Classical music is for everyone | Hacker News Reader

Classical music is for everyone

firstthings.com

79 pointsBostonian77 comments

The assumption that music the author doesn't like must be a — likely political – statement is, let's just say, revealing and itself highly political.

People appear to enjoy things which are bitter, or ugly, or complex, or an acquired taste. Either they're all lying posers, which certainly some people believe, or there really is something to Scotch whisky or James Joyce or Autechre which speaks to some people and not to others. I believe the latter, and I feel sorry for the former. The idea that human experience would be so narrow that some forms of expression are good and all others are bad on a single axis! And music, especially, one of the most cultural-context dependent forms.

A bunch of traditions wouldn't even recognise the Western canon, which tends to seriously lack rhythmic complexity, _as_ worthwhile music.

So: taste varies and that's the point. I love Autechre, and I find real beauty in their work, but I would place significant money that more than half of the audience here would find this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3vENli7wQ – somewhere between modem line-noise and actively painful. Is it pretty in the way, say, Teenage Fanclub (who are also magnificent) are pretty? No. It's not trying to be. It's communicating something else.

> The assumption that music the author doesn't like must be a – likely political – statement is, let's just say, revealing and itself highly political.

Where are you getting this impression from? I just went back through the piece and can't find a place where the author implies that "music they don't like must be a (political) statement" whatsoever.

> Where are you getting this impression from?

This part: The station prides itself on operating without any government funding, which in turn requires it to play music that people enjoy hearing and never the kind that some stations (and performing ensembles) play just because it’s avant-garde or purports to make some political statement.

Yes, exactly that bit. This is a cultural-conservative screed in Sunday dress.

That's not the only way to interpret that passage (it's not how I interpreted the passage, in any case). There's no contradiction in saying "pop music is also popular and so our station also has programs that play pop music". In fact, I took the author as meaning "there is some classical music that people only play b/c it's avant garde or political, &c, but the subset of classical music that we happen to play is what people request". And I'm not even sure that's a criticism of those other subgenres of classical music – more an observation on the general population's preferences and the influence of funding on the programming decisions of radio stations.

edit: to be clear, I vigorously agree with everything else you wrote in your first comment! I just want to assume good faith for the author of the featured piece.

Any idea what kind of broadcasting practices the author might be alluding to? I doubt it's about union songs.

Is it about representation issues? I'm not sure if there's even attempt do address that in classical music broadcasting. (Women composers are very much underrepresented in the scores that survived.)

After reading your post I was expecting the author to rant against other types of music. It’s nothing of the sort.

He does mention at one point that there is such a thing as music that purports to be political.

I struggle to understand how you came away from the article with a response like that.

Because it's the only semi-interesting point he makes in the entire article, the rest of which is more like a very short musical biography.

The site itself is also highly political, and the author even more so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Martin_Center_for_Aca... https://www.jamesgmartin.center/author/georgeleef/ https://www.nationalreview.com/author/george-leef/

Maybe so, I have no idea who they are and afaik I haven’t been to the site before.

But that certainly was not a political article.

There's also simultaneous appreciation and aversion.

There's some experimental and challenging modern classical compositions that I can appreciate aesthetically but which are, at the same time, almost painfully unlistenable. Steve Reich's Four Organs is a good example [1]. It's music, I hear the structure of the music, my mood shifts with the music, yet after a few minutes... aaaaaaaaaaghh! turn it off!!!

In the dramatic arts, there's the whole genre of horror.

I'm fairly sure this extends to foods. Some people like to eat foods that are right on that threshold between triggering intolerable revulsion and excitement.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0yTZmMgI5I

The whole stunt-hot-sauce phenomenon is exactly that.

Krzysztof Penderecki is also on the list of revolutionary but unlistenable.

> In the dramatic arts, there's the whole genre of horror.

For me that would be tragedies: characters being stupid and obnoxious just to make sure it all ends up very badly. All the more infuriating when there are good tragedies out there, where the drives and struggles of the characters actually make sense. Last one I recall was Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

(Edit: just listened to the organs, it is SO slow. And what, a single chord? To be honest I don’t find enough information in there, it’s boring to the point of torture.)

Steve Reich is a fantastic example. Four Organs is unlistenable to me, but I find Music for 18 Musicians and Electric Counterpoint beautiful. Part of it comes from performance exposure. I enjoy music I've studied and devoted time to understanding well enough to play.

As a percussionist, I find Clapping Music enthralling. Pure rhythm. Nothing else. I'm under no illusion, however, that this is mass market appeal. That's ok with me.

> The assumption that music the author doesn't like must be a — likely political – statement is, let's just say, revealing and itself highly political.

You’re putting words in the author’s mouth. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

> The station prides itself on operating without any government funding, which in turn requires it to play music that people enjoy hearing and never the kind that some stations (and performing ensembles) play just because it’s avant-garde or purports to make some political statement.

Simply put, "We don’t play music just because it’s innovative or political."

Here’s the thing: sometimes people make a very crappy execution out of a silly idea nobody’s done before (because it’s silly), and we call that "contemporary art" in an attempt to belong to some wealthy in-group (and sometimes end up helping money laundering). Sometimes (not always of course), the "avant-garde" label is just a cover-up for unskilled crap. One way to know the difference: would it still be art if it was done by a slum boy instead of some famous dude?

And of course, political art is often sub-par, for two reasons: first, there is more art out there than just the one that support your particular cause. Smaller pool to draw from, less quality: good luck winning the Olympics if you don’t train many many gymnasts. Second, we tend to tolerate worse art when it happens to support our cause.

Not saying that innovation and politics always hurt art. Often it’s the exact opposite. Music in particular is particularly enjoyable when it contains just the right amount of surprise. Too many surprises and it might as well be random. But do something predictable, and insert here and there ideas that have never been heard before, and it can really blossom (since "surprise" here is fundamentally subjective as a matter of information theory, some music really is an acquired taste, even though it really sounds random to the uninitiated). Same thing for politics: just go see the Andor Star Wars series, it is highly political in a way that enhances it.

But if you select art just because it is innovative or political, you’ll end up with something worse than if you just selected for the good stuff. I mean is it any surprise that if you select for the wrong criteria you’ll get disappointing results?

The author is putting words in performers and presenters' mouths, so I read this as the absolute opposite. (Also, check out the rest of the site; this is a religious right-wing culture-war organ, so I am confident in my read here.)

> Simply put, "We don’t play music just because it’s innovative or political."

No, "the only reason I can see for them to be playing this is because it's innovative or political". Maybe so, or maybe — I'd contend, more likely — they just like it and this author happens to be deaf to the aspects of it they like.

Since we don’t know who are "them" exactly (the author never tells who they are), all I can deduce is: "there are people out there that select music just because it is innovative or political".

I would hesitate to say no such people exist to be honest.

As an Ae fan I second this, and not in a snobbish way. I used to find Gantz Graf slightly jarring now it’s warm and fuzzy and melodic in many ways but man it took years of listening to them, album by album, to develop that ear. Still, I think Tri Repetae, Oversteps are some of their fuzziest works, and then of course Incunabula and Amber for easy listening.

> In the summer of 1968, a friend and I went to see the blockbuster movie of the year—2001: A Space Odyssey. We settled into our seats and the theater went dark. The film began. And then we heard the most astounding music. It grabbed me like no movie music ever had.

> There was more magnificent music in 2001, some of which I recognized, such as “The Blue Danube,” but it was the opening that stuck in my mind. What was that music and where did it come from?

That particular music can make anything seem deep and epic and moving.

A great illustration of that is this video on YouTube where someone took someone else's video showing a squirrel trying to balance its desire for a peanut and its fear of approaching the human who was holding the peanut and added that same music [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ1ZYGHmtN8

That was riveting, thank you

"In the summer of 1968, a friend and I went to see the blockbuster movie of the year—2001: A Space Odyssey."

So did I, and in the same year—1968. And I went with a friend from uni to see the movie. The next day the physics prac teacher spent much of the lesson whingeing that our behavior was unacceptable and that he did not expect to have to lecture to an empty class. The film had a profound effect on many of us and I still reckon it's the greatest science fiction film ever made.

Even as a kid I liked classical music having been brought up in a household where it was the norm—both my parents appreciated classical music. Nevertheless, 2001: A Space Odyssey was the first time I had heard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. Frankly, it blew me away when I heard it in the film. Kubrick, couldn't have found a more appropriate piece, its selection was absolute genius.

Funny isn't it, some years later I was involved in setting up a listener-sponsored classical music FM radio station.

That said, I no longer consider myself as being normal—at least when it comes to music. I've tried to get interested in much of the mainstream rock and popular music and much of it does nothing for me. I simply cannot understand why I like classical music and why so many others have no interest in it at all. Except for a tiny percentage of oddballs like me, classical music is essentially dead.

I feel like a dinosaur, a throwback from another era.

> I've tried to get interested in much of the mainstream rock and popular music and much of it does nothing for me. I simply cannot understand why I like classical music and why so many others have no interest in it at all.

This resonates with me. I got hooked young and it has stuck with me through the decades. There are vast swathes of 'classical' that I won't listen to but just about everything I do listen to fits within the 'classical' umbrella.

> Except for a tiny percentage of oddballs like me, classical music is essentially dead.

It is possible to be more optimistic if one looks at South Korea, Japan, and China. There are superb young instrumentalists and ensembles coming from there and they have enthusiastic audiences.

"There are vast swathes of 'classical' that I won't listen to but just about everything I do listen to fits within the 'classical' umbrella."

I understand that. There are classical works that I've little time for. Like any classical music lover, I have strong preferences for certain composers and compositions. I indicated several in my reply to musicale.

In your quote of me I chose the words 'much of the mainstream rock and popular music' with care as I do like some modern music, and some of it I find very inventive and cleaver. That said, I can't stand to listen to rap and most stuff with a monotonous repetitive beat, it's boring and doesn't make sense to me. How people find it interesting I'm damned if I know.

I fully take your point about those Asian countries and classical music, they are producing many performers of world class. Several weeks ago I was listening to the Sydney International Piano Competition and the young Asian performers were remarkable for their age. I stumbled across the Competition by accident on FM not knowing what it was. I came in part way through a stunning performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major —a work I know very well, I not only have multiple recording thereof but also a copy of the score (but my piano playing doesn't extend to me being able to perform it). Anyway, I was quite transfixed by the brilliant playing. During the performance I was trying to figure out who the artist was but to no avail. When the back-announcement said it was Jeonghwan Kim I was very surprised. Kim, although Asian, is based in Berlin, it shows the lengths these Asian performers will go to achieve excellence.

What I'm still unclear about is why the West has largely lost interest in classical music, it's essentially ditched its own cultural heritage. By way of example, that FM station broadcasting the competition has less than 1% of the radio audience.

Proof enough I reckon that people have little interest.

> Except for a tiny percentage of oddballs like me, classical music is essentially dead

Opera may have fallen out of popularity, but stage and screen musicals are still popular.

Classical music may have fallen out of popularity, but film music in the classical style is certainly popular.

I also keep noticing how certain popular classical works or excerpts (such as O Fortuna from Carmina Burana, Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem, the overture from Carmen, etc.) are used as stand-in music and in film promotion, and many classical pieces show up in film releases as well.

Along with the yourself and the author, I concur that film music may be a gateway into wider appreciation of classical music.

"Classical music may have fallen out of popularity, but film music in the classical style is certainly popular."

That's true, same with musicals, but it's a great shame that many more people don't listen to say Mozart/Da Ponte's Don Giovanni and Bach's B minor Mass. Those works are a part of the great musical canon and two of the greatest works of musical art ever to come out of the Western Tradition, and if people were given the right opportunity and environment I believe many, many more people would appreciate them. Moreover, whilst I'm unashamedly biased in saying that, I've even heard learned musicologists echo similar sentiments about those works.

I selected two examples I love but I could have chosen other very accessible classical works such as Magnificat BWV 243, and the The Marriage of Figaro. or other equally famous ones.

Sure, opera has fallen out of favor, but if given half a chance I'd defy modern audiences not to like Don Giovanni. As you'd know, even if one doesn't speak Italian, once one understands its synopsis one is compulsorily drawn in by its drama—which is the equal of many a modern work—sex, rape, murder, a macho he-man who's often the secret envy of many men, an uninvited ghostly figure who comes to supper and demands the villain's repentance and his refusal to give it, then his inevitable descent into Hades—and all that to WAM's divine music. Even today, drama doesn't get much more intense. The Don was such a scandal in 1786 in that it was banned in Vienna and first performed in Prague.

Similarly, there are many other works that ought to be easily accessible to modern audiences but they seem to be only appreciated by the small cognoscenti, Die Zauberflöte for instance.

You refer to certain classical works or excerpts as being still popular and I'd agree, but I'd make the point that as far as general popularity goes they are the vestiges of a past era. No doubt these works will remain popular but that they are mainly excerpts shows that most modern audiences have little tolerance for the remainder of such works, or the patience to investigate them further and deeper. One sees this trend even on FM stations dedicated to classical music, instead of playing the full work they'll play an excerpt. Frankly, I find just hearing Dies Irae alone and apart from Requiem somewhat annoying, the context, mood and setting are lost by not hearing the complete work. Carmina Burana is a wonderful work so why wouldn't someone want to hear all of it? Incidentally, have you seen or heard the modern interpretation of Carmen called The Car Men? I once caught it by accident on TV and was mightily impressed.

I understand the reason for excerpts and the popularity of works such as Eine kleine Nachtmusik, they don't require much effort to appreciate and these days people are overloaded with information and activities and have little time to listen and digest the more complex parts of a work. Moreover, that's not always easy and it often takes considerable time to develop one's full appreciation. I use myself as an example, when I was a kid and young teenager, I'd listen, say, to Beethoven symphonies and love them, but it wasn't until my 20s that Schubert's lieder like Die schöne Müllerin, and Winterreise, had the power to reduce me to tears.

I’ve really enjoyed The Story of Classical in new iOS Classical music app.

The app itself is a pain with how it doesn’t integrate into things like CarPlay, but the album itself is great.

It’s a smart lead through classical music in 9 hour long episodes. Each explains the key pieces from different areas, with the history of the composers and social impact.

https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1675318629

I used to like music and listen to it (even tried playing an instrument and using DAW tools), but I found out that, despite my enjoyment, the OCD and intrusive thoughts it gave (I have medical OCD) are just not worth it.

(Not a criticism of the article, and still of course respectful of others who like music but music in general is not something for all of us.)

Music certainly has a psychological effect. I do feel somewhat sorry if you can't enjoy it, because for me the effect is quite positive.

I don’t have OCD but I’ve found the same in many situations. I actually have spent a lot of my life on music, and enjoy a lot of it, but nowhere near to the degree of many others. Really, I could lose it as part of my life. I agree with the Buddhist take on it: it’s distracting and dangerous, and it’s a blameful kind of pleasure that leads to suffering

I didn't know about the Buddhist position on music, but (after finding this answer on Quora about it[0]) it sounds like something I very strongly relate to and agree with. Thank you for mentioning it.

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-view-of-music-in-Buddhism/...

My favorite classic piece of all time is Dvorak's 9th Symphony, the 4th movement [0].

He was ahead of the curve when looking to integrate inspiration from various sources, as mentioned on the Wikipedia article [1]:

> I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVDofBFtvwA&pp=ygULZHZvcmFrI...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A...

> My favorite classic piece of all time is Dvorak's 9th Symphony, the 4th movement

Ah yes, I always thought the opening of that movement was the inspiration for the Jaws theme. Me, I’m a sucker for the second movement of the Dvorak 9. Anything to give the cor anglais a little time in the spotlight.

I think there's little doubt the New World is Dvorak's most popular and acessaie work. It's va great favorite of many.

I think there's little doubt the New World is Dvorak's most popular and acessaie work. It's a great favorite of many.

I always find it comical that classical music is blared outside of stores to keep people from loitering.

Little did they realize I hung out outside so I could wait for that Paganini concerto to finish.

It's as if they'd never seen A Clockwork Orange!

I have recently found "academica" classical is THE genre for me. Both dark and light. Spotify and Youtube have lists on it. Highly recommended.

Some others are too fast or just noise for me.

ex Dark Academia Classical

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX17GkScaAekA?si=...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGC80iRS7tw

Light Academia Classical

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX1jDTenPbqLo?si=...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMuzS3XVho8

Growing up, my parents were aficionados of classical music, and fairly well-versed in it. My father's Heathkit stereo set was used to play that sort of genre (but also others like C&W, John Denver, Herb Alpert.)

Classical music, though, was mostly the domain of my mother, and as such, I sort of stayed away from it. It seemed like something For Adults Only, and I was raised on a diet of TV and pop music radio. Even when we had field trips to the Young People's Symphony, I just didn't get much out of it.

However, we did have one beloved vinyl record at home. It wasn't the OMPS for 2001 or Star Wars but it was sort of an unofficial compilation, I guess. Drop the needle in the groove, and a bombastic, stentorian voice declaims: "Two Thousand and One: A Space Odyssey [echo] [echo] [echo]!" and then "Also Sprach Zarathustra" begins to play. I think it had the most recognizable Star Wars music, and other stuff on it. Sci-fi classics of the late 70s. We thought those were cool pieces. I mean, who doesn't love John Williams' scores?

I actually did not see 2001 until it was almost actually 2001. Nevertheless, I could not quite figure out the ending and it left me profoundly moved, but rather perplexed too.

Weirdly content-less article. The only real point it makes is that classical music is superior to others since people like it because they actually like it and not because just because it's avant-garde or a "political statement". Of course, that's really weird, since classical music very often contains significant philosophical, religious, and political themes.

Beautiful music, accessible at all levels with the right pieces. They can be enjoyed from a casual to the deep analysis levels.

There was a stupid movie I accidentally saw on broadcast TV some weeks ago; it was Parental Guidance (2012). There was a scene where the kids misbehave in a classical concert. The piece played was P.I. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, and if my memory serves me right, the (uncredited!) soloist was Anne Akiko Meyers.

The movie played out all the classical music stereotypes. Then finally, an annoyed old, crusty lady said "I don't know how could anyone bring kids to Tchaikovsky!".

Oh my. What a ludicrously stupid comment. A real evidence that the screen writers were truly clueless. If there is a composer who is notoriously kid friendly was old Piotr Ilych, the one who put music to ballets such as The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, just to name two examples!

And yes, classical music can be enjoyed by all ages, with the appropriate pieces and with the right disposition.

I don't get the problems with this article. I'm an avid listener of Seattle's KING-FM, which is also a non-goverment publicly funded classical radio station. The station (which also streams worldwide) is actively working to expose more BIPOC composers and performers.

Personally, I'm passionate about western music of the 19th century, everything from Beethoven up through pre-WWI. But sometimes music surprises me. Salonen's violin concerto "Out Of Nowhere" (which I discovered via an Apple commercial) seem completely unmelodic and without structure, but I love it anyway.

I enjoy a wide variety of music, and don't enjoy an even larger variety of music. You like yours, I'll like mine, there's room for everyone.

I started playing piano in 2018 and now it's part of my daily routine. I would recommend this to folks how are looking where to invest time to. Mastering an instrument takes years, but it's progress and dopamine.

Same here. There even is some progress (there should be after this much time invested, but this is easily the hardest thing I have tried to master in my life and I'm already resigned to not ever getting as good as I would like to be). It's a lot of fun too!

There’s a plateau (or a few plateaus) that are hard to break through without huge effort when learning an instrument

best way to like a genre is to try to play it yourself

Made many movies have we? Lots of TV shows? Written a ton of books?

The idea that you need to be able to make a thing to be able to critically evaluate it is rather limiting.

They said "play", not "make".

im not saying you need to, im saying its the best way

One key role and context for music is as an accompaniment for social dance.

Since the minuet and waltz are less popular dance forms than they once were, their accompanying music is less likely to be played in that context.

The effect goes beyond classical music into popular music, where formerly popular dances and their accompanying music go out of style and the latter is rarely played. There also seems to be an appetite for novelty, from "dance crazes" to currently popular dance videos on social media.

Related TED talk, well worth watching: https://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_the_transformative...

I listen to classical music and nothing else but want nothing to do with the First Things crowd.

Beethoven? I cannot imagine anyone not liking that stuff. And play it loud!

Play Grosse Fuge loud and make everyone hate you. Well, not everyone - except for me and a portion of one percent[0] of the population.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/business/media/stream-cla...

I have to disagree that it’s for everyone. There are a few pieces of classical music that I like (for example the Infernal Dance from Stravinsky’s Firebird), but 99.9 % just bores me to tears. And it’s not for lack of trying. It’s frustrated me for the longest time, but in the end I accepted that it’s just not for me.

The thing about classical music is that you have to understand the works in order to really enjoy them – of course there are exceptions when the melody just grabs you but that's not the norm. There was an album collection called "Musically Speaking" that explained music works and detailed what to listen for. For example, they isolated the flutes in Beethoven's Pastoral and explained they represented birds, etc. My enjoyment of classical works spiked after understanding more. I think it's much easier to connect with Rock/Pop because the works are much, much simpler so it's mostly whether the lyrics speak to you and you like the melody.

And there was this wonderful man and his great commentary program:

Karl Haas, “Adventures in Good Music” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_Good_Music

https://archive.org/details/1.14.1992CatalogueCriteria

"This is great and here's why you should like it" strikes mme as a terrible argument, especially for things that boil down to taste.

"This thing that most people today don't like, they really might love it if they gave these a try."

> you have to understand the works in order to really enjoy them

That's what they said

sorry, I thought you were commenting on the original article

> The thing about classical music is that you have to understand the works in order to really enjoy them – of course there are exceptions when the melody just grabs you but that's not the norm.

Sorry, but if you need I reason to enjoy something, you don't. There is so much music out there - just enjoy what you enjoy. There is never a reason why you need to enjoy something.

Expose yourself to different genres but if it doesn't hook you move on.

For me the film 2001 I discovered György Ligeti, I wouldn't recommend that to anyone!

> The thing about classical music is that you have to understand the works in order to really enjoy them

Very strong disagree that this is required. Proof: the millions of people who have enjoyed it for 200 years without knowing a cadence from a cor anglais.

Can it help? Sure, probably. I'm a big fan of Rop Kapilow's "What Makes It Great?" series where he does lively walkthroughs of pieces of (usually) classical music [1].

> I think it's much easier to connect with Rock/Pop because the works are much, much simple

I don't think it's about simplicity at all. In the end, all music is a language (in a literal sense) and if you grew up with rock music then you understand and relate to that language, and others will sound foreign. Same for people in China, or in India with ragas and microtones, or people in Mexico who grew up listening to Norteño music with those (to me, nonsensical) drum breaks.

And like any language, sometimes it doesn't come naturally but with enough exposure, one can start to "understand" (in the intuitive sense) what is being said. And there are certainly pieces than are better than others for making the transition into a new genre.

[1] Rob Kapilow is at Stanford's Bing Concert Hall about twice a year. Highly recommended!

What does it mean to understand a piece of work? Do I have to read the sheet music? Do I need to know musical theory? Should I be familiar with the composer's background? The definition is somewhat vague. However, I would argue that one have to remember the works, know what tune plays next to really appreciate them. At least that's the case for me with Mahler.

> What does it mean to understand a piece of work? Do I have to read the sheet music? Do I need to know musical theory? Should I be familiar with the composer's background? The definition is somewhat vague.

Oh no, I didn't mean any of those at all. Quite the opposite.

I mean "understand it" as the opposite of "it sounds like nonsense." It's at the intuitive level, not about the ability to reason the structure details or whatever.

Everyone grows up listening to some particular types of music in their household, culture, etc. You naturally develop an intuitive understanding, in the same way a native speaker has adopted the rhythms and tones and phonemes of their local language. A typical modern American listening to Charlie Parker rip through a bebop solo, is not too different than listening to someone speaking Mandarin. The sounds don't map onto anything recognizable. But you listen to it enough, and the brain starts to understand the structure. It's not just a blurred stream of saxophone, but a series of phrases, with inflections, patterns, meaning. Listen to it long enough, and you hear every individual note as it flies by.

I believe I do understand classical music in the sense you describe, but I just find it mostly boring. Its features are not what excites me in music.

> What does it mean to understand a piece of work? Do I have to read the sheet music?

Not necessary to read the score. But a familiarity with the structural conventions helps the listener contextualize the listening experience. If I listen to Mozart or Haydn, I should expect that I’m going to hear something in sonata form, meaning melodic exposition, thematic development and recapitulation, with some variations around that format. If I hear a Bach fugue, I’m going to hear even more formalized structure, a subject (ie theme) and then restatement of the theme (initially a perfect 5th lower) then introduction in other voices and elaboration.

Maybe there’s even a wider context to place it in. History, how the structural and other elements mirror similar characteristics in the visual arts, architecture etc.

> But a familiarity with the structural conventions helps the listener contextualize the listening experience. If I listen to Mozart or Haydn, I should expect that I’m going to hear something in sonata form

TBH I listened to (and attended lives performances of) what must be hundreds of hours of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven string quartets and such, before I finally bothered to look up "sonata form" not too long ago. I can't say the lack of knowledge about the exact [:Expo:][:Devt+Recap:] structure impacted my enjoyment or appreciation of it. I mean, one quickly picks up on the repeated motifs and the "now back to the beginning" patterns without specifically picking out the expo/dev/recap sections.

> I don't think it's about simplicity at all

I'd go further and say that "simplicity" is the wrong way of thinking about it. Arguing that Western classical music is more complex or requires more understanding — and that complexity on a particular axis is more valuable inherently than complexity on another one – is a poorly informed viewpoint. You can't separate the cultural deification of the Western classical canon from traditional great-man historiography.

A lot of classical music is in meaningful ways much simpler than a lot of pop music, as long as you pick the right axis. Western classical music is, if you were to caricature it, about the elevation of harmony above the other elements of music. It is, particularly, much less prone to developing complex rhythmic ideas. Even within Western music, George Clinton's work is more rhythmically inventive than the majority of the Western canon; John Coltrane's work is arguably more _harmonically_ complex and inventive too. Many high-culture art-music traditions (jazz, Carnatic classical music) are fundamentally improvisational.

This doesn't mean Beethoven sucks, quite the opposite; a lot of music in the Western classical tradition is _really really good_. It doesn't mean it wrong to _prefer_ that music. It does mean that dismissing other musics as intrinsically lesser is fundamentally more about bigotry than aesthetics.

While we're here, let's defend Eurodance too. Modern music in the pop tradition, which I'm going to argue starts somewhere around Joe Meek, has used technology to enable unprecedented _timbral_ complexity. (Yes, yes, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Messiaen, Penderecki; but they're exactly the sort of classical composer this author would reject out of hand too.)

> Western classical music is, if you were to caricature it, about the elevation of harmony above the other elements of music.

While that is definitely important, don't overlook structure. Bach is the quintessential puzzler, Beethoven is nothing without cells and development, Brahms follows both, and the serialists you mention tried to push it even further.

> let's defend Eurodance too

Too bad its timbral complexity never leaves the boink boink boink phase.

> While that is definitely important, don't overlook structure.

Yep, you're right – but the two things are connected, in that the structure of Western classical music is absolutely tied in with the idea of _resolution_.

I agree with your first statement. Classical music captivated me at an early age (5 or so), and I really didn't know Jack about music. As a matter of fact, my first crush was Bach's organ music; I got an album for my 6th birthday.

But there is complexity to it, like there is to jazz and prog. These are also not really popular. And the more complex the classical music (think on a scale from Offenbach to Birtwistle), the less popular it is.

Music is not really a language, despite all the theoretical attempts. It's poetry without language, if you want a metaphor. It conveys timbre, structure, emotion, and time. If it's not your thing, it's difficult to get into.

I do agree that many people don't know if it's their thing or not, for lack of experience. And a music teacher that explains the programme behind Danse Macabre doesn't really count. If anything, it kills the joy.

Another thing that heightens the feeling for classical music is playing it, at least for me. Some form of musical education would really benefit the sector. And that's not just a "sounds good" idea. Where I live, the system of music schools and its support systems has slowly been razed to the ground. The effect is that where once student orchestras were healthy organizations, they're now dwindling, as is the influx to the conservatories. The more famous ones still attract many students, but more and more foreign. It won't be long before they run out of teachers and lose their stature, too. Such are the joys of supply side economics and small government ideology.

> Music is not really a language, despite all the theoretical attempts

I always liken it to a language, but not in any formal ("theoretical") way. Rather, in the sense of: it conveys meaning and emotion, but if you're not fluent in the genre then it will be essentially nonsense.

Like the first time listening to Charlie Parker, I thought it sounded cool but it was just a blob of notes. And then the first time with Coltrane's solo work, it was again a flurry of nonsense until I listened enough.

Some other HN'er said it far better than I ever could but I can't find the comment, something like 'Photography and painting are how we decorate planes, sculpture and architecture are how we decorate volume and music is how we decorate time'.

It really resonated (pun intended) with me, that's very much how I perceive it. And you can decorate time in all kinds of ways just like you can with planes or volumes.

I really can't get behind that understanding bit. Some of this stuff is just so beautiful it just gets me. For instance: Marcello's adagio: https://youtu.be/vE2O_yfgtBU?si=f8BcjAg7ul-VuIHA&t=212 for oboe.

But I can easily get similar feelings from much more popular music.

I'm not so sure. If you play death metal to people who distinctly do not like metal, they will tell you it all sounds the same, that it's just noise. The next metalhead to swing by can lament for hours on the compositional genius of Children of Bodom, but will ensure you all hiphop is a long string of meaningless profanity. Don't even bring the avantgarde jazz enthusiasts in. And so on.

What I'm getting at is that any musical genre will be difficult at first. And I don't mean just listening to a lot, but actually understand it.

If you've given it a try and find it is not for you, then so be it. There is concern in the classical enjoying community that people are put off from even trying it because it is supposed to be reserved for certain ethnic groups, economic strata, and whatnot.

I've had similar experiences to yours with jazz and opera.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com