What made me want to listen to classical music was that I really liked the orchestral parts of some of my favorite songs. For example some of Elton John's early songs like “The King Must Die” and “The Greatest Discovery”. I also really liked some of the orchestral elements of the band Electric Light Orchestra. I had also heard sporadic pieces from big names such as Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Liszt which I liked.
All of this combined made it clear that I needed to give it a shot. And I was lucky that a pretty good symphony orchestra was close by. So I started going to concerts. Five in total. Each concert had between 2 and 4 different pieces of music (symphonies, Lieder etc). So in total I had listened to about 10-20 different pieces.
After the fifth concert I convinced myself that I had heard enough, and that I would not return for a sixth. That sounded dramatic.
The reason for my dislike of the genre centers around one crucial element that I look for in art. The dramatic intention. A rigid structure that serves the drama with every musical note, painter's brush or cinematic frame. With “rigid structure” I don't mean that every song HAS to follow Verse Chorus Verse Chorus or that the filmmaker HAS to use the three act structure. I mean that the artist MUST curate his piece in such a way that the audience experiences the greatest ecstasy and euphoria, which is the point of art. For example: This scene is here not because it's nice to have there, but because it MUST be there. This chorus is here not because it sounds alright i guess, but because the verse makes it mandatory.
I don't feel this dramatic intention with most classical music. Often I feel like there are spikes of greatness only to drop down into meaninglessness the second after. I don't feel like part A propels the piece to part B. It feels disjointed, unharmonic and therefore undramatic. That is why I mostly like pop and rock. The transition between sections feels amazing and like they were meant to be. THIS chord is played here because THAT chord was played 5 seconds ago. Often when i listen to classical music i go “Oh shit here it comes, wait what, oh okay here we are, then this, okay back again, why this?, oh shit this is good, wait wtf go back”.
I'm writing this, not because I want to attack classical music listeners, but because I wanted to discuss some of the things stated.