I prefer music with vocals.
I’ll listen to a little instrumental music and then quickly get bored. I do prefer classical over jazz.
You know of course that they’re just tuning their instruments. They’re not doing that to be snooty.
Which brings up another point: a lot of classical music has been used in popular culture and is familiar to people from that.
The first time I heard the William Tell Overture, I knew the finale from the Lone Ranger and much else. But I didn’t realize that Carl Stalling had often used the “Storm” and “Morning” sections in Looney Tunes. Stalling was often fond of using Von Suppe’s “Poet and Peasant” overture, and there are many classical pieces that show up in Warner Brother cartoons.
Similarly, Stanley Kubrick often used classical music in his movies. He made “Thus Sprach Zarathustra” ubiquitous, and A Clockwork Orange used multiple classical pieces.
You just lost me. I don’t need any musical education to know whether a piece moves me or not. The amount that a piece has moved me has never been dependent on how much I know about it. Same with painting, poetry, film or pretty much any art.
Well, of course there’s none of that in classical music. If that’s what classical music is, then we would just call it rock music. 
Humor me: put on the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, and crank it up pretty loud. It immediately starts with a highly “toe-tappable” beat. Toe-tap along with the music, but don’t try to intellectualize it or “approach” it with any particular mindset. Just let the music wash over you. And here is the key: it may not do it for you at first. Me, over the years I’ve bought numerous albums in different genres that just didn’t do it for me at first. Being that I spent hard-earned dollars though, I felt obligated to give them second and third chances, and often they grew on me to the extent that I fell in love with them. If you aren’t familiar with classical music (a term so broad as to be a bit useless, quite frankly) you very well may not like it. But you like music, don’t you?
I say this to all of you who “hate” classical music, especially if you’ve never really given it a chance. And while I’m on Beethoven’s 7th, might I also say that it is a very good introduction to what classical music is all about. You can listen to it in 45 minutes. From the optimistic opening movement, through the dour and melancholy second, and on through the lively and energetic third and fourth movements, it runs the gamut of all human emotions, requires no knowledge of musical theory, and despite others here pointing out the importance of development and the like, which I agree can be quite interesting, you don’t need to consider this at first. Don’t set yourself up for something that you may not get at first, and when you don’t, think you’ve “missed it” in some way.
And there may be the problem.You are tempted to “interpret” classical music based on what someone else is doing, that is, the conductor. But if you must “direct”, then consider Beethoven’s conducting style:
Get into it, man! 
Then it means that what you really enjoy is talking to yourself. Your first, visceral reaction to an artwork is everything. That’s fine, just not the way I work.
I happen to appreciate some pieces even more when I am told or shown something new about them, something that I’d never have thought of be myself. It’s more like a dialogue, really or at least an interaction.
You know, of course, that they could do it in ways that did not make it appear to be such a big deal, applauding the concertmaster as they come out after everyone else.
My first thought when I opened this thread is very similar. I actually like some classical music, but only the instrumental pieces and performances. Like you, I HATE opera singing. While I have some appreciation of the vocal talent, I can’t stand to listen to it, and 10 seconds is more than enough. I can’t imagine actually going to see an opera. Uggh.
I don’t like most jazz, either. It just sounds like musicians noodling around, with little obvious melody or rhythm. Dixieland jazz, which I like, is the exception, and I don’t even know if that is considered “real” jazz.
Exactly what I feel, said better than I could have. I find it amusing that some people here seem to feel a need to persuade folk that they SHOULD enjoy classical music!
Like I said, my favorite is probably primitive old-timey banjo and fiddle music. Or rockabilly w/ a slapped bass and screaming guitar. But if YOU don’t like it, that’s fine with me.
Actually, I just realized. One thing I REALLY like abut old-time, folk, and bluegrass music is that it is very personal. “back porch” music. Really gives me the feel of regular people making music for their own enjoyment. Which is quite removed from the tux-and-tails environment of much classical music.
Boy, it would be tough for me to decide, if I HAD to go to EITHER an opera, OR a baseball game! Personal taste is fun, ain’t it?
If emotional response is all that matters to you, that’s your business. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s comically ignorant to suggest that just because you don’t engage with more sophisticated aspects of music, that they don’t exist at all.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen individuals in non-classical concerts being applauded separately as they come out, as headliners, or soloists, or special guests, or whatever. Are they all being “snooty”? Or is it just “snooty” to recognize the concert master as someone with slightly higher importance?
If this is really true, it means that you’re equally moved by a simple four-line ditty or a dirty limerick as by a longer, more complex poem. It means you’re equally moved by a poem written in a language that you don’t understand as one written in English.
Despite my earlier posts, which might not make this clear, I agree wholeheartedly with this. Musical tastes differ. I only hope to convince people who have never given classical music an real chance, as opposed to just writing it off as “elevator music”, to do so.
How about a great fiddle and banjo tune played in a setting usually associated with classical music, Carnegie Hall. Flatt and Scruggs “Fiddle and Banjo”. Great stuff.
I can’t find the source, but I saw an article which says that opera vocals sound the way they do because audience needs to hear it. It’s a genre that never adopted to the invention of microphone.
I’m a rock a guy with an eclectic taste. I dislike operas and operettas. I don’t mind occasional classical piece - and I don’t mind the absence of the beat; I’m occasionally listening to electronic ambient music - but I dislike slow movements, predictable textures, too drastic jumps in dynamics, too few and far between rewards of majestic melody buried in between slow, washing, nearly dissonant harmonies.
Same for jazz. I don’t mind melodic noodlings, but I do mind chords. Anything more complex than major/minor 7ths/9ths sound either dissonant or cheesy.
With that in mind, this is probably the most beautiful piece of classical music.
You must really be missing a lot then.
With all great music, art, literature, poetry, movies, dance, etc. the more we understand the work in detail, the more we enjoy it, and the more we are moved by it.
An initial gut feeling, especially based on ignorance of the genre, may be completely misleading. We may be missing the point, or unfamiliar with the style. Knowing something about the context and the artist also adds to the enjoyment of the work.
With music, we have to learn to hear by careful attention and by knowing what to listen for. This is a physical thing - the brain gradually develops the ability to hear more refined and subtle detail. The brain gains familiarity with that style and begins to process it better. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, it’s an acquired taste, and a taste worth acquiring.
Clearly there is a difference in say, Pachelbel’s Canon in D and a take-your-pick Schoenberg atonal piece, given that the term “atonal” and all it suggests is the defining characteristic of much of his music. And I suppose it may come across as condescending, but why such an accusatory post, before even giving Limmin a chance to explain what was meant? I see nothing in that post suggesting you need to be Einstein to appreciate certain works.
Absolutely not. I play no part in it. I’m completely at the disposal of what the artwork can do to me by itself.
sophisticated?
One thing I don’t get at all is musical theater. Sometimes they’re fun, but generally I feel like I’m sitting through a couple of hours of alternating not-great dialogue with not-great songs. People go for it though, so I guess I must be overlooking something.