Has education expanded your listening tastes?


This point recently came up in another thread: a member was of the opinion (if I am paraphrasing them correctly) that critical thinking plays little role in what our tastes in music might be. We like what we like and that's it. So that begs the question for me, how many of us feel that our reaction to music is primarily rooted in the emotional centers of the brain and that rational analysis of musical structure and language doesn't potentially expand our range of musical enjoyment? I ask because I am not a professional musician, but I did take a few college level music history classes, learn to play guitar in my forties (now sixty,) learn to read music on a rudimentary level of competence, study a little music theory, and enjoy reading historical biographies about composers and musicians. I can honestly say that the in the last fifteen years or so, I have greatly expanded what types of music I enjoy and that I can appreciate music I might not "love" in the emotional sense that used to dictate what I listen to. Take Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern for example. Their music doesn't sweep you away with the emotional majesty of earlier composers, but I find their intellectual rigor and organization to be fascinating and very enjoyable. Same with studying the history of American roots music, I learned a lot about our cultural history and enjoy listening to old blues and country music now. How do other's feel about this emotion vs. learning to appreciate thing?
photon46
Thanks to all for the positive comments; glad to be part of a very interesting discussion with so many really great and thoughtful contributions.

Schubert, I am not surprised by the feelings of the principal clarinetist that you refer to. Playing the orchestral repertoire in a first rate orchestra is an extremely demanding and stressful job. Few outside of the profession understand just how intense the amount of preparation that is required is and how intense the pressure felt is in order to perform at such a high level in concert situations where a player doesn't have the luxury of going back to "white-out" a mistake and do it over; one shot is all one gets. So, it is not surprising that some players just don't want to listen to the repertoire for pleasure and prefer to listen to music in a different genre. A good friend and colleague who unfortunately passed away recently was one of the finest concert flautists that I have ever known and was obsessed with the music of James Brown.

An interesting extension of the subject of education and analysis is the issue of objectivism vs subjectivism in judging music and it's worth. I find this article to be a thought-provoking look at the subject:

http://www.rogerbissell.com/id11a3.html
Frogman, For years I sat in the front row at the ISO concerts. Not only was the price right, but it really allowed me to watch the musicians work. And I do mean work! You guys must go home dead tired after a Beethoven symphony. I also have a vivid memory of a Russian conductor scolding a Russian cellist with " non tropo!" I got a kick out of that but I'm not sure the cellist was equally amused.

Most of us non pros get a sense of what constitutes a flawless performance and how obvious and distracting one slip can be. I remember a preconcert talk with one of the members of the Pacifica Quartet who said he usually turned off the classical music when he went home- practice and teaching all day long every day was quite enough.

I can't play a thing other than my cd player. I would give almost anything to be able to sit down and play the Goldberg Variations on a piano-up to such single minded laser focused effort that I no longer loved the music.

Kodos to you and Learsfool and others who work so hard to bring so much beauty into our lives.
The greatest of the Romans and one of THE wisest humans who ever lived, Cicero, said;

"Not to know what has transpired in former times is to be always a child."

Children are easier to control than adults which is why History is both the sine qua non of an educated person AND the worst taught subject in the USA.

Even as a former history teacher and avid reader of same for over 60 years, I never quite realized until this post how my mind automatically put me into the milieu of music heard, from the Renaissance Italy of Frescobaldi , the England of Purcell and Byrd, to the Biedermeyer Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert , the Bismarkian Germany of Brahms or the dismembered Hungary of Bartok etc etc etc.

What Frogman says about the general public not grasping the difficulty of performance is of course true, but I would say same is readily apparent to any serious classical listener.
IMO the not really liking to perform has more to do with the cognitive dissonance generated by living in a culture radically different than the one the works you play were created in and for. And two semesters of Music History at any conservatory or university won't change that.

Even more true of the audience for Classical Music.