“It’s Not Bad Music; I Just Hate It”

The final weeks of summer are a great time to catch up on listening to recordings and to engage in aesthetic debates with friends and colleagues. Here in the Box, we’re constantly arguing with each other about music: its pedigree or lack thereof, its meaning or lack thereof, its purpose, the ability to adjudicate its worth, etc.

I’ve been getting into fights for years now over my attempts to emancipate music listening from evaluative personal judgment. Admittedly there are still things I don’t like—the human brain is a limited apparatus—but I wholeheartedly believe that something’s worth can’t be determined from what I or anyone else thinks about it. Which is why I’m always trying to subject myself to music that I think I won’t like or re-subject myself to music that I haven’t liked previously. From time to time, I get my mind completely turned around, and that, for me, is one of the most exciting things about listening to music—or experiencing just about anything, for that matter.

Thanks to a disc Randy turned me on to of Wolfgang Rihm’s piano trio Fremde Szenen I-III, in the last two days I’ve finally gotten excited about Rihm, a composer whose music—I must confess—I’ve never been able to connect with. Actually I still haven’t heard the third one; I’ve been pacing myself by concentrating on only one movement per day. Since the three movements weren’t actually composed one right after the other, this sequential listening approach seems a good way to get inside the music and so far it’s working. I can’t wait to hear the final installment tomorrow!

I have a newfound appreciation for Rihm although I’m still not sure if I now love his music or ever will. But, of course, I still also know that whether or not I love it makes absolutely no difference. In the midst of our discussions about Rihm, whom Randy and I still have extremely different takes on, Trevor chimed in with an extremely provocative quip when asked about another recording (not of music by Rihm) which I still have not yet heard: “I didn’t say it was terrible; I said that I hated it.” Would such a comment entice you to listen to something? It’s sort of a contra-positive approach to allowing music into your perceptual consideration based on whether it’s “good” or “bad”—terms that ultimately are unquantifiable—and therefore it somehow makes perfect sense to me, and actually makes me very eager to hear that recording. I won’t give away what it is since I think leaving it unidentified might trigger a more interesting discussion on this page.

There are probably lots of things it could be and also probably lots of things it could never be for any of us. There’s a great deal of music—no matter how open minded we claim to be—that will probably elude such a fine distinction, music that we justify our hatred for because it is “bad” in the same way that we justify our love for other music because it is “good.” For example, no matter how far off the deep end I go, I doubt I’ll ever warm up to Avril Lavigne (even though I made myself listen to her hit summer single on my flight back from New Zealand) or Kenny G. (even though I’ve picked up one of his albums). Then again I’ve learned never to say never many years ago. But even still, no matter what we open our minds up to, there are other factors that are even more out of our control. Obviously there are a finite number of hours in the day, years in a lifetime, shelf space on a wall, memory in a hard drive, etc. Limits exist whether we put them there ourselves or not.