I like music to have an evident structure and not seem random; I like a strongly melodic quality and harmony; I like it to be clean and rich, usually without a lot of elision or blue notes, and I dislike much percussion unless percussion is what it’s about. Put a beat behind a piece of music that does not need a beat (a hymn, a Christmas carol) and I will turn it off in disgust.
Above all I want it to be beautiful.
I like classical music and not jazz, opera and not country. I also like a lot of traditional folk music from all over the world, including English, Irish, Scottish (I adore bagpipes!), Western European, Russian, Indian, and African. And I loved American folk music of the sixties.
Sometimes I like music to go down easy, like Debussy and Satie, or be deliriously romantic, like Puccini or Tchaikowsky, but I also like music to be thrilling and uplifting and exciting and glorious. In certain moods I love for it to be large and dark and cathartic. Opera is wonderful for this. And there’s hardly ever a mood so dark that a heavy session with Orff or Wagner won’t purge the poison.
I have also sat with my sons at different stages of their growing up and asked them to play for me some things that they liked and explain to me what they liked about it. That is how I came to listen to and learn a little bit about appreciating some contemporary groups and styles from reggae to Sarah McLaughlin, from Third Eye Blind to Marilyn Manson (whose remarkably intelligent and moving autobiography I have also read), that I would never have listened to otherwise.
In all cases I want music to take me someplace, to feel it move through me and carry me along with it. It’s not background noise or company or avoidance of silence (I love silence). It’s an experience. Just as with reading a poem or spending time in front of a painting, just as with reading a great story or seeing a terrific movie, I want to feel afterward as if I’d been through something. I want to feel a little different on the other side.