I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?


What we listen to we cannot trace always a border between cold or cool admiration and heart wrenching love at first sight....

I admire Bach without limit but i love also him dearly....Here admiration and love are one....

The first time li listen to Chet Baker i was not even sure if it was a great trumpetist, but i love him without knowing why....

More i listen to Miles Davis more i admire him but i still wait for love to come....I like it a lot but it is not love and i know the first time i listen to him why he is a great trumpetist, unlike Chet, his mastering of the instrument was evident.... For Chet i listen not the trumpet but the voice of his instrument, i even forgot he was playing the trumpet and the question if he was great was secondary....Miles was great without any doubts.... But i am in love with Chet because he touch my heart.....



Sometimes the frontier between these 2 are less clear, i admire Brahms but i like him more than i love him.... Bruckner i admire him like a new Bach and i love him like our old grandpa with a feeling that will never end....

I admire Monteverdi at the level of my admiration for Bach, but i like him only , it is not this passionnate love that changes my heart and life like with those i love...

I love Bill Evans dearly but i admire Keith Jarrett greatly but without any passion....

I admire and love Vivaldi at the same times.....

I admire Telemann, Haendel, Haydn more than i love them..... I am in love with Purcell tough and Josquin Desprez.....

I admire Hildegard the Bingen and i love her without words.... I am in love with the organ composer Pachelbel but i only admire Palestrina....

I admire Arvo Part very much, but am i in love? No....Excep perhaps for one or 2 of his work: Alina for example....I admire and love Gorecki symphony of tears but not much the rest....Only respect for the rest of his works....

I admire Arrau, Horowitz, many pianists but am i in love? No, but i am in total love with Ervin Nyiregyházi , Ivan Moravec, or Sofronitsky....

I admire the composer Sorabji almost like Bach but dont feel any love at all....Deep fascination and admiration for a genius  that never speak from the heart to the heart, only from his brain to my brain.... But what a genius ! 

I admire many, many, female singers, but i am in love with only a few, i love Billie Holiday, Marianne Anderson for example....

I will not go on with my list any longer...

But what speak to our heart and what speak to our brain is not the same and sometimes some music speak for us to the 2 part of ourselves...

But one thing must me clear, i dont want to live without the great musicians whom i only admire. I like them like interesting friends, even if i am not changed by love at first sight with them, swimming in the sea of adoration....


What are those you admire but only like ? What are those you clearly are in love with?

When the brain speak first and always, it is admiration and friendship not love.... In love there is a mystery in with we participate and which transform our life....

Those who we admire gives us pleasure.... Those who we love gives us not only that but an ultimate meaning that go to your heart.....


Listening music is learning to listen into the many levels in us where music can reach and transform us.... Each music or musician has this potential to change us at a level or at another one, or at all levels simultaneously....But for sure it is different for each of us......

I apologize if my OP makes no sense for some.... I hope my question will make sense for some....

Thanks......

128x128mahgister
Know just what you're talking about mahgister. For years I admired Mozart but never loved any, not at all. Classical music as a whole was kind of like that- liked some, admired some, never really loved any of it. 

One day by accident someone helped me make the connection with composers, realized Tchaikovsky turns me on, now I have just ordered my 3rd Tchaikovsky White Hot Stamper and am stoked and amazed at the coincidence because UPS notified me it was delivered just now!  

What I really love of course is the combination of superb music with beautiful recording. This is another fantastic coincidence because I just last night heard the new Patricia Barber Cafe Blue. Which is not new and I've had it a long time but on CD and this is the new 45 Impex 1Step pressing and oh my God what an experience!  

Can't say I am in love with Patricia Barber, per se, but I admire the talent on this record and absolutely love the way it sounds. The songs are all very different. All of them I get what they are doing, but some of them I LOVE what they are doing. Why some and not others? Why'd I love Jennifer Warnes Bird on a Wire first time I heard it? Why'd I fall head over heels for Born in Time? That's the million dollar question.
Thanks millercarbon.... Your Tchaikovsky example is spot on....

Try his quartets if you dont already know them....I recommend Borodin quartet version...

One day some great Russian musician , remembering a word he read in a book by Tolstoi speaking about some movement of a quatuor by Tchaikovsky, says that he was curious to look for this mysterious movement not precisely named by Tolstoi that was making him burst into tears....But there is 3 quatuors and what could this mysterious movement be? Each of this 3 quatuors has 4 movements, then one in these 12 is the right one....

Thinking that it will be easy to discover it after all, he listened to the 3 quatuors, but tears flows from him immediately from each and every movement of each quatuor.... He will never know after all which was the movement that has affected Tolstoi so much, because each movement of each one of these quatuors speak so much to the heart that it will stay a mystery...

I can assure you that Tchaikovsky stay in my heart also after listening to these quatuors...Before that i only admired Tchaikovsky, but after that i loved him dearly....

Merry Christmas millercarbon....

P.S. i just begin to listen to Patricia Barber seems interesting thanks....
Very constructive remark thanks....But it will help to know which you admire or love... Hating is not our line of work here in music.... 😎