advertisement


Which composers do you find yourself bored by?

Trouble is, if I find them boring I don't listen to them! So I don't listen to much Mendelssohn or Brahms or Liszt.
 
It is more forms with me. I still struggle with symphonies. Give me something smaller scale or with an obvious lead instrument and chances are I’ll like it. I thought for a while about this before replying and the composers I would have cited all get off the hook as I like the concertos, string quartets, trios, sonatas etc.
 
I can admire Mozart's music, but it bores me.

I like Brahms 4th Symphony, but everything else he composed is just meh I'm afraid.
 
Bruckner, of course. But also Mahler and Mozart with some exceptions.

I find early music boring - especially all the plainsong kind of stuff. I start with Bach and Handel. Sometimes a smattering of Vivaldi, Marcello etc.

And serial music is seriously not for me. Bored by a lot of modern music, like Penderecki, Stockhausen. Like some of it, though.
 
Last edited:
Italian Opera - Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi etc.
But Puccini is wonderful.

Philip Glass.

Webern. Stockhausen.... Pretty much anything Darmstadt related.
 
Thankfully, very little classical music bores me. There are composers, such as Strauss, both Johan and Richard, which I don’t particularly like but I usually just think that it’s just me not getting it and leaving it for another year. Chopin came into that category until I watched that young girl playing on channel 4‘s “The Piano” and all of a sudden I got it, my aversion to Chopin was lifted and that is the wonderful thing about classical music, it is without limit and just when one thinks one knows what one likes another door opens with riches to be discovered.
 
Over many years my tastes in music have continuously evolved. It's not so much that at any moment I find any specific composer (musical form, etc.) boring, but more that what I am currently exploring and listening to is interesting or even exciting. What @camverton writes above hits a resonance with me although not necessarily with the specific composers mentioned.

An example is that when I came to classical music in the 1970s I decided that Beethoven had to be one of the composers I explored. After a while I moved on and Beethoven dropped out quite a lot. Much later I came back to explore his music again and it was a revelation to place it into the context I had acquired. It was a light-bulb moment to realize how revolutionary he had been and how exciting and original his music was, in a way I had not realized on first acquaintance.
 
I struggle to hear what Dvorak and Bartok are trying to say. I used to dislike Haydn when we played it in school/town orchestras but in old age these days his music often starts off a session.
 
I find Haydn very formulaic, which isn’t really surprising. And I’m tired of Mozart for similar reasons. There’s not much Bruckner or Brahms that gets me going. 20th century composers hold more interest for me, as a general rule.
 
I was interested that some folk find it difficult to find a tune in Bruckner. These days I find Bruckner is full of tunes, and as I write I find one playing in my head, but when I first turned from Led Zep, Family and Cream to classical I struggled to find a tune in so much classical. The one thing that sucked me in was the sound word, the overall colour of the music, whether Bruckner or Britten. Only later, sometimes aided by following the score, did it start to make sense and the tunes became clear. It was much the same with Bach keyboard music which took me a long time to move from a seeming mass of complexity of sound to the most lucid, organic and downright beautiful music I can think of.

Moving on and I’m now getting into the Maxwell Davids string quartets. I like the sound (mostly) but only after many playings are the tunes and logic surfacing. They’re a tough nut to crack but worth the effort, although I haven’t quite got to the point where I can bring one to mind and “play” it in my head.

My 72 year old self is now very glad my 22 year old self liked the sound enough to persevere until the music made sense on so many levels.
 
There's two things going on which are not the same - being generally bored by composers and being burned out on certain composers or works you used to enjoy, through too much exposure. Orchestral musicians burn out on repeated repertoire, and so can listeners.
 
camverton said:
I was interested that some folk find it difficult to find a tune in Bruckner. These days I find Bruckner is full of tunes...

My 72 year old self is now very glad my 22 year old self liked the sound enough to persevere until the music made sense on so many levels.
Click to expand...

I always considered Bruckner's music to be rather a meandering mess that never quite reached a satisfying conclusion.

I'm a few years older than you, and it's only recently that I've started to make sense of it, and really enjoy it.
 
narabdela said:
I always considered Bruckner's music to be rather a meandering mess that never quite reached a satisfying conclusion.

I'm a few years older than you, and it's only recently that I've started to make sense of it, and really enjoy it.
Click to expand...
I've come to the conclusion that the greatest music would take more than a lifetime to get to know and even then it always keeps something in reserve. It's much the same with painting, it doesn't matter how many times I look at, say, a Cezanne, Rothko or Bridget Riley it always seems to have something fresh to say. Talking of Bridget Riley and whilst in waffle mode I do find a correlation between the instrumental music of Bach and Riley's later works. It's almost as though they both found the natural order of the world and expressed it in their chosen medium.
 
Almost no real music bores me. But I have a strong reaction of either love it or the opposite.

Though I listen almost exclusively to what is called the classical repertoire, from Purcell onwards to Walton and Sibelius [and nothing since in the classical line except for live radio or concerts], I am more repelled by more classical music than pop, which latter varies between genius level to amiable pap for me. I am not repelled by almost any of it except Punk. The more progressive Jazz is the less I like it!

So not quite answering the question because it is not a question of boredom, I intensely dislike Wagner, most Richard Strauss, a fair deal of Mahler, about half of Schumann, and so on. I tend to enjoy chamber music or chamber orchestra sized orchestra music. Most solo singing quietly drives me up the wall including all German Lieder. Greig sung in German is hideous, whereas in the original Norwegian it is charming and beautiful for me.

To put me through Hell just make me listen to just one part of Wagner's Ring or complete Parsifal!

Best wishes from George
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top