Perhaps due to some character-flaw of mine,  I can often be quite pugnacious in approaching new material and I am usually keen to see "what the fuss is all about?".   So almost all of the music which I now like has previously been music about which I was sceptical, or openly antagonistic in some cases. 

I persevere with things usually because I am not so utterly iconoclastic as to believe mine is the only view. If others whose view I respect like something which I don't, I'll usually ask them why, and perhaps ask for recommendations of recordings they've particularly enjoyed.   Sometimes it's the genre itself over which I have a blackspot - for example, late-romantic German symphonists...  Brahms leaves me cold,  and despite extensive listening to all his works, I still can't see the appeal of Bruckner.

This is, in fact, some of the greatest pleasure available - coming to know and admire works that were previously locked-out of my appreciation for some reason or other.  Often these reasons are extra-musical...  I had a bombastic ultra-conservative music teacher at school who had no time for any modern music (he described Schoenberg as "muck"), but worshipped Elgar. (I think I went to Fires Of London concerts primarily to annoy him, and only incidentally learned to like Max's music along the way). To this day Elgar comes with a heap of negative associations for me that I find difficult to shift,  although at least I am aware of the underlying reason.

Re-reading that after posting...  I hadn't really noticed that this same curmudgeonly Elgar-fan also advocated both Brahms and Bruckner, and also hated opera entirely.  In his defence, I ought to say that his teaching of the technical stuff was astounding, and everyone he taught sailed through Harmony & Counterpoint exams with aplomb.

Like you Ian I find this the case with much new (and not so new) music. A star example for me is Messiaen, who until I started RCM I wouldn't have listened to in an age. Every time I heard his stuff I just thought "what the hell is this" and switched off. I remember, when I was much younger, watching a televised Prom of Turangalîla and simply not being able to be in the same room...  But undergoing a (core) course devoted to post-1945 music changed all that, much for the better. I even did a presentation on the Vingt Regards.

Of course it also depends on what associations a certain work may have: in the first ever seminar the prof innocent-ear-like played Penderecki's Threnody, one of our set works. I was still an unappreciative bar steward at that stage and described it as the ideal piece for my Room 101. After we were informed what the piece was, it immediately took on a whole new level of meaning (whatever Penderecki might have said about what it meant) and seemed much more reasonable.

Hi Martle

I had the same block with opera, which is somewhat ironic   I think mine came from being dragged to WOZZECK when I was 11 - not only the first opera I'd seen, but also the first live classical music of any kind.  It took me eight years to recover,  and I think it was David Munrow's "Pied Piper" prog on R3 which fired-up an enthusiasm to go and see DON GIOVANNI.  I now think WOZZECK is one of the most seminal pieces of the C20th, by the way


True, true...

This thread gave me a niggle, which led to an urge, which led to me clearing out the attic space and eventually, at 2.00am, finding my old diaries.  They are packed with the most dreadful teenage drivel, but do have some personal "Top Tens". 

It seems that in August 1985 I loved Elgar Enigma Variations, and Brahms violin concerto.  Lots of classical and romantic string music in there.

2 years later the top tens were all Bartok, Tippett and Stravinsky, with a smattering of Shostakovich and Barber.  It seems this change just came about by listening to lots of music.

But the interesting thing is that my diaries tell me I was really into contemporary music as a teenager.  I think I lost that love sometime around university and I'm only just beginning to re-engage with music from after 1960 or so.

For instance, I went to and loved the premiere of Vic Hoyland's "In Transit".  I've had a tape of this in the car for years (it was a recording made 3 weeks before the premiere, and broadcast by R3 the day after).  But for years I've got to the end of Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin and had to eject the tape because I couldn't stand the Hoyland.  I'll make sure I listen to it tonight!

I think what happened was that at uni I stopped listening to music in the same way.  I developed my ears to listen out for certain schools of playing and detailed performance aspects, like type of vibrato, note attack, timbre, the sounds in transition between notes, etc.  But I did all this in an environment where there was no contemporary music - private lessons focused on works from Mozart to Ysaye, and orchestrally I can't remember playing anything later than Ives whilst I was at Cambridge.

So, when I got back to contemporary works (in Britten-Pears Orchestra, after uni), my ears and listening had changed, and hadn't learnt how to listen to new music.

Playing works is a great way of getting into them.  My diary tells me I wasn't much taken by Verklarte Nacht when I first heard it in 1987, but I love it now - largely from having worked at the 2nd violin part and how it fits in with the rest.

It works both ways!

Tommo

I think this is quite a common thing, the process of coming to love something in spite of an initial resistance. I'm personally extremely aware of it: two of my all-time favourite things - Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse - I hated on the first, second, and possibly third time around. But now I would run into a burning building for them. (Actually, I wouldn't, I'd spend the requisite £20 on new copies from Borders, but you know what I mean.) Both of them were first acquired in my mid-teens, and in different ways it was pressure from authority that forced me to get into them - the NME told me many times that SY were cool (and DN happened to be the first album of theirs I got hold of); TtL was a set text for A-level, so I had at least to be able to understand it.

Now I'm quite conscious of my resistance to certain types of music, composers, periods, genres (eg: opera, the 19thC, a lot of jazz, etc), but I see each of these as future possibilities rather than closed doors. I resisted Mozart for a long time as a teenager (and I'm still wary about opera in general), but I've come completely to adore the Magic Flute, so that gateway has been opened - I recognise a lot in Martle's post. And I'm looking forward to a day, still a few years off I suspect, when I will sit down with an armful of CDs and get Brahms.

You're right, Ollie, these revelations are never planned. I think part of the fantasy is the idea of exploring a great and unfamiliar repertory - and having all that time to do it!   

What merit there is in Member Martle's message! It is enough to inspire any sceptic to take a second look at opera.

If I may for a moment descend into singularity, Chopin's Preludes and Mazurkas were played before and after my daily School assembly, and I formed the view that his music was vague pointless and flowery, merely decorative. But later, in 1985, I transcribed all his Studies into the M.I.D.I. format, and consequently gained a insight into the true quality of his invention musicianship and aesthetic sense.