According to Shakespeare:
“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.”
The Merchant of Venice
Wow. And that was when all music was played on dulcimers and reedy pipes.
Counterpoint:
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again…
Consider the source.
The line is said by Lorenzo, in an exchange that is supposed to be funny and lighten to mood after Shylock is carried off in chains for forced baptism.
Lorenzo is in a great mood, because now Shylock can no longer prevent him (Lorenzo) from marrying his (Shylock’s) daughter Jessica, whom Lorenzo likes mostly because she is pretty.
Lorenzo likes nice music, but he’s generally kind of shallow, IMHO.
I’ll take those over a synthesizer, or electric anything, any day.
Or heck, even relative newcomers, like the piano, or concertina.
I was talking with a long time coworker this morning, explaining that I was tired because my wife and I had been out late at a concert last night, and when I asked him if he had ever heard of the band (Wilco) he pretty much told me that never listens to music, has never been to concert, has no idea who any bands or singers or musicians are.
Relevant research!
Oh fer–! I would never take a drug designed to make me prefer listening to music instead of the news in my car.
What then hell is so wrong with being indifferent to music just because most people like it? it certainly isn’t comparable to other anormalities, like not being able to sleep a normal number of hours.
And gambling gives me anxiety.
I love music, but generally prefer listening to podcasts in the car. News gives me anxiety, so I avoid it. If all of a sudden I developed anhedonia, I personally would like to treat it, as I enjoy the “high” music can give me. I certainly don’t get that from the news, but I sometimes do get it from podcasts, too. My depressive episodes are often linked to anhedonistic tendencies. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with preferring one or the other, but I do know how music can make me feel and losing that feeling would suck. Especially since I play music. And it does recede at times, and it does stress me out a bit.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad was like that. I never remember him ever listening to music of any kind.
He grew up dirt poor with a deaf mother and the must have not had any music at home
As deeply religious, we sang hymns at church but he was tone deaf.
My wife loves classical music, my daughter loves K-pop and my son plays the violin.
I enjoy music but not to the same extent that my friends did when we were in high school and college.
I wouldn’t describe myself as anhedonic, as I derive pleasure from a great many things; it just so happens that music isn’t one of them.
My sixth-grade English teacher once instructed us to write an essay about “that one song” - you know, the one that hits you right in the heartstrings because you’ll always associate it with some important moment in your life. At the time, I was already a voracious listener to music of all kinds, but the idea that I was supposed to have “that one song” (and that each of my classmates apparently had one locked and loaded for the assignment) left me completely baffled.
I dated a guy who intensely disliked all music and couldn’t understand why anyone liked it. I’d never heard of such a thing and kept questioning him. Classical music? No. Rock? No? Jazz? No. I was stumped. The kicker: he played the sax in his high school marching band. I asked him why he’d do that when he disliked music. He said his parents insisted he take music lessons. It was a tiny town, and in high school, most kids joined an extracurricular. If you weren’t good in sports, band was the only alternative.
I wonder how many students I had during my teaching career who also had specific musical anhedonia and never talked about it to anyone. When everyone they know likes music, a teen isn’t likely to say they don’t and risk sounding like a freak to their peers. Maybe the same is true of adults.
Out of all of the idiosyncrasies I possess, my general apathy towards music seems to be the hardest for peers to swallow.
I have always struggled with the idea of favorite anything. Whether as a kid, now, or anywhere in between.
Q: What’s your favorite [_________]?
My A: I don’t have one; I have a couple, a few, or dozens that are all similarly but differently good. Favorite is a meaningless concept to me.
I suppose part of my deep-seated dislike for favorite was how popular a form of question it was for teachers in elementary schools trying to get kids to think of some specific something they’d be enthused to talk or write about. For me it was a total opposite buzzkill.
“Write a paragrapah about your favorite animal?” Bzzzzt. I’d much rather have been told “Write a paragraph about a squirrel.” Or a zebra, or a goldfish, or a cow or any damned thing. Even one I could pick myself. Just not a favorite; that decision burden crowded out the whole assignment.
I have a favorite song, as well as a favorite classical piece. I also have a favorite flavor of jellybean. i haven’t had a jellybean in years, and I cannot remember the last time I heard either piece of music. But I could write an essay on either if called on to do so. I could also write an essay on popcorn Jelly Bellies. I have a degree in English-- can’t do much, but can knock out an essay on pretty much anything on command.
I understand the issue with picking out a “favorite” anything. When I get a question like “what’s your favorite XYZ?” it’s never really a favorite with me (but I suspect many/most people are like this.) These things don’t exist as lists in my head. It’s more like I have a group of favorites and those are very much dependent on my mood. I can, for the purposes of a question, arbitrarily select one of those as superlative, but ask me that just five minutes later and you might get a different answer.
For example, I love food and eating, but there’s just no way for me to name my favorite food. That type of fine ranking doesn’t exist. With music, I have a couple of stock answers I give but that’s just a stock answer I have at hand, even though it’s hard to say that’s literally true. Still, I understand the gyst of the question and can talk about it as if it were definitively my favorite, and nobody cares whether it’s literally or true or not. It’s just conversation or a homework assignment. But when I ask it, I tend to phrase it as “What are some of your favorite…” or “Are there any you particularly enjoy?”