Oddments
Here is an article I wrote for a local music mag. The editor seemed to like it well enough, and who am I to argue?
Personal taste
‘Taste’ is something we develop through exposure to different musical styles and culture. As a child you will have disliked certain types of music, later learning to love them; abandoning S Club 7 in favour of The Mars Volta. Upon what basis, then, do we decide what we like and dislike, and how do we decide who’s taste to respect?
Appealing to the ‘pleasantness’ of music is misguided – whole genres of music are dedicated to generating sounds that are distinctly unpleasant. It is entirely possible to appreciate music that intentionally upsets, or causes pain and discomfort to the listener.
Familiarity with a given genre is often cited as a reason for liking or dismissing music, but despite any person’s devotion to a given genre, influences, both internal and external to that scene, will inevitably change it and them. People often enter and leave musical cultures for purely social reasons. Furthermore, respect for taste in others is often independent of common interest – you might well recognise that a classical music fan has good taste, but be unable to appreciate the genre, preferring, say, drum and bass.
Knowledge and enthusiasm are justifiably important components of ‘good taste’. Yet knowledge is only important if applied with skill. Knowing the name of every member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra since 1842 hardly helps you to appreciate their performance of John Adam’s On the transmigration of souls, but knowing that the piece is written about 9/11 will add quality and poignancy to the experience. Likewise, the raw enthusiasm of a Saturday-morning children’s TV presenter shows no discernment whatsoever and so is essentially tasteless.
So, where does this leave us? Learning to appreciate music is more like developing a skill. Music, by its very nature, has little objective existence, being ‘heard’ by the mind rather than the ear. We attach meaning to groups of sounds by learning to appreciate their beauty. Finding some preferable to others is a function of experience, as attested to by the diversity of musical forms around the world, many of which have little appeal outside of their culture of origin.
Take avant-garde music as an analogy. What seems revolutionary to one generation (The Beatles, or Pink Floyd, for example), often seems almost trivial or kitsch to the next. Songs that at first seem quite peculiar (such as Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush), start to blend into the background, attracting little attention at the Christmas party. The same pattern repeats within us. That which seems fresh, new and startling seamlessly becomes part of our appreciation of music, and our expectations of what we hear next. This seems true regardless of what order music is encountered in, or whether we like it or hate it.
Your taste, then, is really the application of a complex critical faculty which helps you to appreciate music, learnt by exposure to different kinds of music, and influenced by the opinions of those you respect. As such it is never static, despite all efforts to make it so. To have taste is inevitable, but to have ‘good taste’ requires that the skill be developed, and nurtured, like building a muscle with exercise. Without constant stimulation, this muscle may atrophy, and ‘taste’ simply dissolves into a kind of loyalty to opinion. Yet if this task seems daunting, do not worry, you are already holding a music magazine.