Sometimes music is fun....
Sometimes music is moving...
Sometimes music is ecstasy...
Sometimes music is moving...
Sometimes music is ecstasy...
A philosophical question.
I want to pose a sort of philosophical question about our listening to music.
The obvious answer to the question is that we should listen to whatever we damn please. But the query is: should we be happy listening to our favorite composers and compositions, or should we feel guilty about not exploring new horizons and music we’re prone to hate? For me, the obvious bitter pills are such as Liszt, Neilson and Bruckner, not to mention the Second Viennese school. We run the risk of close-mindedness by ignoring that which we don’t know and missing out on what what glories might be out there. On the other hand, we only have so much time, and there is a universe of more accessible music available.
I just wonder if this dilemma has crossed anyone else's mind.
The obvious answer to the question is that we should listen to whatever we damn please. But the query is: should we be happy listening to our favorite composers and compositions, or should we feel guilty about not exploring new horizons and music we’re prone to hate? For me, the obvious bitter pills are such as Liszt, Neilson and Bruckner, not to mention the Second Viennese school. We run the risk of close-mindedness by ignoring that which we don’t know and missing out on what what glories might be out there. On the other hand, we only have so much time, and there is a universe of more accessible music available.
I just wonder if this dilemma has crossed anyone else's mind.
Showing 5 responses by mahgister
I listen to some cd 1,200 times in a 7 years period for example ( Heinrich Schutz Geistliche Chormusik 1964 Dresden Mauesberger, Vivaldi opus2 sonatas in trio etc)I wrote at this times and use some cd each day for years like a pill for creation without being bored....I guess I am a different animal....I like variety tough, I listen music in all styles, countries, and periods.... I listen very often to some of my best 100 cd or files, amongst the thousands in my library, these best files are so sublime to communicate a specific emotion that I cannot live without listening to them periodically.... For me, some musical work are so high in their emotional content powerful expression, that most other works are almost boring compared to them....Then looking for some variety that rivals my other best files, I was in the obligation to scan all periods, styles, and countries...My "best of" is distributed in all genres...I dont like for example heavy metal in general, but even there I discover some best powerful expressive stuff.... For me music is medicine for my health, food for thinking or meditate, and drugs activating creation device, and emotions feed back machine from ecstasy to excitation and melancholy, and sometimes and at least, a very simple joy.... :) |
rvpiano For Listz I recommend to you this version of Obermann valley : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLk6vqaxU1Y Close the light and listen to this volcanic eruption out of any other pianist possibility except Liszt himself perhaps... Sometimes a composer is revealed only by a transcendental interpretation... This one is for me... You can try Liszt evening bells it is on the same transcendental level by the same pianist... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0S1KDOC8is Thanks for this excellent thread idea... My best |
The history of music in occident is an "history" that reflect something about our own consciousness evolution...It is not a random accumulation of random creations... Then, If we all have our taste defined by our circonstances, and origins, and habits, talents, studies etc, re-educating one self with music is also re-educating our own attention and learning to redirect it on some new levels of consciousness and attention... Man has something more perhaps than inherited tastes something that makes him able to learn and modify himself when he is ready to do so.... Personally I listen to many different oriental musics for example to modify my own consciousness ( particularly Iranian-Persian, Indian and Arabic and Turkisch )... Jazz revealed to me some new aspect of musicianship....I comes from choral renaissance and medieval music and Bach…. From there to Brahms and Bruckner and Mahler...At the end to some contemporary music from Scriabin or Chostakovitch… All that evolution has taken me 50 years...My musical attention was way more profound now....And I have my taste but much more than that a more open conscious manner to discover new levels of reality....It is normal to develop personal tastes, but not desirable to limit ourselves….Like we must learn to make love, or to meditate, we must learn to listen … Tastes is only the beginning of a road, that will reveal new tastes adding to the first one....Learning to love something new is simply learning to perceive something that we were not ready to perceive before....It is not desirable to love everything, and impossible; but learning something new during each passing decade of our " growing listening body" seems more than desirable …. Music reflect new levels of reality in the heart, and new levels of the heart in the perceiving brain....Open your heart....Open your ears....When one is ready the other go on with.... |