# Does Classical Music mess with your head?



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I mean the whole lot. It's so amazing. Those men where so unique and think how rare they were. Out of all the billions of people that have lived all of a sudden you get a Schubert and a Tchaikovsky, etc. Where they possibly savant in some way? Did they hear the music in their head like we would hear it in a performance? 

Sorry, bit of a soppy post, but I assume with this being a Classical Music forum some people might see what I am getting at.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Yes. I feel the same way reading Shakespeare, or watching Messi.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

beetzart said:


> I mean the whole lot. It's so amazing. Those men where so unique and think how rare they were. Out of all the billions of people that have lived all of a sudden you get a Schubert and a Tchaikovsky, etc. Where they possibly savant in some way? Did they hear the music in their head like we would hear it in a performance?
> 
> Sorry, bit of a soppy post, but I assume with this being a Classical Music forum some people might see what I am getting at.


Yes. At the last concert I attended I was so entranced - a unique experience - and I cried a tear. I guess that's messing with one's head.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

As I have said: The ability to write great music is no different from that to write great writing, produce great art, solve quantum gravity, hit a major league fastball, run General Electric . . . It takes training and effort, but there is an unmeasurable inborn aptitude. Most everyone is good at _something.I_ But we value those somethings differently -- doing mathematics vs. selling real estate . . . or drinking beer. 

As for "messing with your head" . . . Different people's heads are messed with by different things . . . Beethoven, Phish, Picasso, Bob Ross, Stephen Hawking, President Trump . . .


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

All the greats make me wonder just _where _it came from. I don't think a composer is great if the music doesn't make me wonder how, what, where did _that _come from? Even when you compare their music with the music of other good composers from the same time the difference is so huge and apparently unbridgeable.


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## Iota (Jun 20, 2018)

Yes, it's why I listen to it.

I'd also say the same about paintings, poetry, literature and visionary scientific thinking.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Why do certain sounds in a certain order have such a profound effect on some people, yet devoid to others? My brother hates classical music and is into-well i don't really know what to call it-dance, trance, jungle type music and he thinks that is the zenith of music. That is his choice; I don't criticise him for it and like wise he doesn't for me. Yet I find I find it interesting how people interpret music in this manner. But saying that he loves Barber's Adagio for Strings and Rhapsody in Blue.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

beetzart said:


> Why do certain sounds in a certain order have such a profound effect on some people, yet devoid to others? My brother hates classical music and is into-well i don't really know what to call it-dance, trance, jungle type music and he thinks that is the zenith of music. That is his choice; I don't criticise him for it and like wise he doesn't for me. Yet I find I find it interesting how people interpret music in this manner. But saying that he loves Barber's Adagio for Strings and Rhapsody in Blue.


I think it's related to peer group. If all his friends and millions more younger people around the world started listening to classical as their main music, it would be understood better on deeper levels. Social science proves this. Stryker's Identity Theory proves this. We tend to partially or heavily become what is expected of us by the social group we are around. Another answer, and this has nothing to do what I may know about your brother (which is nothing) is that some music really only sounds good to people who do a lot of partying. Classical music really doesn't appeal as much to them.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Classical music does the opposite of "messing with my head," it clears my head. I always wanted something more like a purer musical life, to reflect other values. Classical music doesn't have the baggage of rock, pop, jazz (nor of polka, samba, or rhumba!). It also has more, like a rich intellectual tradition you don't find in rock. The more you build up rock, the more you sink. But few will understand what I mean. I was just listening to Hazard Profile by Soft Machine two minutes ago, but I am not thinking there is more to the song or the band than I should, thanks to classical music. I really feel sorry for people who spend endless amounts of time building up whatever limited artist beyond what that artist is due. That includes Zappa and whatever other Prog Rock artist is out there. They just shouldn't have the same type admiration for them. There is a reason why so much of our sacred music is in the classical tradition, there is a reason so many people are now very troubled who only have recourse to rock and pop to entertain them.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It messes with my head all the time. It's almost like being an alcoholic. Sometimes I just HAVE to listen to a certain piece of music or I'm going to go crazy and nothing satisfies until I listen to that one specific work. Last week for some reason I just had to listen to the Brahms 2nd. The itch wouldn't go away so out comes the old Bruno Walter mono recording. Ahhhh - relief! Happens quite frequently.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

mbhaub said:


> It messes with my head all the time. It's almost like being an alcoholic. Sometimes I just HAVE to listen to a certain piece of music or I'm going to go crazy and nothing satisfies until I listen to that one specific work. Last week for some reason I just had to listen to the Brahms 2nd. The itch wouldn't go away so out comes the old Bruno Walter mono recording. Ahhhh - relief! Happens quite frequently.


I have that kind of thing happen when I'm on vacation. I'm so used to having my collection at my disposal that when I get away from it, my brain tries to fill in the gaps in strange ways. Usually I'll get a part of a piece in my head, usually Brahms, and I'll play it over and over. But it's actually fun; I discover things like motives or orchestral details that I've been speeding over.


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> It messes with my head all the time. It's almost like being an alcoholic. Sometimes I just HAVE to listen to a certain piece of music or I'm going to go crazy and nothing satisfies until I listen to that one specific work. Last week for some reason I just had to listen to the Brahms 2nd. The itch wouldn't go away so out comes the old Bruno Walter mono recording. Ahhhh - relief! Happens quite frequently.


Glad I'm not the only one. The other night I just had to listen to Mendelssohn 4th symphony uninterrupted.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Music is a drug. 
I listen to a recording, then on to the next fix, which might be to practice for several hours. Then my next fix might be a live concert, then another recording, then a performance of my own. No matter how many times I repeat these things, I've got to have more. Music is a drug! It's always playing in my head, and when it starts to dwindle I have to listen to more of it to get it going again. It's my constant companion and I can't live without it.

So yeah, I guess you could say classical music messes with my head.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

One of my fixes at present is Anton Rubinstein, whom I have just discovered. I listen to all the symphonies, then maybe a few Schubert Quartets, then the piano concertos. Even when I go to bed I have my Bluetooth headphones on: last night I got through the entire Beethoven/Liszt piano interpretation of his symphonies (I woke to Ode to Joy) then when I got up started listening to Rubinstein again.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I've been temporarily entranced by it, but it doesn't really 'mess with my head'. Unrequited love messes with my head. Unfinished work does too. 
Maybe I don't quite understand the meaning of 'mess with your head' in relation to listening to music.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Maybe my wife thinks it messes with my head. There's always music in there, even if there's nothing on...


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

regenmusic said:


> Classical music does the opposite of "messing with my head," it clears my head. I always wanted something more like a purer musical life, to reflect other values. Classical music doesn't have the baggage of rock, pop, jazz (nor of polka, samba, or rhumba!). It also has more, like a rich intellectual tradition you don't find in rock. The more you build up rock, the more you sink. But few will understand what I mean. I was just listening to Hazard Profile by Soft Machine two minutes ago, but I am not thinking there is more to the song or the band than I should, thanks to classical music. I really feel sorry for people who spend endless amounts of time building up whatever limited artist beyond what that artist is due. That includes Zappa and whatever other Prog Rock artist is out there. They just shouldn't have the same type admiration for them. There is a reason why so much of our sacred music is in the classical tradition, there is a reason so many people are now very troubled who only have recourse to rock and pop to entertain them.


I have an acquaintance who whenever I am in his car he is listening to some commercial pop music playing station and when not in the car irritatingly singing all the songs back to me. I hate it, but I don't think he knows he is doing it. I remember once we were walking through a town centre and this pleasant bassoon violin duet was playing very nicely and he muttered to me sneeringly, thinking I would agree, 'f***ing hell'. Straight away I went 'That's Rondo alla Turca by Mozart', he said I knew my s*** in a certain begrudging manner. Then I spent twenty minutes on the bus talking about classical music.

When I listen to rock music I feel I am letting my classical listening down and crave a 20 minute piano concerto movement rather then a 2.30 minute song. Some elements of rock music has sublimity, but if it does I usually find it is in some way influenced by classical music.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Classical music definitely does "mess with my head." I can hardly believe someone as genius and gold-hearted as Glazunov existed. Even while I listen to his music sometimes, I can hardly believe he was real, that maybe some person made him up, and also made up his music. The music somehow distances me from the composers in my mind, and I have to remind myself, "They weren't people of fiction, they were actual people who existed." I have to _pinch _myself, you know what I mean?


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## zelenka (Feb 8, 2018)

years of listening to Shostakovich and Prokofiev made me think that the NKVD is about to storm into my house and throw me in the gulag


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

No, it doesn't mess with my head... because it's such a joy. But I do notice that it's usually very much on my mind. I, too, think of how remarkable these composers were, surely one of the most unique callings in life to hear what they hear and know how to get it down on paper. It seems miraculous to have that degree of talent.


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