It took me quite a while to get into 20th-century music, even the milder stuff like Debussy and Ravel. I grew up listening to a lot of common-practice classical (mostly 18th and 19th centuries) and it was hard for me to expand my horizons beyond my beloved tonic-dominant cadences! In college, I gradually started pushing myself outside my comfort zone...I took some classes on 20th-century music history and theory, and that helped me to connect with musical styles that had previously been alien to me. Nowadays, I love many 20th-century works, though I'm still struggling with the atonal and avant-garde composers!

 

Händel. I don't know, I sort of glossed over him when I was younger. My parents had recordings of some of his works, like the Water Music suite or the Music for the Royal Fireworks.... my piano teacher made me read short bios about him.... other than that, though, he was just another musical figure to me.

 

My path was very similar to Bettina's. I seemed to love almost all pre-1900 composers but stumbled somewhat with Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel. It didn't take long to come to love those composers, and looking back, it's hard for me to really remember what it was like to not enjoy, say, much of Prokofiev or Ravel.

There were a large number of post 1900 composers whose works I didn't enjoy, but after years of patient, and maybe proper, listening I gradually began to enjoy quite a few such composers. Rather than list dozens of composers I've come to like, I'll give a few specific examples.

I had listened on and off to Schnittke without much success. My first introduction was his Violin Concerto #4. Those who are familiar with that work will know that the violin enters with an amazingly "awful" sound. I couldn't really get past how repulsive that sounded and never ventured further. I occasionally listened to other works but had little success. Somewhat recently the TC Top Post-1950 thread started, and many Schnittke works were nominated. As I listened, I was surprised that suddenly I seemed to like all of them. Now Schnittke is a favorite of mine.

I had a similar experience with Boulez. First, second, third, etc. listenings went nowhere. The music was bizarre. It made no sense and gave no pleasure. At some point I "learned" to listen for different aspects of the music and soon found much of his music was enjoyable. It's hard to hear his works the way I did before since they seem so interesting and fun.

 

Vivaldi. Loved him as a kid, decided later that he was "superficial," and now can't get enough of him. A big part of the blame should probably go to Giuliano Carmignola and Andrea Marcon.

 

I have a feeling the more accustomed I become to Liszt, the more I will grow to like him and will fit into this category for me.

 

Just about all of them. Funny thing is, I grew up with classical music. But we mostly listened to Beethoven. Just about all the rest were an acquired taste. I distinctly remembered a time when I thought Rachmaninoff and Schubert are completely tuneless (!!).

In my teens I made an effort to discover and appreciate a wider range of classical music. It now seems strange to me that there was a time when it took great effort. But I suppose that is one of the things with classical music: it demands some input by the listener, and mostly doesn't come naturally. That would explain why it isn't the most popular of styles.

 

I'm not sure about the "requires input" part. My mother for instance does not spend countless hours listening to Classical, she just finds it very pleasant to her, and if she doesn't like it, she says it. Her favorite piece is the Blue Danube, and she is very fond of Mozart, and the more pleasant sounding classical. I don't think she would appreciate Atonal or works like the Rite of Spring. Lots of dissonance isn't pleasant, and she probably wouldn't like it.

I think the main reason people are turned off from Classical is because of the snobbery associated with it.

I used to believe that some music requires a "getting it" phase. I don't put it quite like that, I think music can grow on you, but you should naturally want to keep coming back to it, not force yourself to listen to something you really didn't like at all on the first listen, unless you feel a desire to give it another chance because you were in a bad mood at the time, or some other extraneous factor.

I don't believe there is such thing as intelligent music and non-intelligent music, but I do believe Classical appeals to a more sophisticated and intellectual crowd because it is certainly more refined and sophisticated.

 

Beethoven. I liked him when I first started listening to CM but then for a while, when all I knew were the big symphonies, I thought his music was overwrought and too conservative. Then I found the chamber music... :angel: I fell in love with the symphonies again also.

 

As a kid, I couldn't stand Bach. I wasn't ready for him.

Now, he's my favorite composer!

 

Same, I wrote off the entire Baroque era as being too unemotional. Not saying Bach is now my favorite, I don't really have a favorite.

 

MOZART.

I used to not believe. I used to jeer with contempt and disbelief when I'd see him top those lists with click-baity titles on Classic FM. I thought that he died too late rather than too early, and that the music he churned out was but a pile of repetitive alberti-basses and superficial, singy-songy melodies, bovine in intellect, pulled straight out of his rear end. I refused to listen to anything he wrote but the Requiem. I would have none of that galant trash!

Thankfully, that changed. :lol:

Two recordings eased my transition: one featuring Andreas Staier/Christine Schornsheim playing on a monstrous harpsichord-piano hybrid, the vis-a-vis, built by J.A. Stein in 1777. I guess it was the soundscape of fortepiani and harpsichords, familiar to a HIP fanatic like me, that appealed to me, and the playing was too good to miss -- it was brilliant, riveting, and in some ways, exotic. It helped me appreciate the music and realize that Mozart wasn't all Alberti basses after all, and actually composed some very complex, even radical pieces, like the fugue to K. 394.
Sample: Deusche Tanze from the recording

Then, I found Wim Winters, whose Bach recordings I already liked quite a lot, playing Mozart on the Clavichord. Although I still have my reservations about the recordings, I guess the relaxed way he plays makes Mozart sound more like a continuation or a logical result, rather than an antithesis, of the Baroque and Galant, while also looking forward to the Romantic.
KV 281:

 

Still not that big a fan of Bartok and still don't like / get the even more "modern "composers.

 

In my teens, when I was gorging on Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Wagner, Brahms struck me as a rather drab imitation of a Romantic composer, constantly reining himself in with his structural severity and sober orchestral dress. My change of heart was gradual, but eventually he became one of my few indispensable favorites. His orchestral works have lost some their charm for me now (except when Furtwangler reveals in him troubled depths and a desperate intensity we didn't suspect), but his chamber music is for me a glory of the repertoire.

As for "modern" music (you know, dissonant stuff), it took a little time to get used to some of it, but my basic responses haven't changed much. The main difference is that now I don't have that juvenile compulsion to judge as "bad" what I don't enjoy.

 

Good and positive topic for a thread!

I've enjoyed Bartók myself from the first note I heard when I was 15 or so. I had many reservations on Liszt for a long time but recently I've discovered his later piano works and I love them immensely. Earlier the same thing happened with Beethoven who's late string quartets I also enjoy.

 

I did not like their music earlier but I like them now: Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Haydn, Schumann, Mahler, Stockhausen, Boulez, Lachenmann.

 

I used to think Mozart was just tediously pretty.

Handel was only on my radar as the one who wrote the inexplicably boring Water Music and Fireworks Music; Bach's non-keyboard music felt into that category too. Fortunately I discovered HIPP and my perspective changed.

On a less singificant scale perhaps, I was listening to several pieces by Golijov last night and found that he was suddenly a long way from "meh" for me.

 

Appreciating Schoenberg and beyond took some time for me way back in the late 80s when I started exploring classical music. Now I like a lot of 20th and 21st century works.

 

Max Reger - I used to diss him as ultra-stodgy ersatz Brahms until the dam broke and I gradually realised what he was striving for.

 

I still haven't figured that out. What was he striving for? I find him interesting, but sometimes he seems bent on cramming the maximum number of modulations into the smallest possible space just to prove he can.

 

My dad took me to a concert of Brahms Deutsche Requiem when I was 11 or something. It might have been a bad performance (in Kenya), but it took maybe 15 years before I listened to him again. A funny note: I took my wife and her dad to a performance of the same piece, and they almost burst out laughing at the same spot, where the timpani plays..."It wasn't me" is what they said the player looked like.

 

Haydn and Mozart. In fact, Haydn has become a very special favorite for me.

 

There was a time I seriously disliked late 19th century pompously heroic german music, but I can hardly remember that any more. Now it's more like my cup of tea

 

Puccini--at first I thought his music was filled with gibberish, but eventually I realized it was just Italian.

 

Haydn. I used to think he was basically just a worse version of Mozart.

 

Mozart, Bach, and Brahms.

For Mozart and Bach, I thought that most of their music was boring. As it turned out, I was just listening to the wrong recordings. But I still prefer Haydn over Mozart.

For Brahms, when I was younger, I thought that it all sounded a little too "manufactured" and lacked real inspiration - but as I reached middle age, I think that I developed a little more perspective and patience, and a little more understanding of musical forms and structure. And singing in a performance of the German Requiem helped.

 

Mozart, Bach, and Brahms.

For Mozart and Bach, I thought that most of their music was boring. As it turned out, I was just listening to the wrong recordings. But I still prefer Haydn over Mozart.

For Brahms, when I was younger, I thought that it all sounded a little too "manufactured" and lacked real inspiration - but as I reached middle age, I think that I developed a little more perspective and patience, and a little more understanding of musical forms and structure. And singing in a performance of the German Requiem helped.

Heh heh. My experiences with Mozart and Brahms were similar (and I also still prefer Haydn to Mozart). The Requiem was my gateway to Brahms. I sang "How lovely is they dwelling place" with the NJ All-State Chorus and loved it, and later performed the whole work with the Braintree, MA Choral Society while listening to the splendid old Klemperer recording. I rather suddenly found myself hearing his other works differently.

 

Delius and Webern.

 

I once wrote that I did not like Ravel but I changed my mind shortly afterwards.

 

I guess the biggest turn around for me was Schoenberg. I still don't really really "get" all of it but I kept listening to him in headphones as background music at work. Suddenly it dawned on me one day I was enjoying it (his Op. 29 suite for winds) feeling that the instruments were having a conversation and I was picking out little phrases that were repeating. It started making a lot more -- sense? A lot more something anyway.

I think the biggest problem aside from it being a different musical language, and on the surface a really unpleasant ugly one, is that well meaning folks were trying to ease me into Schoenberg by way of his "Verklärte Nacht," which is supposed to be more accessible. I just wasn't getting that work. I still don't. Maybe someone can nudge me in the right direction to understand what I'm supposed to appreciate in this piece. But for whatever reason I finally started enjoying the above mentioned suite for chamber winds, and both his violin and piano concertos, the amazing string quartets and several other difficult pieces. They are just beyond my grasp, and maybe that makes them all the more intriguing for me.

 

I think the biggest problem aside from it being a different musical language, and on the surface a really unpleasant ugly one, is that well meaning folks were trying to ease me into Schoenberg by way of his "Verklärte Nacht," which is supposed to be more accessible. I just wasn't getting that work. I still don't.

Same here: it grates on me much worse than any of his later works.