Can you learn to love music you just don't jive with? I tried to find out by trying to find out, and I wrote up my experiment in an essay for this Sunday's Los Angeles Times. (Note: In no way does this piece attempt to satirize experiential critical journalism. Not at all...)
The piece also discusses the fact that dissonance is not just an objective term but a subjective, personal issue (i.e. I find some Offenbach awfully dissonant). The essay's headline was actually "Dissonance" when I last signed off on the piece, and I would have loved to discuss this issue more--you can say that piece is coming soon.
At any rate, here's a resource page for those interested in trying out the "potentially horrific" playlist that I used for my terribly scientific experiment.
1. Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire"
2. Conlon Nancarrow Study for Player Piano No. 7
3. Stravinsky's Agon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cDCbHJYZ88
4. Berio Sequenza III
5. Berio Sequenza X
Other pieces you may want to try that you may love (or want to try to learn to love):
Henry Cowell's The Banshee
**I should also note that I first read reports about the Australian study on the websites of NPR Music and The Atlantic (first report here). I noted these reports in my original final draft, and I would have liked it if those sources were kept in the text, but they were edited out. The online version of the piece also has pretty much the same headline as the NPR blog's piece; before it went to print, when I last saw it, my piece's headline was "Dissonance." In print now it's "A Resonance in Dissonance," which is great and shows us why editors often make pieces much more enticing.
*Lastly: I wish I could have written more about the music specifically. (I'd even included a bit in the original draft before cutting about some tonal music that I can't stand, and how I consider that personally dissonant.) Relatedly, this morning, I received a constructively critical note from one of the aforementioned composer's family members that initially implied that I'm closeminded and/or undereducated, and that I would like a lot more of the man's work if, and I'm paraphrasing, "I had ever listened to it." (And this was one of the nicest notes I've received.)
But here's the thing: A) I've listened to about 97% of it in my lifetime, and I did say that I love certain pieces, as well as that this composer is important. And B) If anything, people should know that articles like this cannot run longer than a certain length, usually, and that I wasn't allowed by space constraints to get into any one musical piece or composer with much depth. I also included references to other great works by this composer that might get people interested in him. I hope that they listen to them, just as I love to listen to much Dissonant music.
The most important motive behind an essay like this -- which is, to be sure, light fare, with a few chuckles about music, research studies, itself, and its author, for that matter -- is to get people to try and listen to more music that they think they may not like. I appreciate reader notes like these, though; I know that it's hard to understand how things work behind the scenes for writers.
What I hope a piece like this does is show that someone with a background in serious concert music can like a lot of other genres of music, that young people also care for concert music (and for advocating for it), and that one should open his or her ears, give everything a fair shot, and then, after much listening, feel free and unfrightened to be human and open and vocal about what he or she likes.
