It is not that music by Bruckner is the only music I like, nor that I like all music by Bruckner. But it is true that I have rather definite musical preferences and that they seem to be very different from those of anyone else I know. To a degree I have chosen to make Bruckner my "favourite composer" rather as yellow is my "favourite colour" but it goes a lot deeper than that. Generally I am not offended by the music other people like but recently I chose to don ear-defenders because what a colleague was playing was driving me up the wall. I can only suppose that this person liked his music, just as some like sushi, but how is it that music attracts such vehement emotions as hate or love?
Although my parents disapproved of "pop" music, which has left me feel guilty about listening to some pop music I happen to like, I do not think they were responsible for my musical tastes. I didn't find Bruckner - he found me. As I may have said elsewhere, when I bought my reel-to-reel tape recorder (a purchase akin to buying an iPod now) I searched the radio-waves for music and recorded anything I liked. In this way I happened to record Bruckner's seventh and only much later found out what it was and that there was more and better.
Professor North reckons that musical taste is connected to personality. He does not resolve down as far as Bruckner but he does at least claim that Classical fans "have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease" which I reckon fits me reasonably well (though I say it myself). If he is right then it has little or nothing to do with one's parents or upbringing except so far as our personality is so formed.
But the category "classical" is far to wide to describe my likes - there is plenty of music that would be regarded as "classical" that I dislike.
It has been said that you either love or hate Bruckner (meaning his music) - rather as Orson Scott Card suggested that you will either love or hate his Ender's Game. In each case I think those hate do so because they fail to identify. Card says:
"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself."
That resonates with me - for me a "good book" or film is one that I can in some way identify with - usually but not necessarily with one of the characters in the book. When I listen to (some) of Bruckner's music I identify or, if you like, I feel "at home".
No comments:
Post a Comment