Some people do seem to have a great ear for music from a very young age. I'm not one of them, though I've improved a lot as a listener in the last few years. I think almost anyone can learn to like almost any music if they really want to.

 

Taking the question literally: One poster here used to claim that some listeners had "better ears" than others, and these were the ones more likely to appreciate avant-garde music. Take it for what it's worth.

 

Yep, thanks KenOC that was what I meant - "better ears". Your closing statement is a fine one "take it for what's it's worth".

Member Garlic made a good point above though about learning to like almost any music if they really want. But that's a trade off between how much effort one is willing to do so versus the rewards later, and of course not everyone is prepared to do that (folks might have restraints say how much time they spend on listening, how much money to spend on it etc.)

 

I tend to be able to see the beauty or good qualities of most music I come across. Is that the kind of thing you are talking about?

 

I think so. But I have one question. You mention "good qualities of most music" you have come across, but is that quite a wide range of music (meaning wide range in periods, styles, genres etc.) or wide ranging within your preference?

I am leaving the definition "open" as I don't believe this sort of thing is "strict" in a rigorous sense. Just for casual discussion.

 

I believe that there are naturally gifted listeners - there are naturally gifted most things - but most natural qualities can be developed.

For example, if someone can play an instrument by ear (I can), the facility improves the more you practise it, and would dwindle slightly if you didn't use it for years. I am a person who has enjoyed a wide range of music all my life but have had a few blind spots, notably for more modern music & various sorts of jazz. However, after six months on TC trying out things I wouldn't have done once, I now am able to enjoy slightly more modern or jazzy music. My ear has 'expanded'.

So if a person with a natural gift for appreciating music was exposed to every sort of music from the word go, would they develop a genius for listening? I can't believe, though, that they wouldn't become a player or a composer or a critic, or use their listening as the basis for creative work like art or poetry. Listening on its own for such a wonderful person would become too passive.

 

We'll see about that.

 

I don't see how someone can naturally appreciate good invention within a style until they have actually heard a reasonable amount of that style. Perhaps they could then pick it up quicker than some other people, but they still start from scratch like anyone else. So I think it must take some effort and time. The difference probably is that some put more of that in because they get more enjoyment out of it compared to others. I have no idea if that part is a natural or born preference or not, but it could be.

 

Sure, why wouldn't there be natural differences in how people process the sounds they hear?

This would involve differences in things like pattern recognition and, despite what the OP says, pitch perception, not to mention personality traits like openness to novel experiences, all shaped by (conscious and unconscious) exposure and learning.

 

Being a gifted listener is the opposite of liking everything you hear. Does a gifted wine taster like every wine he samples? Giftedness is discerning, and opinionated, and its findings must be asserted with snobby authority. The lesser works must be eviscerated and the godly works raised to the heavens for those who cannot tell the difference themselves. That is the gifted listener's burden.

 

This makes me insecure in my music listening skills.

 

I believe in the concept of apperception, whereby a person does not experience things separately, but as a whole. The orchestra before the instruments, so to speak.
I also believe that there are people capable of feeling details, small sounds that are in general not perceived by most people. Whether this is natural or not, I do not know. We are all technically capable of hearing things if we look for them, but I think there is an innate way of listening to music and having great ideas about music.
This also comes with a great open-mindedness about culture.. no ? The more we learn about composers,their environment and education, the more we can hear things that make up the composer's style.

 

I agree on not liking everything but just as important has to be appreciating all styles (including in popular music), and I just don't see that as being an immediate thing.

 

I'm not a naturally gifted listener, my ears really opened up once I started to listen with the score

 

I voted "no." To suggest that there are naturally gifted listeners would imply that there is some sort of objective hierarchy of good and bad music which only the talented listeners can decipher. This would give rise to comments such as: "Oh I'm sorry you don't like [insert piece of avant-garde muisc here]; you're just not a gifted enough listener to appreciate it." I am of the opinion that taste is entirely subjective and that people are entitled to listen to whatever they want.

 

Well if people just want to listen to music which is very generic and lacking any semblance of fresh ideas that would obviously be their choice, but I think work which has more individuality does have some right to be given more prominence according to most people.

 

To me, a "naturally gifted" listener would be in part someone with a great memory - if the first time you hear a 40 minute long symphony you notice that a motif from the opening movement has returned at the end of it, I envy the goll darng tar out of you.

There is probably also some individual difference in how well we can recognize intervals, not only in that some people can do so more accurately than others but that some people can do so much more easily (without extensive ear training exercises) than others.

I don't think we can easily contest those things. Of course musical education and experience can improve those things, but some people seem more talented than others. Individual variation is just a fact of life.

But whether there is any such thing as "getting" music in some romantic sense is open to question to me. I don't know. Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I don't .

In all questions like this, for me it comes back to the analogy with literature because I am much, much more confident in that field. There is such a thing as not "getting" something like, say, Shakespeare. Usually the main thing that means is a failure to understand the language itself, but in a lot of cases it also means a failure to appreciate the literary elements (you know, metaphors, puns, comparisons and contrasts between characters, irony, etc.) that he uses so well. Those guys, I'd say, don't "get it." Probably most of them could, if they were willing to put in the work. But there are also some people who in spite of being as aware (or more aware!) of such things as I am still don't enjoy Shakespeare - for instance, the vulgarity and cynicism turn some people off. Those guys, I'd say at least, "get it," but just don't enjoy it.

Edit: On the other hand, the skills that go into appreciating Shakespeare can make other authors or texts less enjoyable. If I were unaware of issues like symbolism or significant detail or whatever, I would probably enjoy Bradbury more than I do....

I think there is an analogy between literature and any other art: if you are educated in the field you can appreciate things that more casual observers can't. But I don't necessarily equate appreciation with enjoyment - there is a kind of legitimate variety of taste that exists independently of appreciation. Of course modernist art often aims (or seems to aim) to alienate a majority of its audience, but that is at worst only a complication.

In the field of music I've decided to enjoy it without working to further educate myself about it. I guess I will continue to learn more about it, but I'm going to do so at my haphazard pleasure, just having a good old time. Anyway, wow have I gotten off topic here. I'm going to leave this here because I'm too self-indulgent to delete it, but if you actually read this I should give you a "like" for getting here.

The original point of this example was supposed to be that some people pick up literary stuff more easily than others. There are naturally talented readers. Of course education can supplement or to some degree compensate for what nature gives. Edit: BUT "getting" that stuff is different than "enjoying" a work - and sometimes (or often?) "getting" that stuff means not enjoying a work as much as a more naive person might.

 

Maybe I just don't get that, but it seems to me that enjoying a work is appreciating something that is good in it otherwise you wouldn't enjoy it. And appreciating variety doesn't have to mean not enjoying that variety to an extent. I'm not saying you have to enjoy it as much as your favourite style but appreciation has to have some enjoyment and not just purely be some cold intellectual acknowledgement of something. And I don't see why literature doesn't depend as much as anything else on familiarity, developing an ability to process what is before you.

 

Applause regarding the use of Karl Jenkins as your example!!

 

Of course you can have naturally gifted listeners. My late father-in-law had no musical training but it was obvious he knew what he liked and was discerning as to interpretations. Of course, most naturally gifted people today have the opportunity of musical training. It wasn't so back then.

 

I don't believe having a good ear manifests in having a preference for one style or another. It's merely the ability to be able to mentally sort out aural information, and if the information is unfamiliar (because the style is alien), then it will be just as hard to sort as for a listener who does not have such an ability. There's no doubt that one's ear can be developed, as well, so having innate talent doesn't necessarily put one above others who do not.

So, my answer to the question would be yes, but I'm not voting, because I think the question as stated is more or less irrelevant to the discussion.

 

When it comes to listening to music for me, just like any other thing, I try to see and hear things not from just the surface level and I can find something positive and beautiful in everything that way. I don't see how that's "gifted," it's just a certain value I like to have.

 

I know I have a good ear though, as in good aural skills (chord recognition, interval recognition, rhythmic and melodic and harmonic memorisation and being able to write them down after hearing it, intonation etc. etc. etc.) but this is the result of training my ears and practising for many years, this isn't a "gift."

 

Why do you think underground death/black metal has such a following when most people say "I just don't understand why they have to scream so much"? Voted yes.

 

Both the music and its followers are demonstrably sociopathic. There's a lot of that going around.

 

I'm not denying that there's a lot of meatheads like that in the scene, no.

 

I think there are those gifted with good memories and with pitch differentiation. I understand Pierre Boulez can hear each note in a tone cluster. I don't have that ability. I can approximate those abilities through training, but it's not innate.

Then there is the artistic temperament. Some people are naturally predisposed to art, art music, etc. I'm that way. I'll put up with a piece that sounds awful until I make sense of it and it becomes beautiful. My wife isn't, and she's banned Charles Ives' music from the house when she's in it.

That's my feeling about the subject.

 

I'll put up with a piece that sounds awful until I make sense of it and it becomes beautiful. My wife isn't, and she's banned Charles Ives' music from the house when she's in it.

In a perfect world, we'd be neighbors, and every Saturday afternoon you could come over to my house and listen to Ives with me, and our wives could get together at your place and... whatever. We'd be listening to Charles Ives.

 

I thought I answered this question when I joined

 

On the contrary, that is when we began to form our suspicions....

 

It's the old argument of nature vs. nurture. I think that being naturally "gifted" is a factor, but if this skill is not encouraged or developed, it will certainly lose its effectiveness. Both of these factors have to come into play in order for it to work.

 

I deliberately avoided defining what might be meant by "naturally gifted musical listeners" because if I were to impose my definiton for this poll, then the definition would almost certainly be disagreed and the discussion will probably not go anywhere. By leaving it open, I was encouraging folks to present their ideas and thoughts, and after that, hopefully collate some observations that may seem pretty consistent and we might therefore roughly agree, more or less.

So far, the three key points appear to be

(1) "naturally gifted musical listeners" tend to (but not always) "get" the idiom of a "wide range of music".

(2) But "getting" the idiom of music does not imply they also enjoy every single one of those genres, e.g. naturally gifted listener "gets" the idiom of country western music but doesn't enjoy the music. Their preference can be separated from their "gift".

(3) It appears to be able to nurture one who was not necessarily "born naturally gifted" as a listener to one that can become one by wide ranging listening/study/exposure one way or another

These three points are what I managed to collate so far.

 

I think that it's undeniable that there are people who are more musically inclined than others. That pertains to playing and listening in general. Given the right environment that person can flourish.