While working in my office right now I have the internet station beethoven-radio.playtheradio.com playing gently in the background. Why? Because I ‘know’ far less Beethoven than I do Mozart. I use the word ‘know’ in its loosest sense. I can’t play a note! Not even one. There’s a Mozart internet station too – in a similar vein. Curiously I find the Mozart random selections far more engaging that Mr. B’s
This is nothing to do with bit-rates, quality of system or where I’m sitting, and so on. I’m using the onboard replay system of a MacBook Pro. Pretty humble in hifi terms. So I wonder, and not for the first time – ‘what’s going on?’. What is the mechanism at work in my skull that determines these musical preferences? Why do I prefer The Who to Queen despite their almost identical musical prowess, Why Richard Thompson to Bert Jansch, almost anything to Eminem, and so on?
And so I type this as Beethoven plays happily (?) in the background with me pretty certain that if it were Mozart on the MacBook I’d have to stop & listen.
