Sung composers that you just "don't get"

[X. Trapnel]

Further dislikes: Post-Sacre Stravinsky: tiresome stuff, mannered and irritating whether silly-clever chic or freeze-dried pseudo-profound. Sheer agon-y. Milhaud: A case, I think, of a composer who allowed his natural voice to be choked and strangled by Stravinskyism; Poulenc, by contrast, took what he needed and went his own lyrical way. Virgil Thomson: more silly-clever vapidity. Charles Ives: More interesting to read about than to listen to, e.g., the faltering visionary quality of the Fourth Symphony kept earthbound by his straitlaced Yankee puritanism, a dubious tradition unnecessarily prolonged by the anhedonic and perfectly named Cage. However, any amount of any or all of these composers rather than a single bar of Rossini.

[TerraEpon]

My instances of "not getting it" tend to be of a composer's specific work(s) rather than of a composer per se. 

Yeah, same here. Take Beethoven for example -- LOVE the 1st, 6th, 7th...the 3rd is an utter BORE and the 2nd isn't much better. Love Moonlight, Appasionata, Pathetic, and Tempest sonatas, but many others, including the Hammenkalvier just don't do it for me. String quartets? Boring. Wind music though? Love it. Missa Solemnis? Meh. Mass in C? Nice.

Mozart my main source of 'meh' is the operas (sans Magic Flute which I love) and of the more popular works, the violin concerti.  Still, I rank Mozart high on my list of composers I like.

[semloh]

X-Trapnel - hmmm, I can't really argue with you there, except just maybe you're a bit harsh on Ives. After all it was only a hobby, he was producing some pretty radical stuff pre-WW1 (I am always amazed that Three Places in New England is from 1910!), and surely nobody can deny that the Adagio from the early 1st Symphony is a beauty.

[Ilja]

I think rather than list dislikes, it would be interesting to see which music you can appreciate on a rational level, but can't get your ears around on an emotional one. For me that would include Carl Nielsen (believe me, I've tried), Sibelius, and, yes, most of Glazunov.

The 'big one' is Bach. I'm quite sure there is some critical enzyme missing from my brain, but I simply don't understand it, on an aesthetic plane. Conversely, I can enjoy some music that my frontal lobes tell me is rubbish, or at least not of the highest quality.

On another note, I have to say that sometimes I get slightly irked by statements of the 'I like nothing after 1890' variety. No one can convince me they like NOTHING from the immense spectrum of post-romantic music, from Schoenberg to Schmidt-Kowalski and from Tveitt to Vasks - there's just SO much. You should pay more attention.

[Alan Howe]

A word of gentle admonishment here: please resist the temptation to post "shock horror" responses to others' personal opinions. It'll only end in tears...

[Christopher]

This thread is testimony to the diversity of tastes - I am left completely stunned that someone who loves music could not 'get' Mahler, who plumbed the depths and heights of emotion, or be utterly dazzled by Britten's sheer genius in his Frank Bridge Variations or Young Person's Guide, and Gershwin - half my life has been spent whistling, humming or singing his music ..... and so it goes on....

OK - now my confession - Tchaikovsky! utterly meaningless, repetitive, empty-headed, crash-bang-wallop, confused drivel, all fancy wrapping and no contents. (dives for cover!)

I completely agree with you re the diversity of tastes, and so in that same vein completely disagree with you about Tchaikovsky - for me it is he who "plumbs the depths and heights of emotion..."!  Mahler I, so far, just don't get (with the single exception of the second movement of the 5th Symphony, "Stürmisch bewegt...", not the overplayed fourth movement "Adagietto").

And please remember, this string has two halves:  many have commented on which masters they don't get, but it would be great to hear other people's suggestion of pieces they might try in order to "get" them!

[semloh]

Couldn't agree more - and I think we're all being appropriately respectful. I'm sure we don't confuse our distaste for certain composer/works for distate toward those who feel otherwise. It's just so amazing to become aware of such diametrically opposed reactions to music....

As to Bach... well most of his work leaves me stunned. I find it transcendent, and I can say no more. As to ways of approaching those composers we don't like, well can I say that I was never a Mahler fan until I saw Ken Russell's film, this p[rompted me to sit and immerse myself in Bernstein's early account of the 6th and I was absolutely bowled over. I think we find our way by all manner of routes!

[Christopher]

I enjoy Bach, but (to use a cliche) with my head not my heart.  His music doesn't move me, I don't find it spiritual, but supremely logical, which is a different experience entirely.  Apparently people of a mathematical bent find perfection in him.  I am not a mathematician!

[giles.enders]

I've listened to all the Bruckner symphonies a number of times with different conductors, over many years and I take no pleasure from them. To me they are an endless drone.

[Lionel Harrsion]

I've listened to all the Bruckner symphonies a number of times with different conductors, over many years and I take no pleasure from them. To me they are an endless drone.

Agreed!

[Alan Howe]

I've listened to all the Bruckner symphonies a number of times with different conductors, over many years and I take no pleasure from them. To me they are an endless drone.

I disagree - profoundly.

[Alan Howe]

My way into later Stravinsky was through the Symphony in Three Movements and the Symphony in C. Try Dutoit in these works. Very exciting.

I have listened to Bruckner since my school days forty years ago - hence he's always been around for me. Same applies to Mahler. IMHO, the best way into the former would be through either Symphony 4 or 7.

Bach's Brandenburgs conducted by Abbado on DVD are sublime, as is his B minor Mass conducted by Gardiner.

Tchaikovsky 1 drivel? Try again, sir, I say (humbly)!

And please don't dismiss Haydn until you've heard the finale to symphony No.90. Hilarious. (Try Rattle with the BPO live on EMI). And then there's The Creation. Just glorious...

[X. Trapnel]

Semloh--My favorite Ives is the Second Orchestral Set, Central Park in the Dark, 3 Places, and The Unanswered Question. Brevity helps; I've never made it to the end of the Concord Sonata, to my ears great fistfuls of notes accomplishing very little. As far as composer-hobbyists go I'll take Borodin.

[alberto]

On the last BBC Music several English critics are asked about "the most boring work" according to them. Some, with more or less humour, talk rather about the work (or works) they most dislike.
Indeed I didn't exspect to find in the list "Tristan und Isolde", Bruckner Seventh or the "Deutsche Requiem", or Purcell "Dido" (nor, on a slightly -but only slightly- subordinate plan, Madama Butterfly, Rossini Cenerentola, Britten "Dream" or Elgar "Kingdom").
Some of you could object that in this thread we are doing roughly the same thing as the critics asked  by BBC Music.
But I think there are at least two differences:
1) We are obviously more free than professionals.
2) None of the professionals has listed one contemporary or truly modern work (really sure that no one is boring, maybe a little more boring than Bruckner Seventh?). The most "advanced" listed is Britten "Dream". Isn't that again witnessing or proof that we-you are really more free than the professionals (of course I am not saying more skilled, maybe I am saying less snobbish)?
I would appreciate some comment.

[TerraEpon]

Haydn is a funny case for me. Most of his symphonies I find somewhat boring (I like 88 and the Paris symphonies best, I guess), but most of the string quartets -- especially, oddly enough, the earlier ones -- I find much more interesting. I find Haydn is best when he's "light' as it were. So I'm not big on The Seasons or The Creation either.

As for Bach, I oddly find I enjoy him best in symphonic transcriptions. I have five/six separate discs of those and love them all.