# Your Musical Journey and Free Will



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

How do you feel about the fact that you ultimately had no free will in reaching where you are in your musical journey today? (let's say we stick to classical specifically)

You could say I begin this thread with an assumption rather than a theory, but I will explain. There are cultural constraints, socioeconomic limitations, education, etc. that effect literally everything we believe and know. When most people talk about how they discovered classical, it's often along the lines of "When I was young, my mom and/or dad would listen to it," or "I had friend that loved it" or "I happened to watch this movie where I really liked the soundtrack, and it all started from there," etc etc. So someone you know, or some outside circumstance exposed you to music when you were in an open-minded state, or brought you to the music that you liked, without your permission. Sure, maybe it was your free will to watch the movie, but did you know beforehand that the music would move you so?

Perhaps you had none of those experiences. You literally just woke up one morning and said out of the blue, "I'm going to listen to classical today!" and you went online to look for recommendations, maybe coming here. Well, where did you get your recommendations? What came up first in the search engine? Which immediately caught your eye? Could you control these factors, or make a "rational" decision not based on the whim of "it met my eye first on the Amazon recommended classical playlist."

Think of it the way people talk about religion these days. Maybe you ultimately liked classical because your parents did, that their influence on you ultimately changed your life. It doesn't stop with them too. Your grandparents, great grandparents, your city, your country, your generation, etc. Do you think if you were exposed to different music, you would have had different tastes ultimately? I'd say it's more than likely. Why would music be any different than other things?

But the point of the thread is not to discuss "what if?" but rather "what now?" How do you feel that you weren't in control, even now? Go wherever with this question, any impressions and thoughts. I'm quite curious what this forum has to say about it.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Your first sentence says "no free will," which is too strong. But, yeah, if was born a poor Laotian farmer, I probably wouldn't be listening to Beethoven. 

I don't know if that's much different from anything else in life (what if you never met your spouse?). I suppose you can go two ways with these things:

1. I am super-lucky to have stumbled upon the One True Path! 
2. This path really isn't special. I could just as easily be convinced that (fill in the blanks) is the greatest music ever.

I lean more towards #2.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Please don't blame me for liking classical music; my family screwed me up.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I disagree with your premise. Everyone heard a first piece of a particular genre somewhere, and it was one's own choice whether or not to continue. We had all kinds of music around the house. I responded to and gravitated toward classical. My older brother jazz. My younger brother rock. My older sister eclectically. I also liked '50s-'60s Broadway. Throughout life when I'd have the radio on for the news or a sports game I would be exposed to all kinds of pop music -- some songs of which I found myself responding to, others not. Dad had a stack of 10-inch 78s -- everything from Benny Goodman to Strauss waltzes. None of my liking of any of it was predetermined -- unless you believe in predestination.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I don't believe in free will in general so I believe my musical journey was determined completely by outside influences. I started out listening to popular music, and due to circumstances beyond my control I ended up loving classical music.


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## Guest (Feb 27, 2016)

Well you started this thread because you have no free will and people said what they said for the same reason. I am posting this because I have no free will. Including this sentence tacked on here. As well as THIS. And this. And "urggftghhgtgh" as well. I will stop now because hard determinism can be quite tiring.













































And this.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Do I want to be in control of everything? Probably not.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

I was born into a classical music family. We awoke to classical music, it was played on the radio at suppertime, and we went to classical concerts. It wasn't until my teen years that I discovered [via free will] other styles of music mainly on the car radio. We didn't have the internet in those days.

Being brought up in this way I grew to appreciate classical music, and still love it today many years later. Okay, I was influenced and have listened to non classical music change over the years, but classical remains constant year after year, century after century, and that's a good thing.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

No, nobody introduced me to the music I love- nobody that I know in the real world, anyway. So if having very central, conventional taste is evidence of a lack of free will, my will must be very free indeed. (Whether this is in fact true is a question for minds more philosophically-inclined than mine is.) From the age of twelve or so I spent my pocket money and meagre babysitting earnings on junk shop 78s and hiring library cassettes. So much for 'my mom and dad used to listen to that'- I went from my parents shouting 'Turn that bloody racket off!' to my son only today making a similar request, more politely worded at least.  Until a couple of years ago I never thought in terms of genre at all : 'classical' sounds fusty and forbidding, and if you tell people you like opera they ask you whether you prefer Callas or Sutherland (the trained female voice being an acquired taste I've never managed to acquire completely) or assume you must be a massive fan of Puccini or Andrea Bocelli or something equally embarrassing. In fact, far from effortlessly appreciating all the popular stuff, I've pretty much instantly disliked everything we're supposed to like (Beethoven, Karajan, the Three Tenors, Bruckner, verismo, women singers) and adored everything we're supposed to look down on (grand opera, French music that isn't Berlioz or Debussy, good old fashioned songs by the likes of Tosti or Donaudy or JB Faure) or the things we're meant to be loftily indifferent to (pre-electric recordings). I always follow my instincts, and if other people occasionally like what I like it's gratifying. If not, no big deal. Of course, relying on instinct could be evidence of a lack of free will, since the origins of our instincts are not clear to us and the urge to follow them is largely involuntary...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Herman Melville had it all worked out in his chapter "The Mat" in _Moby Dick_: it's all in the interplay between Free Will, Necessity, and Chance---

…it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp…This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly…this easy, indifferent sword must be chance - aye, chance, free will, and necessity - no wise incompatible - all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course…free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.

I feel compelled to cite this reference.....


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

MarkW said:


> I disagree with your premise. Everyone heard a first piece of a particular genre somewhere, and it was one's own choice whether or not to continue. We had all kinds of music around the house. I responded to and gravitated toward classical. My older brother jazz. My younger brother rock. My older sister eclectically. I also liked '50s-'60s Broadway. Throughout life when I'd have the radio on for the news or a sports game I would be exposed to all kinds of pop music -- some songs of which I found myself responding to, others not. Dad had a stack of 10-inch 78s -- everything from Benny Goodman to Strauss waltzes. None of my liking of any of it was predetermined -- unless you believe in predestination.


Excellent post. I think it completely refutes the premise of the OP


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Music to me feels like choice, not like predestination. I am one of six, with one brother who like me was made to learn the violin in childhood, but he never took to it & found difficulty playing in tune. Another brother had musical talent & could pick out a tune on a guitar, but never persevered. My third brother discovered classical music on his own, as we weren't a classical music family. He just 'got interested', bought some Mahler LPs and joined the Classical Music Society at university off his own bat. 

My two sisters share my interest in folk music, but don't seem to feel the intensity that I feel. As for me, I was singing nursery rhymes to myself at the age of two, and in my teens chained myself to the gramophone to copy the lyrics of the various folk song LPs my mother had bought, but didn't listen to all that often. 

There is something inside each one of us that answers the call of Music - or doesn't.

In short, to use Ronald Knox's metaphor, I am a bus, not a tram.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

My sister and I grew up in a house with very little music. Her own house today has very little music. Mine is overflowing with music. Nobody I grew up with listened to jazz or classical music with the exception of a cousin twice my age. And she never turned me onto any particular pieces or composers, so why did I seek it out? Free will or natural inclination? I know one thing. I wasn't exposed to classical music directly by anyone. I sought it out on my own. A compulsion, perhaps?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'm convinced I was predestined, or at least genetically programmed, to like the things I like. I've been exposed to country music all my life and haven't developed the remotest affinity for it, so it can't have anything to do with exposure.


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## Guest (Feb 28, 2016)

MarkW said:


> I disagree with your premise. Everyone heard a first piece of a particular genre somewhere, and it was one's own choice whether or not to continue.


I think the OP's idea is that before you were able to exercise choice in the matter, you had already been pre-conditioned to make the choice that you did. And I think she's probably right for many people.


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## Guest (Feb 28, 2016)

Figleaf said:


> No, nobody introduced me to the music I love- nobody that I know in the real world, anyway. So if having very central, conventional taste is evidence of a lack of free will, my will must be very free indeed. (Whether this is in fact true is a question for minds more philosophically-inclined than mine is.) From the age of twelve or so I spent my pocket money and meagre babysitting earnings on junk shop 78s and hiring library cassettes.


So, you had a machine at home ready to play the 78s and cassettes? Was it yours? And if so, what prompted you to obtain it?


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I agree with the others, I've made my own personal journey in music. Of course there were some influences along the way, but those didn't affect the outcome as strongly as the OP suggests. 
It would've been very different without the internet, that's for sure.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> So, you had a machine at home ready to play the 78s and cassettes? Was it yours? And if so, what prompted you to obtain it?


Good questions! I had a walkman for cassettes from about 1987ish, and there might have been a few other portable cassette players around, though they were generally poor quality and short lived. I think it might have been an Al Bowlly tape from the library that prompted me to seek out that artist's records on 78, or maybe it was a different singer. But in Tring we were lucky enough to have an auction house which sold junk from house clearances, which in those days typically included 78rpm records which hardly anyone wanted, as well as gramophones and turntables. Back in the 80s and 90s gramophones had a certain fashionable, kitsch appeal and were very expensive, so my first turntable was a 1960s one. I can't remember the brand, though I do remember the brown fabric on the speakers and the musty smell it had! It played 78s as well as vinyl but was really designed for the latter, and shellac sounded faint and underpowered on that machine, especially the early stuff. A few years later when I was maybe 16 or so, my parents relented and bought me a cabinet gramophone from circa 1915 (see link below), and that sounded great. It was pretty nice of them as the machines still cost at least £150 and they hated all the music, plus they are the kind of houseproud people who regard anything old as in bad taste as well as probably unhygienic. The sound of acoustic vocal recordings on an original machine can't be beaten, although it's not always apparent from a youtube video recorded on a tablet!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> But the point of the thread is not to discuss "what if?" but rather "what now?" How do you feel that you weren't in control, even now? Go wherever with this question, any impressions and thoughts. I'm quite curious what this forum has to say about it.


I have wondered that if I were raised in China, I wouldn't have such strong dislike for their folk music. Apparently not, because Chinese still like having it around. Personally, I haven't been able to bring myself to like it.

But I do think there are genres of music which speak to certain people outside of their cultural milieu. For example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came from Germany to New York and was attracted to Negro spirituals. There is something in their psyche which certain types of music speaks to.

On the other hand, some music may infuse someone's cultural environment and they still don't like it. Personally, a lot of my friends like rock music, and I'm still pretty much indifferent, though I want to like it so I can fit in with them, and I've made several attempts to do so. So I want to like it, but the attraction is beyond my control.

And my classical music journey began with a lovely young flute player who was a music major, and I took a music appreciation class so I could talk to her. So my classical experience began as a result of temporary insanity. It came beyond my control.

It seems like there is a tuning fork inside all of us, and certain music makes it ring, and I don't know if there is a definite reason, but it seems to lie somewhere between nature and nurture.

And in my experience, where I am now is to consciously be an explorer. As T.S. Eliot said, "Not fare well, but fare forward, voyagers."


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

There's no other self than the one which is already a member of a culture, a tradition, a heritage. I'm most happy to be that self. I'll use my thing-that-happens-to-look-like-free-will-from-my-perspective to participate in that culture, to hone and refine that tradition as well as I'm able.


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