Is not liking atonal music a bad thing?

So i have tried again and again to appreciate atonal music but nonetheless i have never been able to find it comfortable, it is always just noisy and unpredictable to my ears.

I would immediately say no it is not a bad thing. I think there is some really crappy stuff out there. I think that goes for saying in all eras and styles of this thing we call "classical music". So, I think on the whole Elgar sucks. I cannot stand the output from the man. On the other hand I am really fond of Samuel Barber. I think that Schoenberg gets a lot of praise for something and I would consider that something to be pointless drivel. So, they were new techniques and new practices and ideas. So where the ideas of Beethoven when he did his thing and so where the ideas of Mozart when he did his thing. I personally think about 80% of the output of Mozart is garbage, but that is just an opinion. I am certainly not NOT a fan of more modern music, but I think there is line to be drawn between some of the modern stuff that I believe to really be visionary and some of the stuff that just turns out noise. I think you might try to step outside of your boundaries and try to make yourself make sense of what you are not comfortable with. I don't think that is bad. However, I would have to agree with you that stuff like Cage, Stockhausen, Xenakis, and even Schoenberg, Crumb, Ligeti, etc. is basically all crap. I don't think it is bad to like the old stuff. I don't think it is bad to like the new stuff. I don't think it is bad to like both. I don't think it is bad to think that an entire genre of stuff is just total garbage in and of itself. However, I think it is bad to never give it a shot. Some ideas where just never good ideas to be had in the first place.  

15 minutes ago, Ravels Radical Rivalry said:

I would immediately say no it is not a bad thing. I think there is some really crappy stuff out there. I think that goes for saying in all eras and styles of this thing we call "classical music". So, I think on the whole Elgar sucks. I cannot stand the output from the man. On the other hand I am really fond of Samuel Barber. I think that Schoenberg gets a lot of praise for something and I would consider that something to be pointless drivel. So, they were new techniques and new practices and ideas. So where the ideas of Beethoven when he did his thing and so where the ideas of Mozart when he did his thing. I personally think about 80% of the output of Mozart is garbage, but that is just an opinion. I am certainly not NOT a fan of more modern music, but I think there is line to be drawn between some of the modern stuff that I believe to really be visionary and some of the stuff that just turns out noise. I think you might try to step outside of your boundaries and try to make yourself make sense of what you are not comfortable with. I don't think that is bad. However, I would have to agree with you that stuff like Cage, Stockhausen, Xenakis, and even Schoenberg, Crumb, Ligeti, etc. is basically all crap. I don't think it is bad to like the old stuff. I don't think it is bad to like the new stuff. I don't think it is bad to like both. I don't think it is bad to think that an entire genre of stuff is just total garbage in and of itself. However, I think it is bad to never give it a shot. Some ideas where just never good ideas to be had in the first place.  

 

I do like Mozart's music but i believe we are on the same side when it comes to atonal music, its scraggy. The first thing i made sure was to listen some different works of atonal music to judge for myself and i was not surprised by the result, i totally despised atonal music. 

Just now, RequiemLord said:

I do like Mozart's music but i believe we are on the same side when it comes to atonal music, its scraggy. The first thing i made sure was to listen some different works of atonal music to judge for myself and i was not surprised by the result, i totally despised atonal music. 

 

What did you listen to and what did you like and not like?

I certainly love SOME "atonal" music. 

I get into Bela Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin like nobody business. Same thing with stuff like Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, Firebird Suite, Alban Berg's Wozeck, Barber's Vanessa or Piano Sonata or anything by Barber really, Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, etc.

1 minute ago, Ravels Radical Rivalry said:

What did you listen to and what did you like and not like?

I certainly love SOME "atonal" music. 

I get into Bela Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin like nobody business. Same thing with stuff like Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, Firebird Suite, Alban Berg's Wozeck, Barber's Vanessa or Piano Sonata or anything by Barber really, Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, etc.

 

Well, there is not a lot of atonal music that i have liked but i do listen most of Franz Liszt stuff but he is generally not considered a composer of strictly atonal music. Another composer of atonal that i like is Bartok, damn it actually sounds good in contrast to Arnold Schoenberg (whom i have attempted to listen to again just today).

Just now, RequiemLord said:

Well, there is not a lot of atonal music that i have liked but i do listen most of Franz Liszt stuff but he is generally not considered a composer of strictly atonal music. Another composer of atonal that i like is Bartok, damn it actually sounds good in contrast to Arnold Schoenberg (whom i have attempted to listen to again just today).

 

There is only one thing Schoenberg ever wrote that I liked. I will link you to it to see if you can get into it. 

However, even though I have been defending your opinion and right to it it does sound like there probably a lot of stuff out there that you don't even know exists and could probably get into. There is always stuff people don't know about. It is the adventure of life. It is the people who think they are so much better then everyone because they think that they literally have a grasp on EVERYTHING that are the real losers and miserable people. 

What did you think of the Leshnoff I linked?

Have you tried listening to them with scores? I think you'll find it a lot more fascinating, and they MAY lead to a slight liking to them, but not necessarily.

Are we grouping atonality and aleatoric music together? If not, atonality shows up in a lot of cool places because, if done correctly, no tonal center is present, therefore the modulations in those pieces are always super cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFIGoB7rK70&index=4&list=LLzCprbu2shhd8_JMyDEBIMQ

This is Rautavaara's first piano concerto. It's definitely atonal, but that doesn't mean it has to sound ugly. 

Last piece of advice, try to imagine the emotion behind some atonal/aleatoric works rather than directly how they sound. Lutoslawki's cello concerto has a lot of political angst and it's very evident. Bloch's Schelomo (not always atonal) has melody lines that are so beautiful despite the orchestration around it.

So to answer your question, no, but you may be listening to the wrong things.

I don't think it's bad to not like atonal music. There was a time when people had to feign that they did like it, possibly as some weird form of snobbery. And there were also people like Pierre Boulez, that openly bullied composers into atonalism. But, as with most other things, trust your gut. You'll find some surprisingly good things in such a serial piece as Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. And you'll also find a lot of crap in tonal musicians.

This is the Schoenberg that I like. Nothing else to my knowledge.

How can having an opinion ever be a bad thing?

2 minutes ago, robinjessome said:

How can having an opinion ever be a bad thing?

Well, if your opinion happens to go against what is regarded as "politically correct", a few people will go all out to make you wish you didn't have it.

11 minutes ago, Austenite said:

Well, if your opinion happens to go against what is regarded as "politically correct", a few people will go all out to make you wish you didn't have it.

 

Fair enough! While it's not the "having" of an opinion that's bad...voicing that opinion publicly can certainly go badly.

I'll rephrase ;)

How can having an opinion about music ever be a bad thing?

33 minutes ago, robinjessome said:

How can having an opinion ever be a bad thing?

Because opinions are not holy. It is very easy to form an opinion, but very difficult to form a knowledge foundation on which to base said opinions. The greatest lesson anybody can learn is that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one's ignorance (Confucius), instead of pretending to know more than one does. That kind of honesty toward oneself is not only highly sobering, but also gives one perspective and direction. To take a particular example of "atonal" music, is it better to demonize the developments of many decades based on the vague feeling of superiority of belonging to the group of people who have not been tricked by the musical elite who would see music die, or is it better to wade waist deep through the chaos in order to find out how the composers of the time saw the world, and how they thought about music and how those thoughts translated into music? Even if one dislikes the music, and some of it is certainly a little misguided, why hate it? It is only music and can do no harm, but there is much to learn from it, even if one chooses only to learn from its mistakes.

Would it surprise you to know that Anton Webern, known to some as the Antichrist himself, wrote beautiful late-Romantic works at the beginning of his career, and suffered from crippling anxiety and restless nights at the thought of abandoning tonality? There was no political pressure to do so at the time, in fact his efforts along with those of the Second Viennese School in general were vehemently opposed. I do mean vehemently - do you know that Schoenberg almost fell victim to the holocaust because of his disfavor with the Führer as he rose to power?

25 minutes ago, Gylfi said:

Because opinions are not holy. It is very easy to form an opinion, but very difficult to form a knowledge foundation on which to base said opinions.

I'm not sold on it. :)

How much of a "knowledge foundation" is enough to be allowed to form an opinion? OP @RequiemLord said he tried "again and again" to appreciate atonal music. He made sure "to listen some different works of atonal music to judge for [himself]".  Is that not enough? Perhaps a B.Mus degree is the minimum requirement to form opinions about what music you dislike.

How I FEEL about something is perfectly valid. I don't need to know it or understand it to know that, right now, this is something I like. What's not "holy" about that?!  I might change my opinion as I start to explore something, I might grow to like something I initially dismissed; I may end up disliking something. A deeper understanding may help sway an opinion, but the organic instinct and emotion of how I feel about something isn't overly affected by how much I know about it.  

I don't like atonal music. I understand, to a very high level what's going on in it and the process behind it. I still don't have to like it.

And I guess this is my point. There's a difference between how you FEEL about something, and being able to appreciate it in and of itself. I respect contemporary musics, and can see how/why others might like it...but it's not for me.

*shrug*

Well, I think the fact that the OP posted in 3 separate threads about his dislike for "atonal music" is off-putting to most. Maybe if he posted it once (with reasoning behind his dislike), it wouldn't be a big deal. 

ALSO, the OP repeatedly mentions Arnold Schoenberg as the poster boy for "atonal music" and 20th century music in general....which is not exactly the same same as "contemporary music", which leads me to believe that he hasn't fully explored what's out there. 

55 minutes ago, danishali903 said:

Arnold Schoenberg as the poster boy for "atonal music" and 20th century music in general....

Well, he was already during his lifetime, despite contemporaries like Stravinsky, Bartok and Shostakovich being better received (as were Rachmaninov and R. Strauss despite being staunch Romantics).

And we can't deny how his developments (as those by Berg and Webern, among others) led directly to the 50s and 60s with Boulez and Cage taking the torch, and how his legacy carried on up to the 80s-90s.

That doesn't mean any of us must like them or embrace them in any way, either as composers or as mere listeners. Or that we must prefer this style to be regarded as "relevant". Even Lutoslawski and Penderecki eventually shook off the urge to "write modern" and went on to build their own voice.

Fat chance I'll ever like that compositional style or choose that road as a composer. Yet, as Tchaikovsky once said about Wagner, one can't fully escape such a powerful influence, no matter how much one actually despises it.

2 hours ago, robinjessome said:

How can having an opinion about music ever be a bad thing?

My previous point still applies.

17 hours ago, Ravels Radical Rivalry said:

There is only one thing Schoenberg ever wrote that I liked. I will link you to it to see if you can get into it. 

However, even though I have been defending your opinion and right to it it does sound like there probably a lot of stuff out there that you don't even know exists and could probably get into. There is always stuff people don't know about. It is the adventure of life. It is the people who think they are so much better then everyone because they think that they literally have a grasp on EVERYTHING that are the real losers and miserable people. 

What did you think of the Leshnoff I linked?

 

 

That is true, i haven't actually listened to a lot of atonal music because i somehow automatically assume that the whole genre sucks. Oh also the Leshnoff work wasn't exactly fantastic IMO but it does sound good and it works.

16 hours ago, Gylfi said:

 

 

Isn't exactly exciting but it works i guess.

1 hour ago, Austenite said:

My previous point still applies.

 

People might try and make me feel bad about an opinion about music...doesn't necessarily make it "Bad."   

2 hours ago, danishali903 said:

Well, I think the fact that the OP posted in 3 separate threads about his dislike for "atonal music" is off-putting to most. Maybe if he posted it once (with reasoning behind his dislike), it wouldn't be a big deal. 

ALSO, the OP repeatedly mentions Arnold Schoenberg as the poster boy for "atonal music" and 20th century music in general....which is not exactly the same same as "contemporary music", which leads me to believe that he hasn't fully explored what's out there. 

 

Are you sure? Because last time i checked this is the only thread that is clearly about my dislike for atonal music, i did mention it a bit on another thread but that is about it if i am correct. Also i will be exploring atonal music a bit more, so don't worry just yet.

So how do you guys think music will progress in the future? Like will we start embracing Atonal music or will we just keep ourselves to the good old Tonal music? What new genres might pop up? New instruments?

I just want to hear what you guys think honestly.

How can it ever be bad to be you ?

Since liking something or not liking something is the same as just being, who you are.

it makes no sense that not liking something should ever be bad.

That is just nonsense.

Different people will neccesarily like different things.

So say we start embracing atonal music and ditch tonality. Some hundred years go by and people start seeking something else other than atonal music, what will they do then? Like what will they come up with? 

I know i have been making a lot of threads about atonal music but just let me know what you think about this question.

EDIT: Wtf.....i thought this was in another thread i created?