Nirvana: I was struck to read your post. You just (wrongly) infer something from my post, and disregarding the rest of it, you hold on to a single phrase, and although stating that you do not know if these were my intentions or not, you indirectly call me a dumb and arrogant person with a condescending attitude towards
all people.
In any case, I have no intention to end up in yet another argument about things irrelevant to what's important. I am really sorry if that's what was understood by my post. It may have been due to bad/hasty phrasing, which is basically the result of having said this and other things so many times in the past that I can't be bothered to write them exactly as I did in the first place.
We're not talking about people "disliking a piece" here or about people who are expected to like everything they hear. We're talking about people who ignore 100 years of music, musical thought, philosophy of music and the development and interaction of music with the other arts, as well as all the people who contributed in all these fields. We're talking about people saying the analogous of "I don't like Bush, he mixed up his words the other day, he shouldn't be a president". This is not at all a valid reason to dislike Bush, and I am not saying that disliking Bush is wrong because you should like Bush, but that you should refine your judgement, and justify your dislike of Bush in a more valid and serious/grounded way. You might do a lot of research, or just read the news and see what Bush does, and then still dislike him - I'm fine with that. I know people who know a lot about contemporary music, have listened to a lot of Ligeti, read a book or two on Ligeti, and still don't like him - fair enough. I am not blaming them. But if someone discards Ligeti's validity as a "good composer" because they heard from someone who had read somewhere that Ligeti wrote music for Metronomes and it sucked, then I won't agree with that.
It's not "what" people dislike, it's "how" and "why" they dislike it. I won't take back anything from my post, as I think it was highly misunderstood.
What I would value from my previous post, which seems to have been completely ignored, is this part:
And also, I think the part that was most misunderstood was:
I still stand by what i said. I
never said that "all people who dislike contemporary music or some particular pieces or composers of the 20th/21st centuries are misinformed/uninformed, it's their bad, and they have been denying it on the grounds that they don't like it", which is what apparently was interpreted by Nirvana. I said that
the reason we're having discussions like these is because [some] people (the omission of "some" may have contributed to the misunderstanding, but I think it's very clear I don't mean "all" people, since if that was the case, there would be no arguments, we'd all agree...) as misinformed, and are ignorant enough to believe that they are informed enough to have a fully-developed understanding of what they don't understand, and start bashing it with no valid arguments or indication that they have at least done the most fundamental and essential kind of research that one can do (you can't say you like a car without knowing what car you mean - you can't say "I really dislike that BMW", and when people ask you "what BMW, and why don't you like it?" reply "I don't know exactly which, one of them, and I just don't like it, dunno.. I haven't really seen it or anything.. I just don't like it").
About movies, well, I've heard people say that "
Odyssey 2001" sucks, or that "
A Clockwork Orange" is the worst film they've ever seen. Well, these films are considered to be two of the finest films by Kubrick, who was one of the most interesting and artistic directors in the 20th century, so if these people don't do the least amount of research to find out
why Kubrick is considered a good director, and
why these films are considered good, and read things by people who have spent their whole lives analysing films, direction, who have a heap of knowledge on that particular art (without asking every viewer to go and learn what these people know - although a person interested in direction should, and that's what SSC was talking about), I won't take their opinion highly, and similar arguments will arise (things like "
Odyssey 2001: IS THIS ART? DIRECTING?").
Unfortunately, I've had enough of these threads. I've spent so much time replying to many things which are expected to be trivial by people who are supposedly interested in a topic, any topic, and mainly highlighting what other people have said (who deserve more respect than they are given - again a bad thing of the internet, because if these discussions were taking place in real life, these people would be respected more), and I have so many things to do. And instead of trying to grab the greater idea out of all these posts by all these members, people just pick on the smallest details and make a huge fuss out of them, straying largely away from the essence.
Here are other posts of mien in the thread where I have explained better my point of view, in the hope that people will actually read them and not bash me for something they inferred from what they misunderstood from them:
Page 5i
Page 5ii (second paragraph mainly)
Have fun.