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I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?

What we listen to we cannot trace always a border between cold or cool admiration and heart wrenching love at first sight....

I admire Bach without limit but i love also him dearly....Here admiration and love are one....

The first time li listen to Chet Baker i was not even sure if it was a great trumpetist, but i love him without knowing why....

More i listen to Miles Davis more i admire him but i still wait for love to come....I like it a lot but it is not love and i know the first time i listen to him why he is a great trumpetist, unlike Chet, his mastering of the instrument was evident.... For Chet i listen not the trumpet but the voice of his instrument, i even forgot he was playing the trumpet and the question if he was great was secondary....Miles was great without any doubts.... But i am in love with Chet because he touch my heart.....



Sometimes the frontier between these 2 are less clear, i admire Brahms but i like him more than i love him.... Bruckner i admire him like a new Bach and i love him like our old grandpa with a feeling that will never end....

I admire Monteverdi at the level of my admiration for Bach, but i like him only , it is not this passionnate love that changes my heart and life like with those i love...

I love Bill Evans dearly but i admire Keith Jarrett greatly but without any passion....

I admire and love Vivaldi at the same times.....

I admire Telemann, Haendel, Haydn more than i love them..... I am in love with Purcell tough and Josquin Desprez.....

I admire Hildegard the Bingen and i love her without words.... I am in love with the organ composer Pachelbel but i only admire Palestrina....

I admire Arvo Part very much, but am i in love? No....Excep perhaps for one or 2 of his work: Alina for example....I admire and love Gorecki symphony of tears but not much the rest....Only respect for the rest of his works....

I admire Arrau, Horowitz, many pianists but am i in love? No, but i am in total love with Ervin Nyiregyházi , Ivan Moravec, or Sofronitsky....

I admire the composer Sorabji almost like Bach but dont feel any love at all....Deep fascination and admiration for a genius  that never speak from the heart to the heart, only from his brain to my brain.... But what a genius ! 

I admire many, many, female singers, but i am in love with only a few, i love Billie Holiday, Marianne Anderson for example....

I will not go on with my list any longer...

But what speak to our heart and what speak to our brain is not the same and sometimes some music speak for us to the 2 part of ourselves...

But one thing must me clear, i dont want to live without the great musicians whom i only admire. I like them like interesting friends, even if i am not changed by love at first sight with them, swimming in the sea of adoration....


What are those you admire but only like ? What are those you clearly are in love with?

When the brain speak first and always, it is admiration and friendship not love.... In love there is a mystery in with we participate and which transform our life....

Those who we admire gives us pleasure.... Those who we love gives us not only that but an ultimate meaning that go to your heart.....


Listening music is learning to listen into the many levels in us where music can reach and transform us.... Each music or musician has this potential to change us at a level or at another one, or at all levels simultaneously....But for sure it is different for each of us......

I apologize if my OP makes no sense for some.... I hope my question will make sense for some....

Thanks......

mahgister

Showing 7 responses by stuartk

stuartk
3,212 posts
 
Very Interesting thread, even if it is somewhat "over my head"...

I've repeatedly encountered the judgment in Jazz publications that Miles was not particularly accomplished, technically--  that his strength lay more in his ability to convey emotion or "Duende". I'm not a horn player so I don't know whether this is true but compared to, say, Woody Shaw, Miles' playing sounds less virtuosic to me. 

I'd be curious as to "which Miles" you've listened to, as his recordings cover a wide stylistic range. My responses to his playing range from love to outright dislike, depending upon the musical setting. His "second great quintet" (with H. Hancock, W. Shorter, R. Carter and T. Williams) is my favorite Jazz group, period. I love and admire what those players did in that group. When it comes to players I "love", I can't help but "admire" their musicianship. There are many players who are clearly very skilled but whose playing doesn't move me, emotionally. I "respect"  those individuals. 

I'm more of an album-by-album listener. I can't think of any case in which I love every recording by a given artist, even those artists I love above all others. For example, "Europe '72" by the Grateful Dead is one of my best-loved recordings, period-- "desert island" material. for me. The fact that I play guitar no doubts helps with appreciation and thus, admiration for the playing. However, most of the band's output is far too sloppy and technically inconsistent for me to endure. I guess I both love and hate the Dead. 

I can't comment on Classical music except to admit that I respect its creators and practictioners but find it uninvolving, as a rule. The rhythms simply don't engage my body. (I'm one of those listeners for whom PRaT is vital). At the other end of the spectrum would be Rap/Hip-Hop, which offers nothing but rhythm and of an extremely monotonous (to my ears) character. 








 












stuartk
3,212 posts
 
Yes; "taste" is indeed a mystery.   I suspect, had we access to the entire spectrum of what we call a human being, we might have a better sense of what constitutes "taste". Music operates on multiple levels, some that are fairly evident and others that remain hidden from view for most of us.

I have a visceral dislike of the classically trained voice. Why? I could say that it sounds artificial or inauthentic to me, but does such terminology   really get to the heart of my antipathy? No. I suspect there is something else going on. Perhaps it's a result of experiences from past lives. Or, perhaps it has more to do with something that cannot be explained intellectually-- sound as vibration-- affecting me on levels I cannot perceive, only feel, and in a rather primitive manner at that-- solely in terms of liking or disliking. Call it resonance. 

Perhaps, the music we most love tunes us or entrains us within, a vibration or range of vibrations that connect us to a level of being we most crave to experience, whether we're cognizant of it or not. We could come up with all sorts of reasons why we love or hate Engelberg Humperdink, EmmyLou Harris, Yanni, Al Green, Ali Akbar Khan, Sara Vaughan or Kiri Takanawa  without ever perceiving what's going on at what might be called a subtle or soul level.

I'm theorizing that we recognize when what we're hearing resonates with this level because of how it makes us feel and how much we like whatever that feeling may be. For some, it may be peace; for others, aggression, excitement, melancholy or anger. People are "tuned" differently and so, enjoy "resonating" with different qualities of vibration. 

I have no idea if this is how things are or not; it's simply an attempt to expore possibilities within the bounds of my life experience and conceptual framework.  









stuartk
3,212 posts
 
mahgister:  I felt, with that last post, I was going out on a limb somewhat to speak in such esoteric terms on an Audiogon forum and am glad it resonated with you. 

If you have the time and inclination, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts re: the process of "education".

As it happens, I seem to have arrived at a point where it's become extremely difficult to find music I like enough to buy. I'm wondering whether I've exhausted the possibilities that exist within the limits of my taste and how one might expand the boundaries. 







stuartk
3,212 posts
 
mahgister: I love:  "If the soul is an earth, music is the geology of this spirit....."

You are a poet?
stuartk
3,212 posts
 
What a rich discussion !  Thank you, frogman and mahgister, for offering your deeply-considered perspectives. I'm grateful for the opportunity to participate in such a dialogue. Thanks, frogman, for the clarification re: Miles and technique. 

Up until now, I've only participated in gear forums -- most often when seeking help with system upgrades. I didn't realize what I'd been missing, here, in the music forum.

Frogman: I recognize there've been plenty of times when I've given in to the impulse to reject that which does not yield pleasure imediately. I also believe what mahgister asserts-- that "a learning experience is necessary but cannot be forced nor imposed." Taken together, your collective com-ments would appear to suggest this "education" process requires a somewhat delicate balance of "effort" and "allowing". 

For me, it seems one limiting aspect involves tension. Too much tension and I feel assaulted; too little and my attention wanders. This appears to occur on an energetic, rather than an intellectual or emotional level. For example, I enjoy dissonance/atonality up to a point but beyond that point, it evokes distress and a sort of spontaneous disengagment occurs, perhaps driven by some primitive drive for self-preservation in the face of what is perceived as a "danger". 

 Saxophonist David Murray is a good example. I've heard certain recordings in which he generally plays in a zone that moves from a degree of dissonance I can just tolerate into degrees that feel (to me) overwhelmingly off-putting. On other recordings (the ones I own), he takes more of a middle ground, moving from quite consonant playing into degrees of dissonance I can enjoy. He continually moves back and forth from one to the other, and in so doing, dissonance enhances consonance and vice versa. The yin/yang symbol comes to mind, here. 

If pitch is one means by which tension operates, then rhythm is another, no? It involves far more than the beats-per-minute or time signature. What sort of "feel" or "energy" is being expressed in a player's execution of a given rhythm makes a big difference.

I could go on, but I'll restrain myself. 











 













stuartk
3,212 posts
 
Well, the two of you have provided much food for thought!  At this point, I think I need to take some time and try to digest what you've shared.  Thanks again for a deeply engaging discussion. I'll keep an eye out for your posts in the future. My best wishes to both of you. 

stuartk
3,212 posts
 
Thanks for your suggestions, mahgister. I'm curious how intellectual understanding can impact the spontaneous reaction to music/sound that occurs on a non-intellectual level. 

If an interval "feels" unpleasant to us, it's not clear to me how understanding the composer's intention can affect the interval's  "energetic charge" -- it's effect upon our metabolism. 

I apologize if I'm missing something. 



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