Passing music from one generation to the next

apparently does not work very well if going from child to parent.

There is a piece of research mentioned in yesterday's paper which I found rather interesting. I have yet to lay my paws on the actual paper but the article makes an interesting claim. You may like the music of your own generation but that does not mean you will like the music of the generation after you. It also seems that you may like music which was written before you were born.

The research looked at a 1000 people and asked them to rate 30 second snippets of "Top 10" songs from over seven decades. When they collated the results the researchers found that the music you were listening to between the ages of seventeen and twenty was the music which remained with you the most.  After you reach around age thirty-five you will like the new material less and less. Curiously the same apparently does not hold true for music written before you were born.

I suspect a lot more research needs to be done before there is any understanding of what is going on here. The results would not apply to my family. Let me explain. My mother and the Senior Cat did not care for the music they would have heard when they were between seventeen and twenty. 

My mother was considered to be the "musical" parent. She never had piano lessons. Her parents could not afford such things. She could however read music, sing in tune and play a descant recorder. Her musical taste ran to hymns and choral music - although she complained there was a lot of "dead wood" in Handel's Messiah. She taught her classes the traditional school songs and some German folk songs given to her by Germans she knew. She also taught the Downunder Christmas carols. Occasionally a popular song would appear at her school and she would perhaps recognise something sung by Nana Mouskouri.

The Senior Cat had wider interests - Bach, Beethoven, Gilbert and Sullivan, some music hall songs of the previous century and WWI. He could read the treble line and did his best to teach us in school but could not sing in tune even though he produced more than one G&S opera. He knew things like My Fair Lady very well indeed.

Neither of them cared for grand opera. The radio was only turned on for the Senior Cat to listen to the news or for us children to listen to the Argonauts. (The Argonauts was an excellent program. My brother and I contributed to it frequently and had the thrill of hearing our contributions read on air.)

It meant we children did not hear the music of our generation in the way other children did. We did not grow up listening to the Supremes, the Everly Brothers, the Dave Clark Five, the Beach Boys or Herman's Hermits. I had not even heard of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones until I was half way through high school. (We lived in a dairy farming area and cows prefer the music of the Baroque era. No, I am not trying to be funny. The farmers played this to the cows in the milking sheds.)

We went to music lessons. I know a little musical theory thanks to the nun who taught my siblings to play the piano. Brother Cat has learned to like some jazz. He can play several instruments moderately well - well enough to join others in casual sessions and for them all to enjoy it. 

Middle Cat can play the flute as well as piano but is seriously out of practice as her cats complain if she tries. She saw to it that her two boys were taught and they did very well, almost winning a major national competition. They produced some songs and managed to earn a bit of money along the way but had other more stable interests. Their music is definitely of their generation but a good many older people seem to like it.

The Black Cat, probably the most musical of us all, gave it up her piano playing completely. She now claims not to be able to "even read music".

I am nuch more likely to recognise composers like Beethoven, Bach, Telemann, Mozart or Vivaldi. At university the music students would sometimes ask me if I could guess who the composer of a "classical" piece was likely to be.

Eventually I caught up with some of the more "folk" oriented music of groups like Peter, Paul and Mary and the Seekers. I found that easier to understand. Perhaps it was that which sent me to other folk music, music from Africa and South America as well as Europe.

Interestingly the Whirlwind did not care for contemporary music either. Her father is more a 50's and 60's man - the generation before him. She liked the Beatles and would laugh at me when I said it was "too messy" for me.

 But I prefer to work in silence. Music is a distraction and often emotionally stressful for me. I don't care at all for the  very modern "music". To me it is just a noise. I was amused to learn my great-nephew was voted in as captain of his primary school after turning his speech into a "rap" performance but I don't find it "music" to my ears.

I would really like to know more about the generational gap in music. Did people feel that way about Mozart?