Listening poll

[some guy]

When I first started listening to classical music, I would categorize things by whether I thought they were any good or not. Later I learned that the things I naturally gravitated towards were also the great pieces. Even later, I concluded that that was maybe not the best of lessons to have learned. Before that happened, I spent many happy years in the "there are things that I like and there are things that are great and I know the difference between those things (in the rare instances when they did not correspond)" phase.

A recent comment on the "neglected composers" thread gave me the idea for this poll. It was "I'm all for supporting good contemporary composers...." Ah, yes. But what is "good"? And who gets to decide? How do we know who the good ones are? Do we really and truly decide for ourselves or do we let others do it for us? Is goodness inherent in the music, is it in the ears of the beholder, or is it neither? A wee bit epistemology might not be amiss at this point.

Is goodness even a useful concept? I've listened to many pieces that didn't strike me as particularly good at first only to find later, sometimes much much later, that they were fine. So much so, that the question I now ask is not "is this piece any good?" but "am I listening well enough?"

Enough nattering from me for now. Over to you.

[DavidW]

I like to listen to music, I enjoy what I enjoy.

Sometimes music that I don't enjoy I find frustrating or strange or painful or boring and I keep going back and back trying to get it or see why people like it, and then I realize that the music is awesome for being what it is.

Why do we try constantly to rate the music or how we feel about it we should listen.  How many tv shows, movies, novels, short stories, poems, works of art etc etc etc do we experience without constantly gauging our reaction.  When I finish a tv show I don't mentally assign a star rating to it.

Edit: fixed a sentence written poorly.

[Sid]

...Is goodness even a useful concept? I've listened to many pieces that didn't strike me as particularly good at first only to find later, sometimes much much later, that they were fine. So much so, that the question I now ask is not "is this piece any good?" but "am I listening well enough?"

You hit the nail on the head, so to speak. So many pieces don't grab me at first, but when I go away & read, talk & think more about them, & then come back to the music, it often "clicks" with me. This can be months or even years after I have first listened to the piece. It makes me really sceptical of how some people react to music if they've only listened to it once or twice. This is only a superficial, not deep, understanding of the music. Going to concerts and seeing  works, both old and new, live is also a good thing to do, if one wants to gain more perceptions and insights. I also have great faith in practically all musicians who are (& have been) working in the classical music industry, giving us great music. I think that every performance has some merit, if you are able to be flexible and give it a chance. Musicians don't study music for years and devote their lives to their art just so us lay listeners can have these ridiculous minor quibbles about what they are doing. I think that it is a flexible listener who is able to absorb on a deeper level both the music and the performance, rather than just having these primitive gut reactions, which ultimately lead nowhere.

I also think that it's a bit wierd if people who are into classical shut themselves off from certain genres (eg. "I don't like chamber music") based on very little experience. I think that to get the "big picture" of a composer's output, one has to listen to a broad range of his/her music, not only in one genre, but in all genres. Of course, there are limits to this (I'm not a huge fan of opera or solo harpsichord music, for example), but a mark of flexibility is being as open as you can be to the many wonders of a composer's various sides. How do you know what you know, and what you don't know, if you haven't actually listened to a wider range of stuff?

I think that people who are inflexible and (say) only like music of a certain era or genre basically have little understanding of what music is about. They cannot make connections. They do not understand the "big picture." They are stuck in a certain era or genre, and cannot branch out. This is a mistake, because if you cannot hear the connections and synergies between different types of classical music, then it's like being lost at sea without a compass. There's nothing to hold onto, whichever direction you go, you get nowhere.

I can go on, but I won't. I think that people can understand what I am saying?...

[Mirror Image]

I'm with Sid on this one. There are works that I absolutely found dull or revolting or tiresome on first listening, but it's only when I go back with a clearer head and more knowledge of that composer and what they were trying to accomplish or express that I'm able to appreciate the music on its own terms. It has been a slow process for me, but I'm finally coming to terms with my own narrow-minded attitude about music and in doing this I've opened up doors that were shut years ago.

Huge ear-opening composers for me: Berg, Dutilleux, Varese, Part, Webern, Schoenberg, Martinu, Lutoslawski, among others.

[The new erato]

I'm with Sid on this one. There are works that I absolutely found dull or revolting or tiresome on first listening, but it's only when I go back with a clearer head and more knowledge of that composer and what they were trying to accomplish or express that I'm able to appreciate the music on its own terms.

Yep. This is the essence of listening, and why I listen to new stuff and not only new interpretations of stuff I know and love.

[The new erato]

Huge ear-opening composers for me: Berg, Dutilleux, Varese, Part, Webern, Schoenberg, Martinu, Lutoslawski, among others.

You should try to get your ears around Hindemith.

[mc ukrneal]

Is goodness even a useful concept? I've listened to many pieces that didn't strike me as particularly good at first only to find later, sometimes much much later, that they were fine. So much so, that the question I now ask is not "is this piece any good?" but "am I listening well enough?"

Anything like this can only be subjective unless an established set of criteria are put together that identify what 'good' music encompasses. We often use the word 'good', but we have different understandings of what that means and that is where the arguments tend to begin.

For example, if 'good' meant primarily melodic, Berg and others would not fare particularly well. If you mean 'well crafted', well then Berg does just fine thank you very much. 

[petrarch]

I voted for the "I never decide". I find that I have multiple types of listening; on some occasions I am in the mood for something cerebral, on other occasions I am all for 'colour' and 'texture', on others for the craft, and yet on others just for some ear candy (though I must confess that colour and texture are usually also there in the other types of listening).

My first impulse was to vote for the "After listening", but this poll made me realize that usually I don't care whether it is 'good'--in the general accepted standard of good--but just I that enjoy it. So you could actually say that my concept of good is a bit fluid and depends on the mood. Just like the gastronomic experience, in a way...

To paraphrase, there are only two types of music: Good music and bad music.

[karlhenning]

To paraphrase, there are only two types of music: Good music and bad music.

Wherein does the badness of the bad reside?  This were a most interesting question, meseems.

[petrarch]

Wherein does the badness of the bad reside?  This were a most interesting question, meseems.

And there's also that other quote: "What kind of music do you play here? We play both kinds, Country and Western".

[Superhorn]

   Sometimes a work you hear for the first time will click with you immediately and you will respond favorably right away.
  But sometimes it takes repeated hearings to judge a work. That's why recordings are so valuable in this respect. If you hear some works at a concert they may not register immediately,or you may even jump to conclusions and decide you don't like it.
  There are so many works which I didn't "get" the first time I heard them which I now love,or at least like.
  I love this saying:"The only mental exercise most people get is jumping to conclusions".
   I always try not to jump to conclusions in music.
 

[Mirror Image]

You should try to get your ears around Hindemith.

Been there, done that! I love Hindemith.

[Guido]

To paraphrase, there are only two types of music: Good music and bad music.

Don't think I agree. Much (most?) music is surely "in between".

Usually I would say that there is good music and there is boring music. Allows for the subjective response and a more absolute ("there is a truth of the matter") response. This captures most things quite well I think, except for those oddballs such as Satie, Cage and the most extreme minimalists. Though when repetition and conventional boredom becomes a virtue and no longer boring in the normal sense I guess we can then push it into the "good category".

[some guy]

I don't think I agree, either. Which is a bit odd, as I usually do agree with petrArch. But then, I've disagreed with Karl, too. Maybe I'm just too disagreeable!

But enough about me. I think the words "good" and "bad" neither identify qualities of the works (absolute) nor responses of listeners (subjective) but point to what happens when you put a work and a listener together. And different things happen then, as you can see simply by looking at any thread on a music discussion board. I doubt there's any piece about which there is universal agreement. (Though there may be a fairly universal grudging acceptance for some of the more prominent canonical works as being "great.")

And that's not because some people are just too stubborn or too stupid* to recognize good music when they hear it. Not just because, I should say!! But because what happens when a person listens to music is just too complex, too varied and too variable, to allow for such comfortable simplicities.

I think we do music and ourselves a great disservice by using comfortable simplicities. But I don't propose a complexity as a substitute, but another simplicity. (Whew, huh?) And that is that words like "good" and "bad" point to what happens when we listen. To all the various and sundry things that go on. To each person's capacities, prejudices, training, experience, flexibility. To each piece's qualities (length, dynamics, complexities, simplicities). How else to account for petrArch's calling Azguime's Itinerário do Sal unimaginative and me calling it very imaginative? (I use this example principally because I think our experiences of new music are roughly equivalent. Although even if they weren't, the point would still remain.)

How else, indeed, to account for our repeated experiences of liking a piece at first and then coming to dislike it? Or for disliking a piece at first and coming to like it?

*Such an easy trap to fall into, eh? Because it's inarguable that some people are stubborn and stupid.

[Philoctetes]

Don't think I agree. Much (most?) music is surely "in between".

Usually I would say that there is good music and there is boring music. Allows for the subjective response and a more absolute ("there is a truth of the matter") response. This captures most things quite well I think, except for those oddballs such as Satie, Cage and the most extreme minimalists. Though when repetition and conventional boredom becomes a virtue and no longer boring in the normal sense I guess we can then push it into the "good category".

I don't think your qualifiers are any better. They're merely shifting the same old shit around.

Something as subjective as music really can't be talked about in any sort of categorical terms. (I mean we will, because of the weakness of our language.)

[petrarch]

Don't think I agree. Much (most?) music is surely "in between".

I guess my point was somewhat lost due to my jumping a few steps in my line of thought. The paraphrase was meant in jest.

The good and bad qualifiers are not absolutes; the rest of the post suggested that good and bad are very fluid, on the one hand depending on the mood and on the other depending on the music growing on us. Good and bad were used as arbitrary polar opposites, a false dichotomy that is a poor reduction that ignores the rich variety of aspects of music one can enjoy.

Perhaps then the quip about the two kinds of music "that matter" (Country and Western) will be better understood.

[some guy]

petrArch, your quip did not go unremarked nor unappreciated! Just so you know.

I was all caught up with the implications (sticky stuff, implications) of Guido's remarks, something I've been thinking about lately.

Still, no excuse for passing over a perfectly good quip, and one I quite enjoyed, too.