I’ve been listening to that on U Tube. It’s a beautiful album. Thank you for recommending it.
No lyrics, no consistent melody, too many goddamned violins.
I challenge the assertion that there is such a thing as “lite” or “difficult” music.
That in itself comes across as somewhat condescending. The implication being that those who don’t share you appreciation of the latter are lacking the mental capability or application to realise that the latter is more worthy.
If that actually is the way you view people’s musical tastes (I hope it isn’t) then you shouldn’t be surprised by the responses you get.
(My bolding in cochrane’s post.) My insights here may not be worth much: I’m next-door to tone-deaf, and lack physical co-ordination: the great majority of music, and dancing in any way or shape done by myself, are “closed books” to me. I get the impression though, that for very many preferrers of, shall we say, livelier musical stuff: classical music is plain boring, and very lacking in enjoyable and memorable tunes.
There are suggestions that the above, has held held good for many centuries. In Patrick O’Brian’s novels, it’s an ongoing thing that Aubrey and Maturin enjoy playing together, classical-type violin / cello duets. I recall in one of the books, that the two of them are going hard at it thus; “off-stage”, Aubrey’s devoted but surly servant, Killick, comments to the effect of: “tweedly-deedly, tweedly-deedly, all the damn time for hours on end – it’s enough to drive you mad”.
Not wrong… but then, much of pop-rock-rap is boring, too.
But that’s the thing.
In Classical music, you’re supposed to feel the beat, without **BANG ** having to BANG resort to BANG a drum BANG to emphasise BANG blindly every BANG single beat BANG. That’s like underlining all the sentences in a text. When everything is emphasised, nothing gets your attention. Also, it’s kind of lame (Do you really need a drum marking all the beats, like you’d be unable to feel where they are without it ?).
Add to this monotony, the fact that an awful lot of pop-rock-rap inhabits a very limited tempo range (100-120 bpm), that dynamics are often relatively flat (whereas in Classical music, you routinely go from “near silence” to “extremely loud” then “somewhat soft” then “very loud” in just a couple of minutes), that the instrumentation is limited (vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, occasionally brass) and, yeah, to me a lot of it gets boring really fast.
I still listen to 70s rock, or 80s pop daily, but it’s almost entirely for nostalgic reasons. I’m not a snob : you do you. And I still sometimes hear new songs that I like, in a lot of popular genres. Frankly, I feel that a lot of snottiness comes from “the other side” (hardcore classic rock or indie fan, anyone ?).
In the end, it boils down to what you look for in music, and in my observation, there are perhaps two main types of music listeners : those who want to move and those who want to feel, with of course some possibly significant overlap depending on the person. I don’t care about dancing (or moshing or headbanging) one bit. But when I listen to Classical music, I often have powerful reactions that are almost tactile.
I can take it or leave it mostly. It’s not something I go out of my way to listen to but I don’t hate it.
There are a few pieces that I really like. I love Pachelbel’s Cannon.
That should be “Canon” not “Cannon”. My editing window ran out.
Classical music is mostly not designed to be accessible enough where you can just pop it on the record player for a few minutes and say “ooh, that sounds nice”. If nothing else, there’s the time demand.
I mean, some of it is accessible like that, but much it requires some historical and evolutionary context, some musical familiarity or ability, access to good recordings/listening equipment if not live performance. And time. Plenty of time to listen to a long piece, more than once, to take it all in.
I don’t hate it by a longshot, but I will say it demands more of the listener than most people find reasonable.
Don’t confuse modern historical novels with actual history, or imagine that fiction authors don’t make things up, no matter how much research they claim to have done. Don’t mistake the opinions of one fictional character in a novel for a general historical truth.
There was certainly plenty of folk music in the 18th-19th centuries, and ballads were especially popular… but most people of all levels of society were also exposed to complex choral and organ church music from childhood.
Actually, no. Preferences are not this simple. People’s preferences are influenced by their environment—what were you exposed to and by whom and in what circumstances, what were the preferences of the people around you, what were the messages you were given by individuals and by mass media regarding the value and meaning of certain choices? People are taught to and learn to like and dislike certain things.
I think a lot of musical preference comes down to what we were exposed to in childhood.
The more we listen to any type of music, the more we understand and appreciate it. There’s no doubt that classical music is more complex, so it probably needs more exposure and more knowledge of how it’s put together.
Over time I find myself listening to more and more complex classical music. I’m thoroughly enjoying music now that I thought was slow and boring only a few years ago.
This is silly. If you have ever taken a course in musical appreciation, then you know that there are enormous ranges of complexity for melody, harmony, rhythm, and structure. Some composers deliberately put easter eggs or other opaque features in their pieces to reward those in the know (Bach and all his math fugue bullshit).
Complexity doesn’t automatically make a piece better, but it’s uncontroversial to say that some pieces are more complex and require more time, effort, and sophistication to appreciate.
As I indicated in my post: people have described me in the past, as “musically dead” – anything I have to say, touching on music, is likely to have about as much value as the opinions of a fish on the niceties of high-level flight 
.
When I was in grade school (Bach was two classes ahead of me) the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra did a regular radio series that was beamed into all the schools. That was high-level music appreciation, interspersed with pieces of classical music. The first album I ever bought was Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite.
That’s also when I learned that classical music albums were very much like early rock albums. Early rock had one hit single surrounded by whatever sludge could be recorded in a day, bulk for the sake of justifying a higher price.
The Grand Canyon Suite was typical of what the RPO played us. It had one gloriously melodic section surrounded by tweedly-deedly. Whenever I heard the full album of the classical snippets fed to us I heard one hit single surrounded by sludge.
I know rock has a beat, but - more importantly, I think - it has a melody. You could hum to it. You had to: it stuck in your head forever. That’s a big reason why classic rockers don’t appreciate much of modern music; beat is emphasized over melody. Rock developed out of the tradition of of folk music, and folk musics, at least western ones, almost always centered on a hummable melody.
I’m sure classical lovers will now rise up to insist that those dull classical stretches have plenty of melody, along with all the other virtues claimed for them. No doubt. I just don’t hear them, any more than I hear the virtues in a thousand rock albums that I can’t stand but are worshipped by others.
The major difference is that rock has a mechanism for just playing the hit singles, while classical forces you to listen to the whole album. Metaphorically. On radio or in concert you don’t get just the one good part, although you can do it at home. A good mix tape of classical probably would attract a lot of new fans. And alienate a lot of old ones.
Another one who just finds it boring. And modern orchestral/band music is tedious. My wife is a fiddle-maker and loves classical music, so I sleep through a few concerts/recitals a year. My kids were all in band and one majored in music in college, so I was subjected to a good amount of modern concert band music. Not for me. Give me a good old Sousa march that I can tap my toes to! 
I went through a period that I was very much into classical music. I can remember in college being stoned and hearing Mozart’s Jupiter for the first time - blew my mind! Owned at least 3 copies of Mozart’s 40th, and with my roommate compared the different versions on the labels. Through 7 years of piano, was quite the Rachmaninoff devotee. Took my pre-teen kid to see Kronos. But having experienced it, not interested in repeating the experience.
That’s part of it - it is so damned repetitive. Yeah, I know, if you study it, the same piece can be played at different tempos and with different instrumentation. But when you go to see it, it is basically a bunch of guys and women in black, sawing away at the same old piece. No improvisation. No visual interest.
And the snootiness plays a part in my disfavor. Really minor thing, but they lose me right at the start, when the concertmaster comes out to applause, and points to the oboe or English horn or whatever to play an A. Yeah - that’s really impressive and worthy of applause!
My current tastes are for old-time, bluegrass, and rockabilly. Just this morning bought tickets to see Bruce Molsky and Del McCroury.
I sure don’t mind it as background music, but that’s about all it is for me. In fact, years ago I found that the only music I could have playing while I worked was classical. Any other music engaged me too much such that it distracted me from my work.
Classical music is more complex in structure than popular music and does require you pay attention. Thus, a casual listener often finds it boring because they can’t see the nuances.
But the term covers a very wide range of music created over hundreds of years. There are plenty of pieces with a strong beat – listen to Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens, for instance, or any of Rossini’s overtures, or the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth.
When I was growing up, my grandfather would take me to classical concerts and I usually didn’t care much for them. But as I got older, I started liking them much better, mostly because I liked long rock compositions.
But lots of people don’t respond to it. That’s fine. No one likes every type of music.
I dare you to tell me this is not beautiful.
When I hear the William Tell Overture I don’t have to tell you the first thing I associate with it.
HI-YO, SILVER! AWAYYYYY!
The term “classical music” is too wide to be useful to me. I like some of it, and dislike some of it, and am indifferent to some of it. Just like any other broad category of music (or art in general).
I agree that a lot of Classical music movements don’t have particularly striking melodies but that’s because… that’s not the point. I’ve long contended that the essence of Classical music is NOT nice melodies but development.
Take Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, which is entirely based on that bombastic four-note motif, you hear at the beginning. How more basic can you go ? And yet, that work is considered one of the towering achievements of Western music. Why ? Not because of that (a bit silly) theme but because of what Beethoven built with it : an incredibly complex and beautiful structure that repays every listening.
To caricature a bit, when you’ve found a good melody in popular music, you’ve got over 50% of the job done. You just need to dress it up a bit, write some lyrics and you’re good to go. In Classical music, when you’ve got your tune, you’re still nowhere. Because what really matters is what you’re going to do with that melody. You’re going to have to take it on an journey that will change it, perhaps up to the point where it will be barely recognizable. Perhaps, you’ll want to introduce a second melody to complement it, or clash with it. That journey is the real the point of the work, not the melody. Of course, if you can come up with a beautiful tune to start with, that’s great. But again, that’s not the point. And believe me, listening for the 524th time to a work you thought you knew well and realize that at the 7-minute mark, what you’re hear and never really paid attention to is actually the first half of second theme but inverted or realizing that the 4th variation includes an allusion to another composer’s work… it’s a wonderful feeling. Someone mentioned Easter eggs upthread, and that’s an excellent analogy. And all this still doesn’t touch the huge subject of interpretation.
The essence of pop music (in the broadest sense) is melody and beat.
The essence of Jazz is improvisation.
The essence of Classical music is development.