Oh come on. You challenged the idea that a category of ‘difficult’ is a real thing, you tried to prove it by stating that contextual knowledge never had any effect on you at all. And you want to recast this as word choice struggle?
This sounds to me like you brought your own baggage, and it’s loaded with insecurity, and you want others to change their words to spare your feelings.
Sorry man. Likely responded to what I perceived from others in this thread, rather than your post(s). Yeah, the whole issue of how/when various music was appreciated by broader audiences is interesting. And some people will enjoy debating whether some performer’s Carnegie performance was better or worse than some scratchy Neil Lomax folkways recording.
As far as playing, as a bass player, driving a F&S tune is right in my wheelhouse. At a jam, when all else fails, never hurts to pull out one of their tunes.
I don’t think I’d go this far. When I find music or a performer I enjoy, I’ll often do some reading up on it and will listen to other folk who influenced/were influenced by them. And sometimes, if I feel moved by something, I’ll do some research trying to figure out why.
But I really disagree with anyone who says, “you would enjoy it if you studied it more,” and that “you should WANT TO study it.”
People can listen to and play music in any number of ways. Doesn’t make any particular manner better or worse than others. Hell, people come to hear me play all the time. I watch them tapping their feet with no sense of time. And after I hack up a song, they’ll happily tell me what a great job I did. What am I supposed to do - tell them they are idiots and DIDN’T enjoy it? Hell, if they’re smiling and clapping (or at least, not throwing shit!), that’s enough for me!
In the “folk/Americana” area, you run into these folk who are walking encyclopedias as to when a certain song was written or recorded by whom, what specific instrument they used, etc. Heck, if that is what they enjoy, good for them. And I find that SOMEWHAT interesting - it does enhance my enjoyment of music. But my GREATEST concern is whether you can pick that thing - enjoy doing it - and cause others enjoyment through your playing.
Now everyone, get off your damned keyboards and go maker (or listen to) some music! 
Shit, Fiddle Peghead. I just noticed. What are you doing w/ a BANJO headstock as your avatar! 
(Clawhammer is my 2d instrument.)
Certainly that is the key thing for a lot of listeners. But then, that’s why Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, Scarlatti, Chopin, Purcell, and numerous others were invented. 
Plenty of classical music to go around for everyone! You know, if one is so inclined…
My very first post dealt with precisely that,
I like what I like and care not one jot what others think. Insecurity doesn’t come into it.
If we want to encourage others to discover a wide range range of music we’d be wise to steer clear of attaching terms like “lite” “difficult” and “sophisticated” to classical music or giving any impression of elitism. There’s too much of that already.
No problem of course.
As far as appreciating music, I am now and have been a huge fan of bluegrass and country for decades. But growing up in Virginia, as a young boy of 7 or 8 in the 1960s, oh how the sounds of those harmonies by what I pretentiously thought of as hillbillies and hicks, even though I was one, grated on my ears. If you ever saw the show “Gospel Jubilee”, you may know what I’m talking about. But then on my 15th Christmas, I was out of ideas what to ask for as my “big” present. My grandfather had a banjo that he would play clawhammer style. Not too well, frankly, but it was cool. So I said, hey Mom, how about a banjo? I took lessons for about six months, and of course they were devoted purely to how to play the damn thing. Then I got Peter Wernick’s “Bluegrass Banjo” book that summer, and he suggested in it that it may just be a good idea for aspiring bluegrass banjo players to actual hear the music played by a band. While being vaguely familiar with F&S from Beverly Hillbillies, I knew little about them. So I got that Carnegie Hall album and fell in love with it, vocals and all, which led me on to so many others.
I see what you mean but I don’t think it’s going to lead to much more than an eternal monologue.
This accusation was not aimed at you ;).
It’s true that not all Classical music has a development sections, but the many pieces that do are the ones that I (and a lot of fans) keep coming back to and buy multiple versions of.
That’s been a running joke for a long, long time…
“I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.”
(= “I only like things I already know, and I have no curiosity to know more.”)
And that’s perfectly fine.
By the way, Classical music fans are not a monolithic block. There are those who believe that string quartets are the only game in town. Those for whom symphonies are above everything. Those who swear that solo piano is the towering achievement of Western art. Those that consider a cappela choral music as the most moving. Those who only listen to mid-18th century Latvian cello concertos…
And the opera lovers, but those guys are just weird.
Even during Mozart’s time, one can make a (not razor-sharp) distinction between “catchy” music, “light” music, etc. (sure to be popular), and (for instance) hard-core atonal masterworks or whatever else the composer feels deeply realizes their personal vision. It should come as no surprise that the latter are less popular. Not sure how anyone would rise to the level of hating such music, though; I wouldn’t expect them to spend much, if any, time listening to it at all if they did not like it.
ETA I feel like most operas are on the “popular” side, as proved by their enduring popularity, though there are always weird experimental opere if you look hard enough…
Certainly. And some get multiple versions of ones that don’t generally have development. I myself am on what will be a lifelong quest to learn all of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the piano. Out of the thirty or so, I know the aria, about 1/2 of one variation, and 1/3 of another. I will fail at this task. But I love hearing various pianists interpretation of them.
I hear ya talkin,’ boob.
I do like classical music. But one thing that’s harder to appreciate, when you’re not hearing it in person, is the dynamics. There are pieces I love to hear live, because, heard live, they go from almost silent so it’s like you’re thinking the piece in your head, or sensing it in your bones, to bombastically loud, but yet not overpowering.
On a recording? This doesn’t work. First you have to turn your sound up really loud, for the quiet parts. Then you have to jump up and turn it down so it doesn’t shatter your speakers, and make your windows rattle.
Now they don’t always get the acoustics right in the concert hall, although they mostly do. But they almost never get it right on a recording, although they sometimes do. Like, I used to have a recording by the 1955 (or something) Vienna Symphony (or something) of a couple of pieces I loved so much that I put them on to get me going in the morning as I was getting ready for class. I have never found another recorded version of this particular music that works (and I don’t have a turntable any more). In fairness, I didn’t much like any of the versions I heard the Denver Symphony Orchestra perform either, so maybe it was only that one, but the main thing was, on that one recording I could hear it all without fiddling with the volume. That’s one example of one specific piece, but I have had similar trouble with others.
I don’t know if the sound engineers recording classical stuff just say, “Fuck them if they can’t get to a performance,” or what.
Note, there are a lot of classical pieces, mostly things without violins, that work fine, but for a lot of them this is a problem with classical music, particularly in the car.
If you hear this music in a movie, then they usually do get it right, so it’s possible.
It’s frustrating, and it’s just better to listen to Tubthumping by Chumbawumba because in that case I know what I’m gonna get.
I remember in college saying I liked ALL music, except for opera and country western. Now, 30 yrs later, still can’t abide opera. And tho I still don’t like a lot of “big hat” and popular C/W, pother than that, pretty much the more twang the better. I even like a little hiccup and yodel in my punk! 
I’m well aware of this, and when listening at home usually know when to “jump up.” Then again, there was the first time I put on Shostakovich’s tenth symphony. Had never heard it before. The one with the snare drums. Do you know it? The one where you turn up the volume when the snare drums start, because the rest is so quiet. The one where the whole orchestra gets louder and louder, and you never even see it coming. The one where all of a sudden you realize, holy shit, it’s 1 a.m. and the neighbors are gonna fucking kill me!
If I said I love country but don’t much like country and western, would that give you an idea of who I like? I’m past the days where I would reflexively say how much I hate Clint Black or Garth Brooks, and realize now their music is just fine. It’s just not for me. As for opera, I’m not into it either.
Shostakovich’s 7th, not 10th…
I’m in the a cappella camp. I like words with music.
One problem with modern opera is the style, where the words and emotions are lost, sacrificed to virtuoso technical singing. Opera was written for people who understood the words and wanted plenty of emotion in the singing. If you compare, say, Caruso with Pavarotti, there’s a world of difference. If we listen to opera only as abstract sounds sung with technical perfection, half of it is lost.
I have to say also there are some classical music appreciators who are not at all interested in making this kind of music accessible to the masses.
Once I went to a concert because my cousin was playing. I didn’t see a piano, and I hadn’t got a program when I went in, so I asked the lady [sic!] next to me if I could have a look at her program, just to get an idea when my cuz might be coming on. She said: “I don’t have a program. I know what I’m listening to.”
Well alrighty then, that’s me put in my place.
My earnest wish is that this effete snob was around, after the concert, when the featured artist was surrounded by adoring fans, and he saw me and pushed through the crowd to give me a hug. She probably wasn’t, but it’s nice to think so.
In general my view is, “Just change that classical drag to some sweet musical rag” and I guess she saw that in me…
That certainly is a cliche but it doesn’t apply to me. Being open to the shock of the new is very important. I’m on record on this very board of saying that no-one should dismiss any art without experiencing it first hand.
Sounds like someone who knew the music, but had never felt the music, and so she was insecure for knowing, deep down, she never groked the music. Let’s give her points for trying, but she still fails.