Which music have you "outgrown"?

[hangos]

The first Mahler I ever heard was his Resurrection Symphony (Solti/LSO) and it bowled me over (like many others on this forum, I suppose).Then came the 6th (Bernstein/NYPO).
My problem and question is ;
I never want to hear the Resurrection again, yet I still love Mahler 6!
What is this thing called outgrowing? I suppose it happens to us all.
Conversely, as a teenager I couldn't stand Mozart and Bach (boring old farts then IMSO) but now I love their music.
Has it something to do with the intrinsic value of a piece ( knockout on first hearing but wears thin because it lacks "depth") or is it more a case of "a change of mind"?
I welcome your thoughts!

[jbuck919]

With few exceptions among us, I imagine (correct me if you're one of them), we all owe a debt to pieces we appreciated in a juvenile stage of listening that are now of secondary importance at best. If people didn't have this "phase," which is different for each listenr of course, there would be no audience for classical music at all (as in statistical terms there almost isn't in the first place).

Having said that, it would be hard to state a piece I loved as a boy but would not listen to now (buying an expensive ticket for a live performance being another matter). Vaughan-Williams, perhaps (he came up recently and I covered my thoughts on that on another thread), but other works that were formative for me are still "on the list," if not all at the very top. And they include, Karl Henning, a dose of Tchaikovsky.

[slofstra]

I can see two factors at work in my own listening history:

1) Pop music is mostly 'hook' based, has high initial impact, but tends to wear out on repeated listenings. I like to play the Beatles '1' about once a year and then I'm good for a while.
Some classical music is susceptible to the 'hook' factor to a lesser degree - say Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker or Pachelbel's Canon.
So - some music has a limited shelf life by its very nature.

2) Life is a journey. I can't be listening to something new if I'm listening to something 'old'. (I mean 'old', in my experience, not 'old' as in Gregorian chant). So I don't listen to the Beethoven symphonies a great deal - been there done that. When the Rattle set came out, I was excited again for a bit, and I always enjoy Beethoven symphonies in concert. Fifteen years ago I played the death out of the 9th; I even had the CD-ROM with the score and the play-by-play and the whole bit. (In fact, I think I'm due for some more 9th listening - it's been a while).

The enjoyment of classical music is also the case of getting things under your belt. For example, I'm trying to gain a greater appreciation for Stravinsky. You listen to a lot of a composer, and see where he (or she) is going aurally, and gain an appreciation that way. Classical music is very fulfilling in that way. I try never to reject anything out of hand.

I can kind of list a string of infatuations going back even to my teens - although I didn't listen to a lot of classical then.
Tchaikovsky -> Wagner -> Beethoven -> Wagner again -> Mahler -> Rachmaninoff -> Brahms -> Vaughan Williams.

Of course, I've listened to lots and lots of other things along the way, and lately I've enjoyed a lot of what's happening in pop/indie also.

[hangos]

Thanks, slofstra, for your words of wisdom!
You have a very open-minded view of music (so do I - in the last couple of years I've really got into Monk and Coltrane and listen to them just as often as I do to classical music) and I agree that the exploration of new territory has a lot to do with it ; many of us seem programmed to move on to pastures new (currently I'm exploring Ligeti) and it must be awful to be stuck in that rut of "I know what I like and I like what I know"
Nonetheless, I still have little desire to listen to some pieces which started me off on my musical journey. Perhaps I'm not willing to find the time!
It brings to mind a story about Bartok, who apparently enthused over Rossini's Semarimide Overture when he heard it as a boy at a concert.I wonder how often he longed to re-hear it?
I wonder if Pierre Boulez ever liked Tchaikovsky's music?!!!!!
hangos

[jbuck919]

I wonder if Pierre Boulez ever liked Tchaikovsky's music?!!!!!

Boulez has been interviewed many times and I imagine he has revealed his thinking behind that clause in his contract (which I suspect is not as obvious as it might seem), but if I were to speculate, it would be based on the assumption that no conductor is going to refuse to conduct just one warhorse composer. I don't know how it was then, but nowadays I doubt that any music director of an orchestra on the level of the New York Philharmonic takes the job with anything less than complete artistic control. It's along the same lines of James Levine at the Met, where for many years he conducted all the gold himself and left Cav and Pag for the guest conductors.

I saw a special on Valeri Gerghiev where he was preparing an orchestra for Tchaikovsky's Fifth, a work he himself referred to as a warhorse. A Russian conductor cannot very well have it written into a contract that he doesn't have to conduct Tchaikovsky. Want the punch line? The snatches of the performance that were broadcast were not very good. A great Russian conductor botching a foolproof composer because he really doesn't give a damn.

[Chalkperson]

I wonder if Pierre Boulez ever liked Tchaikovsky's music?!!!!!

I saw a special on Valeri Gerghiev where he was preparing an orchestra for Tchaikovsky's Fifth, a work he himself referred to as a warhorse. A Russian conductor cannot very well have it written into a contract that he doesn't have to conduct Tchaikovsky. Want the punch line? The snatches of the performance that were broadcast were not very good. A great Russian conductor botching a foolproof composer because he really doesn't give a damn.

That's interesting, his recording of the Fifth was really good, now if only everyone and their mother would stop recording Tchaikovsky's Fourth the world might be a better place..

[MaestroDJS]

Can't say I've really outgrown any music. There are pieces which I don't play as often as before, but maybe they'll return to the forefront eventually. Case in point: Gustav Mahler. In the 1970s I fell completely under his spell. Mahler was a volcano! The cataclysmic explosions of his music overwhelmed me. Who needed lava lamps anymore, when I was inundated with Mahler magma? It was Earth-shaking! Then in the 1980s I hardly listened to Mahler at all. His music seemed too overblown, and much ado about nothing. Eventually in the 1990s I began to re-evaluate Mahler, due to the CD reissues of Bruno Walters' legendary recordings and also many new recordings. Yes the music of Mahler is huge and grandiose, yes it is both sublime and ridiculous, and yes he tries to cram the entire Universe into each and every symphony. But it is good honest music. Now I appreciate Mahler more than ever, but for very different reasons than my first impressions.

It is absolutely correct that life is a journey, and maybe certain familiar composers are shunted aside while I absorb something new or unfamiliar for a while. That's one of the great hazards of an ever-expanding CD collection. I'll return to the golden oldies again eventually, but the more CDs I have, the longer it takes to play them all, again and again.

Dave (temporarily in Washington DC)

[slofstra]

Mahler in the Seventies. It's all coming back now. 'Heavy Mahler' repackages from every record company. In fact, my first exposure to Mahler was in my late teens. We went to T.O. to see Ken Russell's movie version of the Who's Tommy, and couldn't get in. The adjoining theatre was showing: Ken Russell's bio-pic, Mahler. Don't remember much of it now, except that it was way, way better than his version of Tommy, which was just dreadful. Ann-Margaret singing, what a concept.

[Brahms]

Truly great masterpieces are tough to outgrow because they harbor hidden, deepseated complexities and emotional depth that become further appreciated with repeated listening.

Even works as seemingly trite as Mozart's 40th Symphony and Beethoven's Fifth become susceptible to heightened appreciation when one takes the time to study the score toward grasping the underlying motivic intracacies and architecture.

With a little effort, most "masterpieces" will reveal hidden treasures that have been glossed over by even the seasoned listener . . . . . . .

[slofstra]

Perhaps I'm not willing to find the time.

That's really it I think. In terms of finding everything in a piece - sure - most people don't listen to Mozart polyphonically - really taking it all in - it just sounds kind of pretty. Both Bach and Mozart make fine background music; where you can ignore much of what's going on, and the music creates an ambience. This is less possible with the Romantics (background listening I mean), and completely impossible with most 20th C music.

[MaestroDJS]

That's really it I think. In terms of finding everything in a piece - sure - most people don't listen to Mozart polyphonically - really taking it all in - it just sounds kind of pretty. Both Bach and Mozart make fine background music; where you can ignore much of what's going on, and the music creates an ambience. This is less possible with the Romantics (background listening I mean), and completely impossible with most 20th C music.

Au contraire. Just about any music can become background music, including 20th Century music, much of which was actually designed to be piped into the air all around us. Of course there are exceptions. I've never heard Edgard Varèse in an elevator, for example. On the other hand, Varèse composed his Poème Électronique as the ultimate background music, to be heard in a continuous loop on 425 loudspeakers inside the Philips Pavillion at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958, as people came and went.

Believe it or not, I once heard the Adagio from Bruckner's 9th Symphony in an elevator! That became the first time I pressed all the floor buttons since I was a kid.

However I would agree that to get the most out of music, it really needs our full attention. It is absolutely delightful to listen to Bach or Mozart while reading the scores.

Dave (temporarily in Washington DC)

[Harold Tucker]

The concept of outgrowing a piece of music is one of many artificial constructs the mind builds up as it prepares to shut down in old age.( For other useless constructs see the collected posts of jbuck. )Basically you develop an attitude that you know all there is to know of a work and you will not allow yourself to let anything new into your head to challenge your delusion. I was cured of this many years ago by Carlos Kleiber's Beethoven Fifth. Outgrowing a piece of music is simply a matter of bad attitude.

[Brendan]

The fact that someone may come to dislike a particular piece, say Mahler 2, need not imply "outgrowing", just discovering personal taste. My own feeling towards that symphony would be to say that anyone who feels they have outgrown Mahler's 2nd has a lot of growing to do. But that's just my taste/feeling expressing itself.

If I've overlistened to a peice, discovering it again years later can be quite a joy.

[piston]

Music I have "outgrown":

--- Tchaikovsky's ballets (but I'll go back with the grandchildren!)
--- Vivaldi's Four Seasons (but I'll listen again when emotions rule!)
--- Beethoven's Ninth (but I'll blast it out of my house when a mighty thunder storm rules over the human race!)
--- Satie's music (but I still enjoy it when I remember the guy was schizo!)

[RebLem]

Respighi's Pines and Fountains of Rome. Respighi was the Italian fascist counterpart of the Soviet composers who complied without a whimper with every idiotic twist and bend in party arts policy.

[piston]

Respighi's Pines and Fountains of Rome. Respighi was the Italian fascist counterpart of the Soviet composers who complied without a whimper with every idiotic twist and bend in party arts policy.

Would that be Khrennikov? He was so afraid of Josef that it is said (in Shostakovich's memoirs) that he once relieved himself in his pants

[Corlyss_D]

Orchestral Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach. I wish I would never hear another note of it. Fat chance.

[Jack Kelso]

The concept of outgrowing a piece of music is one of many artificial constructs the mind builds up as it prepares to shut down in old age.( For other useless constructs see the collected posts of jbuck. )Basically you develop an attitude that you know all there is to know of a work and you will not allow yourself to let anything new into your head to challenge your delusion. I was cured of this many years ago by Carlos Kleiber's Beethoven Fifth. Outgrowing a piece of music is simply a matter of bad attitude.

Well stated. This is the way I feel, too. Some of my favorites (as a teen) were Liszt's "Les Préludes", Tschaikowsky's "Romeo and Juliet", Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" and "Tannhäuser" overtures.

I still listen to these works----not as often perhaps, but a new and brilliant recording can still bring new "life" to these and other old familiar friends. Also, if I leave them alone for awhile I can "re-appreciate" them later again.

Inspired and immortal works NEVER die out with me----I just approach them and react to them differently now.

Jack

[Ralph]

My tastes haven't shifted so much as new discoveries tend to crowd out repeated hearing of older favorites. Certainly I haven't outgrown any works I've always appreciated.

[Chalkperson]

Orchestral Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach. I wish I would never hear another note of it. Fat chance.

I guess you must listen to all that Talk Radio instead...

[ichiro]

I think Saint-Saens would be the only composer who has really slipped in my mind, everyone else has held ground or grown in my respect (Mozart, and Schubert especially). I really liked SS's 2nd Piano concerto, but even at the beginning I knew it was too "light and frothy", although I played the hell out of his 4th piano concerto's last movement. And i still love the organ symphony.

[johnshade]

~
César Franck, Symphony in D Minor. I don't know why I thought of this, but many years ago I listened to this music very often. Today I never listen to it. I must pull it out, listen, and see if "I have outgrown it". Do any of you like the Franck symphony?

[lmpower]

I like the Franck symphony but not very much. I own a recording of it, which I haven't listened to in years. I'm not much attracted to Franck in general. Maybe the violin sonata is his best work.

[Wallingford]

My liking for Franck & St-Saens could never diminish--at least not in the present lifetime. St-Saens left a body of 169 published works, along with tons of unpublished stuff, of which I'm always finding several hidden gems.

In my adolescence, I thought I could worship Rachmaninov.....now, I'm just tenaciously clinging to my respect of the man as composer (it's as PIANIST that my wholehearted & unreserved praise goes to him). As for his own works, I'm desperately trying to find more examples of his rhythmically-agressive side, and ignore his warmly-lyrical side.

[Jack Kelso]

~
César Franck, Symphony in D Minor. I don't know why I thought of this, but many years ago I listened to this music very often. Today I never listen to it. I must pull it out, listen, and see if "I have outgrown it". Do any of you like the Franck symphony?

Yes, very much. The work builds through each successive movement, becoming spiritually more idealistic as it progresses, culminating in a wonderful coda expressing the joy of life.

Musicologists of the 1950's ranked it with the Brahms symphonies as one of the great late 19th-century masterpieces.

Also, Franck's tone-poem "Le chasseur Maudit" is one of the most intense of all orchestral works. It grows on you. It deserves to be heard much more often.

Jack

[slofstra]

Au contraire. Just about any music can become background music, including 20th Century music, much of which was actually designed to be piped into the air all around us.

Well, my statement wasn't meant to be that general, as you've so aptly pointed out its flaws. I really meant it in this way. I occasionally listen to background music while I read or program (when testing, not coding) and it better not intrude too deeply into my consciousness at those times. My brain can somehow ignore all the inner complexity of Baroque and early classical and just take its surface temperature. Whereas with modern and Romantic music - I can't do that - it's too intrusive. In the case of minimalist music that may be ironic, since one of its goals is to invert common foreground/ background conceptions. As far as Muzak, which you seem to be referring to in your statement above - I'm excluding that as serious music.

[slofstra]

The concept of outgrowing a piece of music is one of many artificial constructs the mind builds up as it prepares to shut down in old age.( For other useless constructs see the collected posts of jbuck. )Basically you develop an attitude that you know all there is to know of a work and you will not allow yourself to let anything new into your head to challenge your delusion. I was cured of this many years ago by Carlos Kleiber's Beethoven Fifth. Outgrowing a piece of music is simply a matter of bad attitude.

On the other hand, one could also be so unwilling to examine new constructs that you only revisit old signposts, such as the Fifth, let's say. And if a kind of musical Alzheimer's sets in, it may only seem new.

[Reed]

When I was younger, I liked Shostakovich. I found his music powerful. Now, I found most of it incredibly boring.

Please don't flame. You won't persuade me he's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I won't persuade you that if you remove the autobiographical factor, his music is often mind-numbingly banal.

[GK]

Some works do not come to me now with the same magic that they did in earlier hearings--Brahms' 1st symphony, Mendelssohn's 4th symphony, Tchaikovsky's 1812 come immediately to mind.

[Corlyss_D]

When I was younger, I liked Shostakovich. I found his music powerful. Now, I found most of it incredibly boring.

Please don't flame. You won't persuade me he's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I won't persuade you that if you remove the autobiographical factor, his music is often mind-numbingly banal.

And here I was going to say something nice about Slava's conducting of Shostakovich . . .

[Chalkperson]

And here I was going to say something nice about Slava's conducting of Shostakovich . . .

Finally...

[anasazi]

Although I seem to go through phases of returning to composers I liked as a youth, there are a few composers that I don't return to as often. I guess Wagner would be the major composer named, but also Delius, Berlioz and Dvorak. Just nothing there for me anymore it seems. Oh, forgot Smetana.

[anasazi]

The concept of outgrowing a piece of music is one of many artificial constructs the mind builds up as it prepares to shut down in old age.( For other useless constructs see the collected posts of jbuck. )Basically you develop an attitude that you know all there is to know of a work and you will not allow yourself to let anything new into your head to challenge your delusion. I was cured of this many years ago by Carlos Kleiber's Beethoven Fifth. Outgrowing a piece of music is simply a matter of bad attitude.

I disagree (politely). When you reach a certain age (or when I did), I began thinking: do I want to spend the rest of my time trying to like stuff or spend the rest of my time totaly enjoying what I do really like? It's not a brain twister or anything, and we all have our favorites. But exploring is best done by those with both the time and the money.

I feel there was a reason that I spent many years searching and trying all of the music that I could. That reason is so that now I can concentrate more and more on what I discovered on my journey. Why else do it? And I don't know all there is to know. Many composers, many works I will not hear. But I do want to know certain music a little more and spend a little more time with it.

Actually, I AM hoping that my brain shuts down before my other organs do.

[slofstra]

anasazi,
That's an interesting perspective. I'm still at the exploring stage, but of course, you do have times - could I get that last hour back? - it wasn't worth it. And what you say about music probably pertains to other things as well. I'm working through Thomas Mann's 1500 page opus, Joseph and his Brothers, and at page 200, just wondering if it's worth it. I often third-read or half-read a book. I think as we get older, we have a better sense for avoiding time-wasters, whether that's a sports event that had more sizzle than steak, new technology of which we're skeptical whether the effort will be worth it (because often it really isn't), books that are "important" but not enjoyable, shopping trips that are unnecessary, and so on.

[Lance]

An interesting topic that causes one to think about the question. Quite honestly, there is only one piece of music I cannot stand: Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. I heard it as a child (someone alluded to this being the reason for it falling out of favour) and it wore itself out. I continue to love Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty and particularly Swan Lake of the ballet music. I also have a tough time listening now to Tchaikovsky's fourth and fifth symphonies (also heard constantly in youth), but I adore his first and second symphonies. Tchaikovsky is the only composer for me that has the most repertoire that is worn out to the ears and I cannot seem to be re-interested in these works. The other piece I can't listen to any longer is the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony; the rest I enjoy enormously. The first movement has been done to death in commercials, etc.

[slofstra]

An interesting comment about the Nutcracker. Do you also no longer enjoy thick syrup on your pancakes?
For me the Nutcracker will always have a special memory. When my girls were - maybe 6 and 4, I was given three front row balcony centre tickes to the Nutcracker - I think the Winnipeg ballet production - which is one of the best ballets in Canada. The girls were totally enthralled. I can still picture them sitting at the front edge of their seats, arms on the balcony railing. For a while the Nutcracker became a yearly event, night in Toronto, etc. So, for that reason alone ....

[Corlyss_D]

do I want to spend the rest of my time trying to like stuff or spend the rest of my time totaly enjoying what I do really like? It's not a brain twister or anything, and we all have our favorites.

How . . . sensible, Bill. I did the same, winnowing what I liked and enjoyed from what I felt obligated to listen to. Don't any more!

[Lance]

An interesting comment about the Nutcracker. Do you also no longer enjoy thick syrup on your pancakes?
For me the Nutcracker will always have a special memory. When my girls were - maybe 6 and 4, I was given three front row balcony centre tickes to the Nutcracker - I think the Winnipeg ballet production - which is one of the best ballets in Canada. The girls were totally enthralled. I can still picture them sitting at the front edge of their seats, arms on the balcony railing. For a while the Nutcracker became a yearly event, night in Toronto, etc. So, for that reason alone ....

No - I totally enjoy the thickest (true) MAPLE syrup on my pancakes, and not only the pancakes but the WAFFLES, too! Nothin' like it - and I can prove it by my waistline! But the "Nutcracker," it just ain't for me any longer. And yes, my daughter also enjoyed it when we saw it several times live and she also was exposed to it on disc. Of course, the Nutcracker is generally associated with Christmastime these days. But I'd rather hear genuine Christmas Music (Bach-Christmas Oratorio, etc.) Just something about "Nutcracker" - cannot take it. But as I always say: different strokes for different folks! And I totally understand your reasons for liking the work. I hope it never waivers!

[Corlyss_D]

An interesting comment about the Nutcracker. Do you also no longer enjoy thick syrup on your pancakes?
For me the Nutcracker will always have a special memory. When my girls were - maybe 6 and 4, I was given three front row balcony centre tickes to the Nutcracker - I think the Winnipeg ballet production - which is one of the best ballets in Canada. The girls were totally enthralled. I can still picture them sitting at the front edge of their seats, arms on the balcony railing. For a while the Nutcracker became a yearly event, night in Toronto, etc. So, for that reason alone ....

A lovely treasurable image and memory, Henry. I don't have such a one, however. For me Nutcracker is what I had to listen to on Xmas day from WGMS. It was always the same program, sometimes in different order: Nutcracker, a reading of the Dickens' classic, Messiah. All complete. Cute the first 5 or 6 years. Tedious thereafter. I still consider them a blight on the season.