From Mindspillage

Most of this comes from mail or IRC conversations.

There are not many atonal pieces I really like on first encounter -- which is not to say that I don't like them, either, I just don't have any particular fondness. Most tonal pieces are immediately accessible; I know what they're generally about and whether or not like them on first listen. (There's almost nothing I really dislike, but much I am indifferent to, which includes most of the Classical era. Also, I enjoy being emotionally manipulated by music.) Atonal music takes a little more figuring out. I don't generally actively like it until I've put some time into listening to it and have become familiar with it. I am not sure what the difference is between me and people who simply don't like atonal music -- maybe the musical sophistication to know that it will soon make sense to me, even if not on first encounter? And it rarely sounds jarring or ugly to me, just like something I can't understand yet— chatter in a language I don't speak well. I enjoy listening to music that I've analyzed and found to have been constructed very cleverly even if by sound alone it's not something I'd ordinarily like much. Perhaps it is openness that is the difference: I don't have a formed opinion of a piece until I think I get it.

For pop music, there are many very simple songs I can listen to repeatedly. I also enjoy trying to build playlists of songs that segue perfectly into each other, each tied to the next by some common musical or lyrical element. It's hard to identify anything tying together popular music I like -- except that if the lyrics are awful they must also be either unintelligible to me or easily ignored. (So I can listen to dance-pop in Russian or German, but not in English. And I would rather not understand the lyrics of most opera.) Anything that matches my voice well enough that it's enjoyable to sing to gets a pass.

I also will enjoy playing things I don't think I would have any particular fondness for listening to. (I think there are some audience members who would not be surprised.)

The music I like most tends to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum—so Bartok, Persichetti, Hindemith, people who are still in the universe of classical tonality but pushing the edges, playing with other structures.