Try as I might, I really do not like listening to German songs. I often happen on them on Radio3 and stay listening with effort. Then, what sounded like a man's fervent outrage at what happened on the Eastern front and what he is going to do about it and I learn at the end it was about appreciating the beauty of a butterfly or similar.

Classical music we don't like? Only about 98% of it.

Edit. And why do we now have 3 threads of the stuff, instead of one which is easily ignored?

chamber music...

I'm sure this makes me a complete Philistine, but I can't be doing with Wagner, especially not Brunhilde.

The beautiful warrior maiden is nearly always a fat soprano in pigtails and a plastic helmet and it just makes want to giggle. Sorry.

Yes Temp, not only do we seem to like the same music, we also seem to abhor the same stuff too...

I'm not at all a fan of Wagner, although I can tolerate the 'Ride of the Valkyries', but as soon as the said Valhalla Maidens (maidens? ha!) start wailing - or whaling, as my ex always said they sounded like they were doing - I'm done with it.

But not all big sopranos make me giggle. Mozart's, 'Queen of the Night', Aria in 'The Magic Flute' is impressive if nothing else... If they can actually hit all the notes, as in this recording by the soprano, Diana Damrau, where mercifully she does manage to faultlessly hit all the high notes, while acting at the same time, but then the role of "Queen of the Night" is one of some "gravitas" and not at all suited to a wee slip of a girl (NB the aria proper starts at 2:10):



Actually I love the 'The Magic Flute' and I'll own up and say that I do in fact really like this particular aria (if it's sung well) and for the quality of the music, not necessarily just for the comedy effect of the weight of the singer, or the number of their chins! But I do realise "huge screeching sopranos" aren't necessarily to everyone's taste..... many might well think she's whaling again, or has even already been harpooned...!

Mm, neither are portly Madam Butterfields and Lt Pinkertons. Some opera perfomances are better heard than witnessed. I disgraced myself with a fit of giggles at aC Garden production of Don Carlos - in front stalls with deaf grandma trying to channel my mind yet again. He took such a loooonnggg time to die after being shot at the top of a flight of stairs down which he tottered whilst balling out his last notes for what seemed like 15 minutes.

And another thing - when the stout Valkyries are also swinging across the stage on strong harnesses, its best not to be there, really.... people turn and hush when you whisper 'Oh my gawd, will it hold out,' etc.

You and modern audiences are not alone, Priscilla. On the 1853 opening night of Verdi's opéra tragique, "La Traviata", the lead soprano, Fanny Salvini-Donatelli in role of Violetta, was supposed to be playing the role of a delicate young woman wasting away from tuberculosis. Unfortunately Madame Salvatini-Donatelli was nearly 40 years old and notoriously fat. In the third act when the doctor announced that Violetta's illness had worsened and she had only hours to live, the first-night audience burst out laughing, with one wag shouting: "I see no consumption, only dropsy!"

Even Verdi, the composer, described the night as: "an utter fiasco"!

The story of Tosca throwing herself off the Castel Sant'Angelo, landing on the heap of mattresses and rebounding to reappear above the walls may or may not be true but it should be.

I also include many areas of jazz in my likes but have a strong dislike for any jazz that features a xylaphone, sorry L. Hampton fans but there it is. Louis Armstrong sometimes had a go at the bones too - same reaction from me. The sound irritates. Hand bell ringing comes close to that - not that it figures in anything closely resembling classical music. Oh dear, one has to be so careful. When my 'Yah yah,' cricket loving accountant said he played the hand bells in a church group I nearly had a stroke from suppressed giggles and stifled opinion.

I can't be doing with sopranos at any price, however big/small they may be.

I don't really like opera, except perhaps in concert performance.

Wagner and Delius leave me cold.

I really hate jazz .... but then jazz isn't classical music, so I suppose that's a rather irrelevant comment to post on a "classical music we don't like" thread.

Oh what joy to find another that hates jazz... I find a biscuit tin full of nails tumbling down the stairs more tunefull...

Mm, perhaps you have not been listening to the best, norm and MM. Thelonious Monk's 'Solitude' for instance- he recorded several versions - and I heard it live at one enthralling concert, doesn't have a tin nail and bucket sound, believe me. .... and it's classic jazz of its genre - and Monk a master of it.

It also begs the question - is this jazz, or Academic, music?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CZFnyXwlV4

and where in the musical canon does this sit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3JrxoHUssE

Despite my family being generally musical (my grandmother played the piano in what was then called an orchestra and later a band) and me learning the piano for about ten years classical music was never really familiar to me. I think music teachers could spend more time telling kids about music and less getting them to play it. I didn't have, after all that time, any sense of the changes in classical music forms or where different composers fitted.

So opera has always been a closed book to me - I recall not long ago hearing an soprana singing an aria and thinking what a perfectly ghastly shrieking noise that was. The announcer then came on and said, "Wasn't that sublime?" Er, no. (But my kids tell me I only like women's voices if they sound like men, ie Marlene Dietrich, Marianne Faithful, etc.)

I'm not very fond of jazz either. And some blues bore me, but others I like a lot. The classical music I do like is the light piano stuff that I know, even if not by name necessarily.

Oh dear P... well I found your Thelonious Monk's 'Solitude', I wish I could be as enthusiastic as you about it, which raises the question why do peoples taste in music vary so much. To me jazz is nothing more than a dreadful cacophony of noise... half a dozen people playing together, unfortunatly not all the same tune which makes me wonder if they could repeat it, as I find it hard to believe its written down on sheet making something from ACDC or The Grateful Dead appealing. But then I dont like modern church music, modern art or modern poetry... I dont like modern architechture either. I wonder if its coz I’m an old grouch.

Yup... after listening to Priscilla's suggested Thelonious Monk's 'Solitude' ... I'm still with you Norman. It's not completely dire, but it leaves me cold. It sounds like a good pianist who's just tinkering around on the piano a bit before they start playing properly. Sorry P

But like you Norman I do wonder why people's musical tastes vary so much... is it just what we're used to, or what we were exposed to as children, or does it depend on what we associate it with, or does appreciation come with an understanding of the techniques etc...?

And I do sometimes wonder what, for instance, Mozart, a great musical innovator himself in his time, would have made of the music of Thelonious Monk, Michael Tippett, Stockhausen, ACDC, etc....

normanhurst wrote:

I dont like modern church music, modern art or modern poetry... I dont like modern architechture either. I wonder if its coz I’m an old grouch.

That's not it - You are suffering from Wingnuts Syndrome. Have you been associating with Hair to the Throne again?

Oops, forgot another pet hate... a total waste of oxygen...

To MM and Norman- I didn't expect you to like the Monk- but I wasmoved to do a Wikki read on him and found his work linked to Art Blakey's - now his version of Solitude you might like. MM, Monk's music is not about where it is heading but more about where it has been or more likely where it is now burrowing. Yes, I imagine you would dislike it no end. Monk is master of the pregnant pause and more classial music followers might find it - let's say very annoying! Though some Chopin players of note use the style it very well.

Since Wagner's got a bit of a battering and some folk aren't keen on opera. this is a must

I have read that though people find coincidences everywhere, there are billions of occasions when there are not coincidences. Be that as it may, I still them quite entrancing, and was very taken to see that the last two words in my book, the memoir about a piano lover, are Thelonius Monk. (I haven't finished my book yet, and naturally wouldn't do anything as dastardly as skip to the end, but it's permissible to check the sources and bibliographies etc as you read, which I did.)

I must made an effort with youtube today and listen to (some of) Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, of which the author says, "In thirty-three masterful variations on the theme, he parodies the styles of lesser composers, alludes to works of Bach and Mozart, anticipates Chopin, and finally reaches heights of such sublime beauty that all other compositions for the piano pale in comparison. In short, he summarizes his entire art in an hour-long piece that is by common consent one of the towering works of the Western imagination, as great and fundamental a manifesto for the classical era as Bach's Goldberg Variations are for the baroque. Only the greatest pianists can give a convincing interpretation of this masterpiece."

How do people recognise parodies of lesser composers of the 19th century? - I would think they have been forgotten by now. Apparently Diabelli sent his waltz to 50 composers (including 10-year-old Liszt) for their variations; I don't know how many responded or if others did great works.