize and organize random material. That's why that happens. It does it with clouds, funny marks on your walls, peculiarly toasted bread, shadows, abstract art and music. Music just takes more listening to make it intelligible than staring at a cloud because its usually more dense with information.

The "rules" or "laws" of music really only exist functionally so that people who write music can know how to replicate certain sounds and build on that knowledge. But listening to music isn't about rules or laws, it's much more about perception and imagination.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think I understand the OP and I'm sympathetic to its concerns. I think this information is, paradoxically, some of the hardest-to-find, most-carefully-guarded secrets in the classical music community!

Here are some threads or posts that might interest anyone in this line:


Classical everyone just knows 
the great pops works / your favorite pops works

Some parts of my post in the "Required Listening for Humanity" thread may be relevant as well.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's a radio programme by Tom Service, called _The Simple Truth_, which looks at composers who are working with simple ideas.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009c65

Well worth a listen IMO. Simplicity is a major trend in contemporary avant garde, it is part of the enduring influence of Cornelius Cardew I think.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Well worth a listen IMO.


I take that back. Unbearable middle brow lightweight populist journalism. I hope Boris explodes the BBC into oblivion.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Complexity is simultaneously under- and over-rated. So is simplicity.

Think in terms of fine art as an analogy. You may love both Michelangelo and Dali. You may love how a specific piece 'resonates' with you. There may be many aspects that "click" for you. Maybe you'll delve deeper, and admire the blendings of colors, the brush strokes, the interpretation of a scene by the artists, or the structural composition in terms of balance, or perhaps their juxtaposition of chaos and order, or the balance of calm and tension.

I'm sure there are artists that view fine art in this way. I'll listen to the patterns in music by Sondheim, and how they work in the context, and how they contribute to an overall arc of a piece. I'll hear the sonorities, the arrangement, the choice of instruments, the patterns, etc . . . . . . . .


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