Music you "ought to" like but just aren't that into, .. help me like it? Options

[ma non troppo]

This is a great thread. It's so cathartic to finally come clean. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I don't get Wagner either.


To be fair though.....our tastes DO change. I would say I have only really appreciated Haydn since I got into my late thirties (I'm nearly 42 now).

[bassoonista]

I love opera...until the singing starts (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif) I just hate that sound. I also can't get into jazz. As I become more advanced in my own instrument, I'm beginning to see how clever it is, but I just can't listen to it. I've even tried going to live performances, thinking that the atmosphere will help, but it doesn't. The other genre I can't get into is country and western.

Are we related? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I can't say I am keen in "Italian high opera" - all that bel canto mullarkey - but I do like some earlier and later opera (Britten is Purcell re-incarnated right?). I have eventually found a way into country and western (or rather "proper" country music as opposed to that dreadful "hot country" garbage) via folk and bluegrass. Jazz remains a closed door despite the best intentions of Frank Zappa, Soft Machine, King Crimson, Stravinsky, Ravel, Nigel Kennedy, et. al.

Maybe we are related then!! If golf is a good walk spoiled, then opera to me is good music spoiled (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[soccermom]

I'm very much with Corenfa. I used to think I didn't like opera either, but actually I do like quite a lot. Tosca is probably my favourite, but I like most things I know by Puccini, Mozart and Verdi. However, I loathe the stereotypical Wagnerian "fat woman in helmet" style of singing.

Interesting how a number of people are commenting on jazz. I don't like it either. Like others, I have always felt that I "ought" to like jazz, but I really don't unless it's only mildly jazzy. I always suspect it sounds better if you're drunk.

Things I don't like on the whole (but don't feel I should like) are Country and Western, brass bands, and Viennese waltzes.

I love Brahms - especially the Requiem - and Strauss's Four Last Songs. As for Beethoven 9, familiarity has bred contempt and I like that only if I haven't heard it for a long time. I used to be in a big London choir that sang it far too often. If I remember rightly, one year we performed it six times and recorded it three times.

[Tenor Viol]

I'm very much with Corenfa. I used to think I didn't like opera either, but actually I do like quite a lot. Tosca is probably my favourite, but I like most things I know by Puccini, Mozart and Verdi. However, I loathe the stereotypical Wagnerian "fat woman in helmet" style of singing.

Interesting how a number of people are commenting on jazz. I don't like it either. Like others, I have always felt that I "ought" to like jazz, but I really don't unless it's only mildly jazzy. I always suspect it sounds better if you're drunk.

Things I don't like on the whole (but don't feel I should like) are Country and Western, brass bands, and Viennese waltzes.

I love Brahms - especially the Requiem - and Strauss's Four Last Songs. As for Beethoven 9, familiarity has bred contempt and I like that only if I haven't heard it for a long time. I used to be in a big London choir that sang it far too often. If I remember rightly, one year we performed it six times and recorded it three times.

I'm slowly learning about jazz. As with classical, there are many sub-genres and styles. I'm no expert and would defer to others, but I think it's styles such as be-bop etc that tend to get jazz a bad name as being long random strings of notes noodling loosely around an undelying tune. Avante garde is what you'd expect and to me at least is as impenetrable as serialism and atonal music. Now some swing and big band I can cope with (there - I'm a peasant (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) )

[katica]

I'm very much with Corenfa. I used to think I didn't like opera either, but actually I do like quite a lot. Tosca is probably my favourite, but I like most things I know by Puccini, Mozart and Verdi. However, I loathe the stereotypical Wagnerian "fat woman in helmet" style of singing.

Interesting how a number of people are commenting on jazz. I don't like it either. Like others, I have always felt that I "ought" to like jazz, but I really don't unless it's only mildly jazzy. I always suspect it sounds better if you're drunk.

Things I don't like on the whole (but don't feel I should like) are Country and Western, brass bands, and Viennese waltzes.

I love Brahms - especially the Requiem - and Strauss's Four Last Songs. As for Beethoven 9, familiarity has bred contempt and I like that only if I haven't heard it for a long time. I used to be in a big London choir that sang it far too often. If I remember rightly, one year we performed it six times and recorded it three times.

I'm slowly learning about jazz. As with classical, there are many sub-genres and styles. I'm no expert and would defer to others, but I think it's styles such as be-bop etc that tend to get jazz a bad name as being long random strings of notes noodling loosely around an undelying tune. Avante garde is what you'd expect and to me at least is as impenetrable as serialism and atonal music. Now some swing and big band I can cope with (there - I'm a peasant (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) )

In my maturer years I'm quite happy to be a peasant! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I have to hear jazz live to enjoy it and much prefer old fashioned big band and - on the more modern end - latin jazz (fusion), which I find more accessible.

I like some opera, mainly - like arundodonuts - either early or modern and not an awful lot in the middle. Even then, there's no hard and fast rule: love Mozart's Don Giovanni, can't abide the Magic Flute.

I have to admit, too, that I get bored with long stretches of recitative and can't cope with listening on CD. In my snobbier youth I'd have thought it completely "non U" to listen to - still less own - mere opera highlights. But now I must admit that highlights are quite good enough for me, especially if only listening.

It was also fashionable in my university days to be very sniffy about Mozart. It was rather regarded as music for kids and easy listeners. I must say that now I've come to have a new appreciation for much (but not all) of his music. And I think maturer oboists get a great deal more out of his oboe concerto than some of the brilliant young virtuosos.

[VH2]

6 little pieces - Schoenberg (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif) @?$%^&!

Mikrokosmos - Bartok ?????

I don't get it.

That is before we get on to Boulez!

[maggiemay]

jazz

[TSax]

I love jazz. Lots of different types. I love be-bop and hard-bop and post-bop. I think Miles Davies is a genius, Sonny Rollins is my hero. There's some fantastic, contemporary, boundary-breaking stuff going on in the UK at the moment. I play a lot of swing/big-band stuff, I find latin jazz uplifting and fusion can really get me going.

I don't know much about classical music and I don't listen to very much of it. Sometimes I do and most often I enjoy it when I do. But there's so much music I want to listen to, and so little time - I just can't do it all!

I don't feel as though there's anything I "ought" to like and don't. There are areas of music that I know others on the forum adore, but that leave me cold. I suspect that's because for one reason or another I just haven't found my in-road yet - I might never find it, but that's OK because I've got jazz!

[karslima]

Most people who play the violin seem to rave about Mahler, but I don't get his music at all. I don't have a problem with this and in fact this thread has prompted me to look into selling a Mahler box set that was given to me as a gift on ebay or amazon. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hides.gif)

[Tenor Viol]

Most people who play the violin seem to rave about Mahler, but I don't get his music at all. I don't have a problem with this and in fact this thread has prompted me to look into selling a Mahler box set that was given to me as a gift on ebay or amazon. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hides.gif)

Considering I'm an early music afficionado, I quite like Mahler - I love the 4th symphony.

[tangerine]

I love most music apart from that of the Romantic Era - too big and cloying for my liking. Give me good clean Baroque lines any time! I like jazz, brass bands and wind bands,a fair amount of pop and rock, English choral music (and that from other countries, but sung by English cathedral/chapel choirs)... I could go on and on.

However, my pet hate is Gesualdo! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

[VH2]

Interesting how a number of people are commenting on jazz. I don't like it either. Like others, I have always felt that I "ought" to like jazz, but I really don't unless it's only mildly jazzy. I always suspect it sounds better if you're drunk.

I find it hard to believe that anyone can dislike all "jazz", because the genre is so diverse. At one extreme there is trad jazz: banjos, bass, clarinet, happy sunny sounds, at the other extreme there is "modern jazz" as played by Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock amongst others. And there is everything in-beween. Somewehere near the middle is Gershwin's fusion of classical/romantic/jazz idioms in his Rhapsody in Blue. As for the form and structure , there are pieces of every conceivable type and metre, marches, waltzes, laments, pieces in 5/4 and 7/4, gentle ballads, subtle gentle pieces, big show-off pieces.

There are soloists, small groups (the typical trio became drum, bass, piano, but a saxophone adds versatiliy and colour) and big bands like Duke Ellington's and Count Basie's.

On piano there are the likes of Errol Garner, George Shearing, Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, to mention only the most famous and accomplished of jazz pianists, although Nat King Cole and Andre Previn had side lines as pretty good jazz pianists.

There must be something in there that you can like.

[Tenor Viol]

I love most music apart from that of the Romantic Era - too big and cloying for my liking. Give me good clean Baroque lines any time! I like jazz, brass bands and wind bands,a fair amount of pop and rock, English choral music (and that from other countries, but sung by English cathedral/chapel choirs)... I could go on and on.

However, my pet hate is Gesualdo! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Ah... you're not into the mannerist style then? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Or is it that he had his wife's lover murdered? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) It would make a good soap opera.... "...Seering passion in noble households..", "Spurned husband vows vengance...", "Murderous husband is acquitted of Crime of Passion", "Jilted lover leads monastic life devoted to writiing sacred music... tortured by his memories..."

It definitely has potential.... ony problems is - it's true!

[Arundodonuts]

Interesting how a number of people are commenting on jazz. I don't like it either. Like others, I have always felt that I "ought" to like jazz, but I really don't unless it's only mildly jazzy. I always suspect it sounds better if you're drunk.

I find it hard to believe that anyone can dislike all "jazz", because the genre is so diverse.

Fair point, though I think we tend to lump together pieces of a genre we don't enjoy much and say we dislike it as a whole. I always say I don't get on with jazz but I'm well aware there is a considerable body of music with very strong jazz connections which I do like. Oh and even some jazz.

I think it's all the noodling about on one chord that drives me up the wall.

[carol*piano]

I think it's all the noodling about on one chord that drives me up the wall.

And how many chords does one "noodle about" on for morris dancing? I'm guessing no more than three... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)