...or isn't it? Anyway I think like they do, I hate rock, pop, rap, country, disco, you name it, so much that I almost get angry hearing that stupid, mindless crap with their idiotic drums. I tolerate operettas - although I would never buy one - and although I can enjoy Bellini and Donizetti, they come far down on my list of fav composers. Debussy, Ravel, Leoncavallo and above all Delius, I never listen to. Mozart is the supreme one, Bach is 2nd, Beethoven and Wagner fighting for 3rd place, Verdi and Schubert for 5th, then Handel, R.Strauss, Chopin, Bruckner, Schoenberg and Berg, and Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Palestrina, Puccini, Bizet, Haydn, Gluck, Smetana, Grieg, Berwald, Sibelius, Albinoni, Gounoud, Wolf, Mahler, well whatever.

I wasn't born this way. From 1963 (when I was 6) I liked Beatles, Stones, Animals etc in the 60s, Cream, Doors, Yes, 10cc, Henry Cow in the 70s, and my big hero was Jimi Hendrix! I was exposed to classics during my childhood and youth as my parents played nothing else but I didn't like anything but Bolero, Spring, and Peer Gynt. The usual ones when one has no clue. Suddenly in 1978 I just hated the rock I liked so much, and jumped in the sky hearing Schubert. The euphoria I got listening to classical surpassed anything I earlier had experienced with rock. My friends were totally confused, as was I at that time, but I didn't miss rock for one second. I quickly sold all my records, buying classical ones, running to the opera house, to concerts etc. Got new friends, but kept several of my former popfriends as I liked them as humans.

Only I had to beg them not to play their records to me, as I promised not to play Scoenbergs violin concerto to them. I also said that drums made my head ache - which wasn't true, but it was a reason. I WORSHIP classical music, if anyone put drums to Bach I'll kill them, it's sacrilege.

Ooops this was way too long, lol. And excuse my english, it's not my native tongue.

wolf

Life's too be short to be so negative.

Wow, theres a lot to deal with here! First....relax! I have come to a point in life that I have nothing to prove to anyone. If someone I know doesn't like what I listen to, no big deal. As for mindless dribble, yuppers, most pop is now days. Lets not forget raciset as well.

As far as what I listen too; I lost intrest in anything pop in the in the early ninties. I still listen to some of that old stuff once and a while. I like cruisen in may car with the American Graffiti sound track blasting. But tommorow it could be just as well as Jose Cura! Being a church musician, I am very much into the sacraed music of the early masters, the requims etc.

On a different note, I can't believe you placed Mozart above Bach? Without Bach, our western music would not be what it is today. There would have been no Mozart as we have come to know him. It's all about equel or even temperament tuning and the square root of twelve!

As a fellow classical fan, I'm not sure to welcome you aboard or just completely ignore the negativity that you're projecting.

I will say that I think it's okay to like one style more than another, but I would never come down to point of making a point to hate something. I don't put one style of music above another. I prefer classical and jazz, but these are the genres that I get the most out of and most importantly enjoy.

As you get older, you start realizing that good music is good music no matter what it is. You can find something distasteful all you want to, but to somebody else they might enjoy it, so while I think it's great that you're a classical fan, just like I am, I don't think it's wise to put down a particular style of music just because you find it inferior in some way.

I learned many years ago, you can't change what you like. You can hide or run away from the notion that you like something that you feel is inferior now all you want to, but there's no shame in coming to terms with the reality of what you like.

I still break out some Yes, Genesis (old Peter Gabriel-era), King Crimson, Soundgarden, Eric Johnson, Alice in Chains, or Toad the Wet Sprocket every now and then and I'm perfectly okay with it, because this music meant something to me and still does. That never changes.

By the way, welcome aboard.

You mean you don't like "A Village Romeo and Juliet"? That's funny about your your least favorite composer, Mr. Delius.

I rather love "A Mass of Life" myself. I heard it on the radio and was amazed.

I AM a classical snob, but you do not think like I do.

There are drums in orchestral music. Listen to any drum part in an orchestral piece. Often it's just a snare going rat-tat-tat-tat tat once in a while, almost just a sound effect. Or it may be one big cymbal crash or a triangle tingling away noisily in tutti sections. Compare that to any Neil Peart, Bill Bruford, or Jack DeJohnette virtuoso drum track that is so integral to the music. You may not enjoy it, but you must be aware it is not idiotic!

I believe you and I are about the same age but we are going about things in opposite directions, I started out hating pop/rock music and thinking only classical was sublime. I have grown since then.

Bgroovy2 (first thanks for your welcome), I wouldn't dream of trying to prove anything - but considering that you are surronded with muzak and pop all day long, in telephone queues, elevators, shops, from passing cars, youngsters etc, I'd appreciate if one wasn't forced to listen to it privately too. As everyone knows, 98% of all humans, abhor class music and can't stand even 30 seconds of it, so knowing that I suggested in all humility that my friends would refrain from playing their music to me, as I would to them. If they suffered so much from that, they could manfully have endured a couple of hours of Berg and Richard Strauss, then I would of course have to endure their rock.

But they wouldn't, so why should I? And they seem to think the deal is fair. On parties etc I have to let go of course. If I am on my own, and am watching an interesting TVprogram,I turn it off if the producers choose to have Deep Purple as background music, but of course I do nothing of the sort, nor do I leave the room, if several people are sitting together. And I don't discuss music with them, or try to 'enlighten' them. I have absolutely no problem with ppl preferring pop - it's just that I don't want to listen when I dislike it so intensely, as perhaps you don't want to listen to Ms Spears.

As for preferring Mozart, I only go by the amount of euphoria the music produces in me and the enjoyment I get from it. As Mozart has everything - a divine sense of humour, a melody line of haunting beauty, exhilarating movement in the music, and concentrated polyphonia - I prefer him to all others. But of course Bach is soooo much more important in our musical history, as are most composers btw, and Moz from 1782 onwards would never have been so fantastic without J.Ss influence. Mozart is only a footnote in the history of development in our western musical culture, but what a fantastic footnote...

As for mirror Image, i don't know what to answer, you seem to have misunderstood me. I could have lied - as usual - and said that I loved all rock AND classical music, of course that would have been better, but I thought one could write the truth in a forum like this one. I presented myself, that's who I am, noone taught me to sound as if I'd have been a music critic in Nazi Germany (notwithstanding Schönberg, Mendelssohn and Mahler). I didn't fall in love with classical music and then scornfully berated what I listened to before, the whole caboodle STARTED with me suddenly getting violently irritated by my heroes Hendrix et al (and at that time I couldn't understand why), I didn't begin to listen to classical until a few weeks later, suddenly hearing a piece of Schubert, and almost not believeing my ears as I shook from head to toes. If you still listen to your old rockfavorites, great, I do not, as it gives me absolutely nothing.

Faramondo, no I don't, I can listen to Delius as background music to a TVprogram (I don't turn it off even when I'm alone!) but I never listen to him on CD as his music doesn't interest me.

Weston, please! I certainly didn't mean drums in classical music! What would Götterdämerung be without them? I meant that ever-the-same drumrythm as - for instance - poptypes use when 'popping' up mozart etc. And also drums in rock as that is what penetrates into my head from shops etc even when I have my own headphones on.

Bill Brufords drums are less idiotic than most, certainly, but as you say, I don't enjoy them anyway.

I read many posts before entering, and I've seen ever so many where the signatures berate this and that, especially rap or Britney or whatever, and certainly from you too. If I put my acceptance level very tight, thats who I am, I don't worship classical music because I think it's cool to do so, but because it gives me exhilarating and euphoric feelings, and intense joy and pleasure.

You feel exactly the same way I do about Mozart. I don't care, though, about how revolutionary a composer is. I'm interested in the music's quality, not what makes it different. What makes Mozart so impressive to me was the ability to compose pieces that are immortal and STILL remain conventional to the standards of composition for his time. I also love how many of them sound both happy and sad at the same time, creating that "longing" feeling perfectly described in the movie Amadeus. Besides, his music has that "wit" that you don't get in a lot of the more florid Romantic era pieces.

Well uhhh....erm....Welcome? Hope you can be a ....productive member on these....boards...uhh..*shaking*



















DRUMSETS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!! *runs away.

Personally, I find it abhorrent when the classical intelligentsia talk trash and look down at other forms of music.

Me too. I find it distasteful.

I suspect that the biggest reason many people say they don't like classical music actually has little to do with the music itself. I suggest that rants like a couple of those seen here make many people say, "Wow, if that's what classical music does to people then I don't want anything to do with it."

In short, the people who imagine themselves to be classical music's greatest fans are actually its worst enemies.

I disagree with your final assertion. While no one can justifiably say they are the "greatest" fan of classical music, I'd say those of us on this forum are probably up there close to that. We are all very much in love with classical music, to be sure. I know I am. But I don't think we are our own worst enemies, at least not is this forum. MOst of us here, anyway, have a very down-to-earth relationship with classical music, and most are anything but "snobs" and "elitists." We are easy going people who happen to love an art form whose core audience of stuffy society hacks in tuxedos and top hats is largely a myth.

__________________
"Music is not philosophy." --Akira Ifukube

I never thought classical fans were that bad or that there was anything wrong with them. They, like any style of music, have people who are snobs and only consider their preferred genre to be the best. I never thought like this, because it's a dangerous frame of mind you get into when you start thumbing your noses at everything.

Coming from a jazz background, there are people in the jazz world that are absolute grade A snobs and elitists, but this doesn't bring me down and keep me from enjoying the music just like a classical snob doesn't keep me from enjoying the music.