A meta-musical question

[womzilla]

In a discussion at last night's gaming session, one of my friends said, "Everyone likes music. There's no music that *everyone* likes, but everyone likes *some* music."

And I scoured my brains for a prominent, or even minor, counterexample and couldn't come up with one. supergee suggested President Ulysses S. Grant, who was quoted as saying "I only know two tunes; one is 'Yankee Doodle' and the other isn't." The UK version has Sir William S. Gilbert (of "and Sullivan") saying the same of "God Save the Queen".

So, how about it? Do you know anyone who simply doesn't like music? Are you such a person?

Comments

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Well, my research suggests Freud didn't care for music much. Franz Joseph is quoted somewhere on line as going to the opera as a sacrifice he made for the good of the Empire, but I think he enjoyed dancing.

I don't know why W.H. Auden is sticking in my mind as an unmusical poet -- he wrote opera librettos, for crying out loud. But I think he's standing in as a proxy for some other British writer whose essays I've read who did say he didn't care for music. Maybe Chesterton?

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I heard the same quote from US Grant. I thought he was tone-deaf, and I suspect anyone else with the same condition would feel similarly.

[ookpik.livejournal.com]

I have had at least one client who, if not actively disliking music, certainly said that there wasn't any kind of music that she liked or would just listen to of her own accord.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I recall once reading a biographical profile, I believe of a deceased 20C British political figure, which mentioned casually that he had no interest in music whatever. Can't identify it now.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

I found out a friend of mine just doesn't "get" music. It doesn't do anything for him.

[redbird]

I can't think of anyone offhand, but it sounds like "everyone has a sense of humor." One of my LJ friends has no sense of humor (in the same way that someone else might be colorblind), does not consider this a problem, and gets tired of people telling her that "of course you have a sense of humor" because they think they're being reassuring.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Does "has no sense of humor" mean "never laughs"? I have known a few people who pretty much never laugh at loud, though they say that many things amuse them.

On the main topic, I can't think of anyone who has said they don't like music, but my parent's house never had music in it. They never played records or the radio, and while we had a piano, I do not remember my mother ever playing it. Music just wasn't there.

K.

[redbird]

If I understand her correctly, while she enjoys many things, "funny" is a blind spot for her.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure Ogden Nash was music blind. He never would have written verses for "Carnival of the Animals" on his own, but was commissioned, and squeezed out some perfunctory wordplay that I used to be subjected to whenever the piece was performed. I saw someone say in the last couple of years that Nash actually had no feeling for music whatever. Need I add that it showed?

Maybe Music Near Sighted

[(Anonymous)]

Ogden Nash did write the lyrics for the musical *One Touch of Venus,* after all.

[docbrite.livejournal.com]

According to Paul Theroux, V.S. Naipaul likes to tell people he hates all music. He does seem to hate most of it, but he turns out to be something of an expert on traditional calypso.

[washa-way.livejournal.com]

I have one friend who is both severely tone-deaf (he literally can't tell which note is higher when they're an octave apart) and red-green colorblind, but he still LIKES music; it's just that his choices of what music to purchase (the Germs, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Kiss) are kind of, uh, odd.

Especially when considered together.