An observation about "Modern" classical music.

"I like music if I can hum it" - This narrows your musical choices.
Take a sonata form; you ear the theme exposition, maybe the re-exposition, skip the development (the biggest part of the composition), and click on the play at the end to ear the theme recapitulation. By this I assume that almost all the music from the Romantic Period, wich subverted and by this broadened the classical forms, like the sonata form, is not your cup of tea. Composers like Brahms, Bruckner, Schumann, Wagner, Mahler, etc, are out of your list?. And what about Beethoven ?! Not the melody type of composer for one to hum. Dam you Beethoven for beying a lousy melodist.

Music is not just melody. Melody is just a part of the music. Ok, for you the most important, but by going this way you are just hearing a small part of the musical composition.
IMHO you must try to broad your horizons, to ear the musical compositon in all of its facets, as a whole.

PS- Dont try to hum Stravinsky "Rite of Spring" cause you will get hiccups.

My original posting simply reported a fact, delayed audience response, which anyone at a live performance can verify, and which suggests to me that the audience was disconnected from the music.

I'll take a delayed audience response any day of the week to an audience that thinks they should applaud in between movements, or anytime there is a break in the sound.

Eldartford, I love Classical Music including Contemporary Classical Music, and I'm extremely pleased that you love it too. I'm just trying to get new public to modern music.

Of the examples you gave I apreciate all of them. But I must say one thing about Beethoven 5th. Althougth everyone hums this, we are talking about a rhythmic motif, not a melodic one. And he brilliantly makes a symphony out of it. Breath taking. A gigantic leap in terms of music composition. In is time the reponse to is music was very ambiguous.

Brahms is a difficult composer. Is ideas are dense and hard to grasp. Every passage, note, gesture as a key role in is big canvas of composition. Even is chamber music as a symphonic character (the string quarttets). Concentration and memory is very important for the music of Brahms to be understood. Sometimes a music diploma, unfortunately.

Prokofiev is another composer that uses rhythm as, almost, the main ingredient of is music. I'm glad he dindt stop at "Peter and the Wolf", and wrote some woderfull piano sonatas, piano concertos and violin sonatas, and ........
One of the major leaps in XX century music was in terms of rhythm.

Cheers, and continue to enjoy music you love, but I hope you open your mind to new stuff.

PS- As I wrote this Beethoves piano sonata nº 12 in A flat, Op 26 is being played by the great Alfred Brendel.

Eldartford,

"Don't we all narrow our musical choices to stuff we like?"

No sir, we don't. The list of music that I didn't especially like until after a considerable investment in multiple hearings, and in some cases, multiple performances, is quite long. Indeed, if I followed your rule, I might still be listening to "Old McDonald had a Farm." In my youth I found the tune quite likeable and humable.

There remain works of both the classical and modern eras that I just don't quite connect with, even after some effort. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is such a work. So also are all of the works of Elliot Carter that I have heard. In both cases, I am confronted by a considerable number of advocates, so that it would seem that the deficiency lies with me, not with the composer. In the case of the Beethoven, I'm determined not to give up quite yet. However, it is unlikely that the Missa Solemnis will ever get the playing time of Prokofiev's piano sonatas in my home. I and many other people respectfully disagree with your outrageous assertion that Prokofiev should have stopped at Peter and the Wolf.

As has been stated previously in this thread, no one likes everything. Each listener will make his own choices, and I think we all welcome expression of an appropriately respectful negative opinion about a particular work. I urge caution about painting with too broad a brush, so that entire eras or genres are dismissed.