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I get the difference between knowledge and tastes, but tastes do elvolve. You can dislike something at first but end up liking it and vice versa.

In music, it happened to me some times that my teacher suggested a piece I didn't like very much, but that I end up really like playing.

The area in which I mostly saw that evolution in taste is with beer. There were beers I loved when I was 20 that makes me "meh" today and beers I couldn't even take a sip at 20 that I love now (at 31).

Yup, he has just turned 14. How did you guess?

Can we not compare Bach with .......

It's biological.

Considering that you started with Drake, the story has to illustrate that. Did any of my points make sense? My children are now in their thirties, so we've passed that stage.

I'm going to make another food analogy.

I don't think I've ever met a kid that likes to eat cilantro. However, by age 14, some kids develop a tolerance, or even a liking, for cilantro. Others continue to hate it immensely. That taste for or against cilantro is pretty much cemented by age 14.

Of course, that age differs from person to person. It's biological.

Another food analogy that might work is durian. To me, rap music is durian. Most of my students think Bach is durian.

I was talking to a friend this morning and commenting on the sight-reading exercises that my youngest son had some 20 years ago and saying how appallingly unmusical they were. And from what he said things haven't changed. Merely an exercise in seeing that people could recognise notes. I don't know what the pieces are that they are required to play but if it is anything like I had when I was young, a very long time ago, they won't be very inspiring.

I have one student who compares technical exercises and difficult pieces (if she doesn't like the pieces) to eating carrots. We have an ongoing joke that we have to eat our carrots (for me, it's arpeggios - my arthritic hands just don't want to cooperate). I hope that, when the time comes, she sees Bach as candy rather than carrots.



Ugh, my father-in-law loves durian. He calls it "The King of Fruits." He's the only one in the family who can stand that nasty stuff! He even has some durian "candy" (if anything that reeks so bad can be considered candy) that makes me want to vomit.

Regarding rap, what gets me is not the artistic/musical style, but the content. Most English-language rap I've heard has been vulgar, violent, and misogynistic, which is what turns me off to it. Have you ever heard any Japanese rap? Some of it is quite good, the same "musical" style but without the disgusting content of its English predecessor. Much of the Japanese rap I've heard has even been *gasp* thematically upbeat and positive.

Could be biological. I started piano at 7 and Trumpet at 10, always played in the orchestra and stage band. My parents listened to classic jazz 100%. I purchased records of classical and jazz about 25/75 growing up then the numbers switched the other way to classical in my older age. I will admit though that I did purchase a Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Barry Manillow and Kenny Rogers album in my youth.

There are many different rappers and rap song and is considered as todays opera and poetry. Some tell a story and not necessarily coding what is in the lyrics. You will be surprised that Mozart wrote some pretty vulgar lyrics.

Mozart. http://mentalfloss.com/article/55247/3-dirty-songs-mozart

Musical taste is cultivated when classical music sounds in the house (in unintrusive manner) very often and kids listen to it from young age.

An individual's musical tasteS .... plural .... are formed by everything that individual does and explores. Ideally knowledge plays a role, otherwise what might it be beyond a selective prejudice inculcated by one's surroundings, and forming a kind of deafness? What I wrote before.

I agree, that is certainly contributatory, but there are several of us here that never heard classical music at home. What I consider to be the strongest influence in developing my love of classical was from watching Looney Tunes cartoons. There is no other explanation possible to me, as no music was played by my family in any form.

Other tastes developed or were rejected with exposure.

I heard very little classical music as a child because my parents didn’t like it. Then my piano teachers introduced me to it and I became obsessed with little else until I heard Waller and Gershwin in my teens. Then I heard Joplin and James Scott and added them to the mixture along with copious quantities of orchestral music. Through my middle decades I composed quite a lot and carried on absorbing the music of many composers, past and present. At fifty-five, largely due to advances in technology, I embraced recorded improvisation as my creative medium and it has now become just about everything to me (in music). Therefore my taste is dynamic, and depends on actual musical features rather than on who created the music. That’s the great thing about making your own music, you don’t play anything which isn’t completely to your taste because it’s impossible by definition.

I don’t think I ever “cultivated” musical taste at all, the whole thing just happened, guided by whatever sounds I enjoy, which are now almost entirely my own; but who knows, I might hear something tomorrow that sets me off down a new road. I couldn’t bear having static taste.

All I can say is embrace those teenage years. They’re great - seriously.

I enjoyed all kinds of non-classical music during my teenage years and beyond. OK, not rap because that didn’t exist then. My daughter got into Korean rap. She’s now a functional young adult.

In my younger days didn't listen to music all that much. The record player and later the first cassette player were considered expensive items only the parents had permission to use. There was Classical music playing off the records and music from the Beatles, Elton John etc. who were considered the music for rebellious teenagers.

Once we had a piano in the house. Mom thought nobody at home had the talent for music and gave it away. Did learn to play recorder in school. The only possession I had was a portable radio considered the novelty of the day. Would listen to it before bedtime. Back then heard all sorts of Pop music but didn't really associate with any Pop stars or songs in particular even after hearing the same songs on radio. Back in the early 1980s Sony introduced the first generation of portable cassette players (Walkman). For a little while a cassette called "Hooked on Classics" which was a medley of Classical pieces became popular for listening. These are not complete pieces or even complete movement of a piece but just a few bars of 1 piece and transitioned into another piece by a totally different composer. You'd start off with the Overture from Ruslan & Ludmila by Mikhail Glinka and transition to the Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Greig and further down you get the Rossini William Tell Overture kind of thing.

Playing piano music was something out of reach in my younger days. Back then didn't make any connection between playing the pieces I'd hear on radio or off a record. Coming from a non-musical family, our family got as far as drawing and painting together but making music wasn't on the list.

In the past many of us tend to see music as an academic exercise. It's hard to appreciate playing music at a personal level unless we get to an intermediate level. Only much later when the kids started moving out I got into playing music for personal reasons. Many of us get into a routine of doing our daily exercises. Playing music is exercise you do with your brain. On the other hand, a lot of people get uncomfortable playing without a teacher even after many years of taking lessons. Many of us are conditioned to limit ourselves to playing the repertoires assigned by a teacher. Even when there are more pieces available online to last a lifetime that some people don't go out of their way and learn songs on their own.

I'll simply leave this anecdote: Clive Davis has wrapped Janis Joplin's take on Summertime and was eager to show it to others before it was released. Richard Rodgers had reason to stop by the studio so Clive played it for him, since it was a song of Rodger's era. RR hated it. Made no sense to him. Didn't see how anyone could call what Janis was doing "singing".
Davis remarked, "He wasn't ready for these new sounds".

I played violin at 8 years old until 18, I mainly played classical because I had to for the school orchestra and youth symphony. I did not like classical music, however as an older adult I now do. I think taste come from peers, school orchestra/bands, movies, entertainment, exposure, and parents. What you like changes over time as one ages and the experiences one has during their lifetime. The only music I really don't like is Opera and rap.

Durian is delicious and can’t be compared to rap, most of which promotes violence (blatant as well as insidious). We have a big problem with the latter here in parts of the UK. Whereas the only ‘problem’ with durian is its fragrance. It’s actually yummy.

As for taste in music, I knew I found what I really liked at ten when I heard classical music for the first time (from my teacher playing it for me). I knew nothing about ‘class’ or good taste - I just liked it, because it meant something to me that pop didn’t. As for jazz, most of it was just noise.....which didn’t get better with repeat exposure, unlike some contemporary classical which I didn’t used to enjoy much.

I was the music major whose car radio speakers would be blasting the latest Top 40 rock music as I pulled up next to the performing arts building at university, looking for a parking spot before classes or orchestra rehearsals.

Now, 30-something years later, it's usually a classical music station I'm tuned to when out driving around, and at most other times, too.

My husband still listens to classic rock most of the time, and I do kind of still enjoy hearing snippets of old American Top 40 countdowns with Casey Kasem while we're on our way to church Sunday mornings. I came of age in the 70s, and hearing music from that era "takes me back." Stuff like songs from Hotel California, Rumours, Foreigner 4, ABBA anything... It's nice to hear once in a while, but I don't actively seek it out now.

Now I'm more interested in going to YouTube to hear different pianists' interpretations of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, etc.

Tastes evolve over time, and I find the journey into new musical realms a rather pleasant one.