How do people actually like classical music?

it is waaay overrated wrote:

The Mozart movie convinced the casual viewer that everyone knew his songs by playing Nachtmusik. The only Mozart song everyone knows. Not even Turkish march is ubiquitous, Nachmusik is the only one.

There is a website with a Mozart-or-Salieri game where you have to listen to other Mozart clips, and Salieri clips, and try to guess which one of them composed it. It's damn near impossible, it all sounds the same, and 99% of it is boring light melodical fluff. Strings, flutes, stuff people would listen to while doing homework. It was garbage, nobody likes it anymore.

Beethoven had 4 hits: 9th, Moonlight, Elise, and the intro to the 3rd. That's all. Moonlight was the equivalent of Eddie Van Halen Eruption, a skill piece with no musical value at all. Elise is for kids to play at recitals. 9th is good.

Bach is famous for the D Minor fugue, which noone can prove he actually wrote, and is unlike anything he is known to have written. Noone would even remember that if it weren't for Dracula movies.

jamese1045 wrote:

Bubba Beethoven wrote:

Ok, I admit it, I am a musical ignoramous, at least as far as the technical aspects are concerned. I do like a lot of different styles of music, though try as I might, I just cannot acquire a taste for classical music, meaning, for the most part, orchestral music written by European men before the twentieth century. To my untrained and perhaps defective ear, it all sounds more or less the same, and boring as sht. If you can love it, great for you. I just don’t get it.

The fault is in your question. Just as in damning or praising any so-called genre of music or any art form you are like the blind man describing the elephant. Music is music, without borders. Yes I know its generally accurate to identify and classify certain characteristics as "belonging" to certain "types" of music and even geographic areas! I will do it sometimes just to be non-contentious and inappropratel. But when asked for an opinion I will usually respond that "Music has no borders. It is to be evaluated and enjoyed according to basic principles of esthetics, tonality, euphony, melody,harmony (Pythagoris (sp?) had it right!) and architecture. And then there's Satchmo's response when asked what is The Blues?---"You got to ask, you dont get it."

My practical answer is: be specific: pick your piece of music or particular musician, focus on the performance and say what it is about it that offends or pleases you.

it is waaay overrated wrote:

The Mozart movie convinced the casual viewer that everyone knew his songs by playing Nachtmusik. The only Mozart song everyone knows. Not even Turkish march is ubiquitous, Nachmusik is the only one.

There is a website with a Mozart-or-Salieri game where you have to listen to other Mozart clips, and Salieri clips, and try to guess which one of them composed it. It's damn near impossible, it all sounds the same, and 99% of it is boring light melodical fluff. Strings, flutes, stuff people would listen to while doing homework. It was garbage, nobody likes it anymore.

Beethoven had 4 hits: 9th, Moonlight, Elise, and the intro to the 3rd. That's all. Moonlight was the equivalent of Eddie Van Halen Eruption, a skill piece with no musical value at all. Elise is for kids to play at recitals. 9th is good.

Bach is famous for the D Minor fugue, which noone can prove he actually wrote, and is unlike anything he is known to have written. Noone would even remember that if it weren't for Dracula movies.