I judged by what I had to go on - with the reservation that I don’t know everyone, so I can’t form an opinion about them.
I’ve tried to be as careful of this as I can in this thread because I’ve met up with attitudes here that didn’t match what I’ve encountered in real life. Most of the folks in this thread have tried to explain things to me, and I appreciate that. Its more than I’ve gotten in real life.
Is a simple “What do like you so much about that piece of music?” an arrogant question when I see someone enjoying a piece of classical music?
The kid was stating the facts as he saw them, and I as I heard them. I hear nothing spectacular (or even particularly interesting) and ask what all the excitement is about, and I get “Well, you’re just a hopeless schmuck.” What would you do?
“I don’t see anything in classical music where so many do, therefore what the fuck is wrong here” would be closer to my feelings about it. I’ve always wondered if I was missing something in my background that others had - which you would know if you’d read my posts. That’s what a lot of this has been about. I can’t see classical music as relevant - for me - and wondered how so many do see it as relevant to them.
I expect classical music to jump on my ass and overwhelm me with emotion as it seems to do for so many other people. Since that doesn’t happen, I wonder what’s going on.
A blank look and “Huh? You don’t get it?” are the best responses I’ve ever gotten.
Study is a fair thing. It just always seemed to me that I was going to have to do heavy weight library digging to even get a glimpse of what was going on. If there were something there to give me a starting point, I might make the effort. The problem is, I hear nada in most of classical music. The exceptions are pieces that sound like something I’ve heard elsewhere that had either a visual or lyrical accompaniment.
Who was talking about any conspiracy? The only thing in that direction I’ve said is that I’ve managed to meet quite a few classical music lovers who had a bad case of the snobs - and I’ll be the first to admit that that is nowhere near a majority of music lovers out there.
I do appreciate what these folks have been doing. I’ve gotten honest, non-snobbish responses to what I hoped were reasonable questions. I’ve listened to the suggested clips - multiple times because I want to hear what’s there - and didn’t hear what was being described to me.
Thanks for the suggestion, fessie. I’d agree with you that exposure to people doing something for fun is a good way to learn to enjoy whatever it is they’re doing.
I do listen to what classical music my wife plays at home.
Heck, last summer, I rigged my PC with an extra pair of sound cards and rented microphones and a mixer and mike stands and so on and recorded a concert that her church choir put on. They sang a few pieces, and they had musicians play classical music on instruments that you don’t see very often. It was interesting, but most of the music just went right by me. The choir and the audience had a good time and seemed to enjoy the music, so I figure that it must have been fairly nice stuff, but I didn’t get it. Lord knows I listened to it often enough, afterwards while adjusting volume levels and assembling the tracks to make the CD. Try as I might, though, all I got out of it was a mental video of the concert.
I’m glad you clarified your points, Mort, because I did often have the impression you were just playing with people. And I didn’t mean to pit you in an unmerciful way, it’s becoming clear you’re a good guy and that’s part of what had me frustrated (and I’m the one who suggested “Fantasia”, not Zoe).
In previous posts you suggested several times that you might be the one missing it, but you also made some dismissive remarks and circular arguments that set me off. And since I’m busy trying to promote our orchestra, being told that classical music isn’t “relevant” because it doesn’t resemble “Hotel California”, well that’s pretty incindiary.
Keeping classical music alive and enjoyed is a huge issue, not because of any shortcoming in the work, but because of competition from other media. And, much like the classroom bully, the noisy, simplistic ones are better at getting attention and arguing their virtues. Especially with Big Business money behind them. Your view may be borne from a genuine physical limitation, but I’m struggling against ignorance.
And I do think you’re right, it helps to hear the music beginning in childhood - but not because future listenings bring back associations (otherwise I’d still enjoy “Puff the Magic Dragon”). Must be a hardwiring issue or something.
But I’m really truly sorry for you that you can’t hear in music what I hear - when our orchestra is really kickin’ it on some good stuff, it makes me cry during rehearsal. The soloist who’ll be playing “Tzigane” with us this weekend was at rehearsal last night - watching her thrash that violin around, listening to the notes dance and pop and trill, it felt like shockwaves.
Mostly I’m once again impressed w/the Doper community, w/their knowledge and character. Sorry for the pitting, I should have held my temper and given you the benefit of the doubt. Your true motives become clearer with each post and I can understand your frustration.
BTW, don’t think I’m a music snob - there’s plenty of “classical” music that I don’t care for, and when Hubby and I saw “Megadeth” last year I knew most of the words
K. Done here. When you start denying things you’ve said, things in this thread, then it’s clear you’re not here in good faith.
Are you dishonestly implying that that’s the extent of your exchange? You’re just taking the first sentence of a dialogue that has evolved to you basically denying the validity of anyone else’s viewpoint, and arrogantly accusing them all of either blindly following some kind of cultural dictum that YOU are uniquely free from, or of “faking” their view.
[ul]You: Are you gonna eat that?
Me: Yes.
You: Can I just have a bite?
Me: No.
You: Aw come on (swipes it, pops it in his mouth)
Me: Mom! Furd ate my dessert!
You: (spitting it back out on my plate) No I didn’t! Look, it’s right there!
Me: Mom!
You: What? All I did was ask if you were gonna eat that.[/ul]
Please point this out in this thread. You refuse (surprise!) to see the single point I was making with my “analysis” of your Emperor parallel: it was a concrete fact that Emperor was naked; it is NOT a concrete fact that classical music is a sham. Your insisting on the parallel to the story elevates your OPINION to the level of inarguable FACT. There lies the arrogance: your opinion is NOT fact.
Perhaps they’ve put in the initial effort to be open to such an experience. Perhaps it won’t jump on your ass until you make your ass available to it; you might have to pull down your pants, say; don’t expect the music to do ALL the work.
Again with the denial of your posts: you posited a theory that everyone was “faking” their appreciation as one possible explanation for why YOU seem to be the only one who GETS the fact that there’s nothing there. Again, this is an artifact of your insistence on a parallel with the Andersen story. GET OVER THAT; it’s not a valid parallel and it’s become an obstacle to your ability to see the situation in any other light.
Bye; better things to do than to drag the defiantly benighted into the light of day.
[ul]You: It’s dark.
Us: Here’s a candle.
You: (blows it out) Nope, still dark.[/ul]
Whatever.
FWIW, you don’t have to spend hours in a library researching what a piece is about. Most decent CDs have copious liner notes that more than cover what you need to know.
lissener, it seems that everyone here has come to some sort of reconciliation. Everyone here is a bit clearer on everyone else’s motives, and seems to be at peace with that. Everyone but you. Why are you trying to drag this out into a fight?
Sorry to seem combative. I don’t mean to insist on a fight, but I DO want to express some resentment at MF’s disrespect of the people who have participated in this discussion. His postings throughout this leave me with the distinct feeling that he is not here in good faith: he’s here to tell us all why we’re either victims of cultural conditioning or “fakers”, and that he is uniquely free of such things: he is the lone voice of reason in a world of self-deluded fakers. His near-delusional arrogance in adopting as his mascot the little boy in the Andersen tale is quite frankly infuriating, and insists on our acknowledging his failure–whether organic or volitional–to “find something” in classical music as objective fact.
Mort I have been following this thread closely, and there is one thing I’d like to say.
I know many people who say that classical music does nothing for them and some like you who just don’t get it, can’t understand why I enjoy it.
However none of these are tone deaf, or have an inability to listen to music, they just don’t get it.
Peoples musical tastes change, and some of these people who previously didn’t get classical music now do and enjoy it. And Many still don’t and never will, and many will do in the future.
My advice is just to listen to it, and try and pick something that you like and focus on that, there are many types of classical music.
If that doesn’t work don’t worry, everyone has different things that push their buttons many classical listeners will never get or appreciate Hotel California, or many other genres of music which are appreciated and move people all over the world.
Just keep enjoying the music you enjoy, maybe yours tastes will evolve (and by this I mean, will change, not that they will get ‘better’).
I’m not going to worry about why millions of people like stuff that I don’t get.
One day you may suddenly realise what all the fuss is about, until then, don’t sweat it.
Geez, lissener - stop browbeating the guy. He’s obviously tried to understand classical music; he just doesn’t hear it the way you and I do. If you look at all of Mort’s posts, he says over and over that as soon as the words stop, the music becomes superficial and virtually meaningless to him. More study is not going to help. Classical (at least up to the 20th century) and pop music share the same tonal vocabulary. If you just don’t hear the psychological tendencies of the music, like how a V7 chord wants to resolve to a I chord, for example, it’s just not going to make sense to you. You don’t even have to know what a V7 chord is; it’s something you just hear. It can’t be explained in words; you HAVE to hear it. Tension and release is what makes tonal music interesting. If the tension and the release both sound the same to you, it’s just not going to make sense. If you can’t hear it in “Hotel California”, you aren’t going to hear it in a Mozart symphony. You could study Mozart your whole life, but if you can’t hear it, you still won’t “get it”. It would be like watching a movie in a foreign language without subtitles.
But I don’t think this is such a big deal. Not everyone appreciates classical music, and they don’t have to. There are other things in life to appreciate, for Pete’s sake.
All I’m saying is that I think he’s NOT trying: that this whole thread was just to justify his unchangeable conclusions; to browbeat everyone else, in effect. I’m just calling him on it. And I never suggested more study; it’s perfectly possible to appreciate classical music without any study whatsoever. (Your bit of esoterica with the V7 chords probably served to alienate more than anything previous in this thread; my eyes certainly glazed over.)
In fact, if you ask me, there are only two ways NOT to appreciate classical music: to be tone deaf, which I’m not buying in this case–he obviously appreciates SOME music, or to REFUSE to appreciate it. It’s become such a point of pride for him (the lone voice of reason!) that he’d rather chew off his own arm than sincerely try. All I’m saying is fine, leave him in his self-imposed silenced: he’s far more interested in insisting on his deafness than in letting any music in.
But the thing is, he really doesn’t. He appreciates the words that are laid over the music, but the tune is secondary to the point of almost being incidental. The opening riff of the Eagles had no effect on him without the context of the words; the words inform the music and without them, he is directionless. I’ve never heard of someone being tone deaf to that extreme of a degree, but maybe it’s true (no doubt, colored by an obstinence in beliveing that all pleasure available to other must be within his grasp as well).
And only staring at the bottom of the screen hoping the words that don’t show will provide a clue to the rest of the screen you’re not watching…
I disagree, but let’s say you’re right. Notice how by the end he was acknowledging other people’s views, seeing a possible shortcoming in himself, and accepting a new perspective? Even if he came in with a chip on his shoulder, his tenor changed over the course of the thread. He acted with grace and class. Ignorance was fought, and knowledge won out.
Blame Berlioz for all this. His Symphonie Fantastique was one of the first, if not the first, programmatic offerings. I like it, although I’ve heard a few bad renditions of it, I can only listen to those while drunk
I don’t mind listening to programattic music: however, I do dislike someone over-analyzing a non-programmatic classical piece and telling me what to feel about it.
That first was referring to real life, not this thread. I guess I haven’t yet found the vB code for IRL that makes real life references appear in letters of fire on the monitor.
If you had actually read the original post containg the reference to the story, you would also have seen an “or” in there and another option - there’s a best case and a worst case and the first one is me just really not getting it. That’s best case - everyone is seeing something and honestly appreciating it except me. The other is called “worst case” because that would really be a bad thing - a “conspiracy” as you call it of people all over the world trying to make little old me believe in something that they all know is fake. That takes megalomania and paranoia. Not just a paranoid belief that someone is out to get you, nope, that and the belief that you are the most important person in the world. Also please note I said an “awful lot” not “all” or even “most.” Let me state it explicitly: In real life, it seems I’ve met more than my share of snobs and fakers in this area.
Along the way, did I say that me feeling like the little kid in the story was correct? If I were convinced of it, I wouldn’t ask anyone for their opinion. I hear things one way and the little kid sees things one way. He is right, and I’m standing around going “Uh, really. They’re all wrong? Don’t think so - let’s ask somebody.” In real life, this is usually folowed by someone applying some verbal smack-fu to me.
So, I’m supposed to take the opinion of an abrassive ass to heart? Here on the SDMB I’ve been presented with patient explanations by people who really care about the music - and it is clear as all get out that they do hear things that I don’t. I’ve listened to the suggested clips and not heard what others obviously do. Its just blinkin’ not there for me. A piece that by its title and description should make me think of horses galloping sounds like birds and reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, fer cryin’ out loud.
I’m sorry that music theory bores you, but it’s a fact that certain combinations of tones trigger certain psychological responses in the human brain. Mort has TOLD us that this doesn’t happen for him, and you are obstinately refusing to listen to him.
The only reason you aren’t “buying” it is because you’re stubborn. Did you listen to the examples in the test? They are PAINFULLY obvious. The fact that Mort missed any of the examples shows that he’s not hearing what other people are hearing. You don’t believe it because you are mired in your little tantrum about how he dissed classical music. Just get over it.:rolleyes:
Personally, I think Berlioz is WAY overrated. It’s O.K., but hardly up there with the masters. His stuff is too gimmicky, and comes off disjointed and sounding tacked-together. IMO, any piece that is dependent on the “story” behind it to make sense isn’t a great piece of music. Give me Bach or Brahms any day - they can be appreciated simply for their superb musical craftsmanship.
