**** Classical music has no soul ****
I share Learsfool's amazement that someone would make such a statement. One may not like one particular genre or another, but to believe something like that is, to me, a sign of a lack of openness at all that music OF ANY GENRE has to offer the listener. Without meaning to get overly metaphysical about this, music, like all art-forms touches parts of a listener's (audience) psyche that are not always in our comfort zones. We then, as typical human beings, do what is sometimes easiest: we shut out it's emotional impact, and decide that (at best) "we don't like it", and (at worst), "it sucks, it has no soul, etc,".
None of us are fully enlightened individuals (I will speak for myself), but a first step should be a degree of openness to art that we don't understand, or that causes us some discomfort. The potential rewards are huge.
I share Learsfool's amazement that someone would make such a statement. One may not like one particular genre or another, but to believe something like that is, to me, a sign of a lack of openness at all that music OF ANY GENRE has to offer the listener. Without meaning to get overly metaphysical about this, music, like all art-forms touches parts of a listener's (audience) psyche that are not always in our comfort zones. We then, as typical human beings, do what is sometimes easiest: we shut out it's emotional impact, and decide that (at best) "we don't like it", and (at worst), "it sucks, it has no soul, etc,".
None of us are fully enlightened individuals (I will speak for myself), but a first step should be a degree of openness to art that we don't understand, or that causes us some discomfort. The potential rewards are huge.