My kid plays all types of music (country music being the exception). We’re just honest…“Hey, your guys’ playing was fantastic but that really wasn’t my favorite piece.”
On another note, remember The Rite of Spring caused a riot! 
Here’s a great book: Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time
Read about the reactions to Beethoven!
When I’m listening to something that isn’t speaking to me emotionally, I try to figure out what the composer is trying to say. Maybe he or she is trying to make me feel angry. And since I’m also a vocalist, I think that sometimes the joy of a piece is in the singing, not in the listening.
Try finding the more difficult pieces on YouTube and listening again, maybe more than once. You might come to appreciate them more and sometimes you will find comments that explain the pieces so you understand them better.
DD likes to sing new music, what her voice teacher used to call her weird English songs. It took a while to start to enjoy them but as I listened to them more and learned about them and their difficulty they became easier to listen to. Still not my favorites but can be enjoyable now. Give it time. Tell the others what will be in it and give them a chance to explore it if they wish.
I hear you, @Singersmom07! Having mezzo daughters pretty much guarantees that we are going to sit through
some unusual 20th-21st century works!
@ stacjip-
Not being a fan of a lot of contemporary classical music I can understand where you are coming from, I have heard my son and the ensembles he is in perform a lot of ‘modern’ pieces, NYYS has commissioned new pieces that often are difficult (to be kind), and in chamber he also has done a lot of music that can only be considered “modern”., often by young composers…and yep, it is difficult. That said, they are going to see your son perform, and that is the important point I think, not whether the pieces they are playing are easy to listen to or not. I think whoever you invite, even if they don’t like the music particularly, will be charmed to see your boy play:). (For the record, I personally don’t care much for most contemporary classical music, there are gems out there, but a lot of the stuff I am hearing is still either 12 tone/Serialistic stuff or music a la Terry Riley, I really hope there is more going on and that if a kid wants to write tonal music or jazz inflected music he/she won’t face what composition students had for many years)
This thread has become profoundly depressing.
I’m a young composer and a lot of the music I compose triggers negative emotions and is difficult to listen to for some people. This is what I tell people when they ask about why compose that way. What I find odd, is that in every other medium of expression, excluding the culinary arts, challenging art and strong negative emotions are not only accepted, but celebrated. People love horror films, scary stories, and haunted mansions, all of which portray fear. People love watching boxing, MMA, and wrestling because they love the adrenaline of fighting; a lot of people enjoy participating in the fighting too. People love sad movies and stories even though they feel like a wreck every time they watch, read, or hear them.People will expose them selves to material that that scares them, makes them angry, or makes them sad, and enjoy them. But you make someone listen to raw dissonance with no steady pulse, and people lose it! Life is filled with horrible and painful things, so why should art be limited to pieces that are easy to experience. Why can’t music be something that makes you cringe and grab your ears? Why should an artist be limited pleasant mediums to portray horrible things? Experiencing art with the mindset that it’s okay to be challenged and to be made uncomfortable by it makes it much easier to experience art.
Compmajor thanks for posting this. Well said.
This is just a guess, but my feeling is that the first music must have been based on flute like tones and rhythms of various kinds. I feel like people are wired for music of this kind like we are wired for language. Our body’s expect it in a very different way than we expect a ‘pleasing’ life like visual representation or warm colors. I think something with dissonance and no steady pulse, as you describe, runs counter to our natures in a more visceral way. There are music lovers who are quite sound sensitive to where certain combinations are physically painful not just unpleasant of challenging (my mom is such a person and a great arts supporter). Also, while people do love horror movies and MMA many many people also strongly dislike them. It may be that those people are the traditional audience for classical music.
Saintfan, I agree that the type of music I described is either “unnatural” to us or it contradicts what most people understand to be music (depending on your stance of nature vs. nurture, but that’s another discussion). Due to it’s “unnatural” properties, it makes sense if most people don’t like it at first, if ever. Also like you said, some people even feel “physical” pain, but that is actually a psychological reaction to the stress of experiencing something so radically different than what you’re used to. I also agree that many people dislike things like MMA and horror, but those are a few examples of popular things that trigger negative emotion. An other example could be sad movies. The point being that everyone, or at least everyone I know of, enjoys experiencing other’s negative emotions through art in some way. That being said, “new” or “modern” or what ever you want to call it music, is not for everyone. The problem is when people hear this music they don’t like and throw a fit. Call the music “unapproachable”, “strange”, or even “displeasing”, but acknowledge that it’s music.
The more I think about it the more I feel like this is really a mismatch between genre and audience. Challenging modern “classical” composition is still most likely to be heard by classical traditionalists because those are the people who show up and pay the bills. Certainly there are audiences who would relish those types of compositions and it may be a matter of seeking out the less conventional audience.
Relating it back to a horror movie - part of what people enjoy about a classic horror movie is that the negative emotion comes in predictable doses with periodic surges and conclusions. The form is there for people to latch on to. With some modern composition audience members have no frame of reference to gauge an ebb and flow. Knowing when you will get relief can be important.
@Saintfan - you mention the first music and make an assumption that those flute like sounds you imagine would be in the same tuning as modern equal temperament - which is a recent Western construct and that the singing would be in a Western scale. The scales and notes those stone age folks would have been tooting & humming would most likely sound out of tune and dissonant to you now.
Wow, so glad I posted as this has triggered a wonderful conversation on this topic. For those who are interested I have had some wonderful conversations with our son about what they are doing and he had his own suggestions of what I or others could do to better enjoy it. Things like listening to pick out big themes. For those who asked about what they are playing, it is all original composition material. Some of it is free Jazz or new Jazz. But that is using the term “Jazz” loosely because they are improvising. It is more contemporary than Jazzy.
I should add that I am not musically inclined. I am not tone death but music is just not something that I relate to that much. Even as a teen, I was not inclined to listen to music the way my peers did. I tend to like songs with lyrics (as they have something I can hold on to) or to watch music when it is part of a dance or theater. I can go to a fabulous classical concert where everyone is talking about being moved by what they heard and I will hear that it was fabulous, but I will be bored.
I am definitely going to have to WARN people who are coming to this concert. I don’t want people to write off other groups our son is in after hearing this. But also in the case of some relatives, I am not sure it makes sense for them to go out of their way to hear this when I know they definitely will find it challenging. Although there is another group playing that evening and I have been told by our son that their music is much more accessible.
I would like to know more about the knowledge base and preferences of some on this thread concerning “new music.” Can anyone who posted tell me some 20th-21st century composers they have listened to, whether they liked the work or not?
“New music” tends to be reduced to a few simplistic (sometimes outdated) categories. Serialism and post-minimalism for instance. Or new music is considered even more generally as just opposed to traditional “tonal” music. What depressed me here is the wide and negative generalization going on that doesn’t seem to be based on experience with very many individual composers’ works. Contemporary classical or concert music (“new music”) is diverse, like any art form. Much of it even retains quite a bit of lyrical beauty, if that is what you like. It might be more useful to discuss specific works.
Check out David Lang’s “The Little Match Girl Passion, or “I Lie,” which I was just listening to, John Corigliano’s string quartets, Arvo Part, or Judd Greenstein’s “The Night Gatherers”, all works where you will certainly find musical “beauty” which will appeal to traditionalists Check out Steve Reich’s"Different Trains,” but read about it first. To get a little more adventurous, check out Marco Stroppa, Sciarrino, Tristan Murail, Kaija Saariaho or Phillipe Manoury. Others that come to mind at random: George Crumb, Phillip Glass, Elliot Carter, Augusta Read Thomas, John Adams, Nico Mulhy. Chen Yi, Andrew Norman, Takemitsu (recently listened to his guitar pieces), Helmut Lachenmann, Mark Andre. I could go on and on. I also listen to works by young composers still in grad school. Nina Young is one of my favorites. Eric Guinevan. Dylan Mattingly. As one person put it, contemporary classical is a “vast soundscape,” and I have just randomly picked a very few points within it. It is an exciting world and it is frustrating that so few experience it.
It is helpful to know that Stacjip’s son is playing improvised jazz. I hope that the word “warn” can be changed to “letting them know ahead of time” or “tipping them off” or something a little more neutral! 
How cool would it be if your guests could listen to something similar before coming or learning something about what the musicians are doing so that they can enjoy it more.
I wasn’t assuming any scales or tuning - more basic than that even. I was thinking when we used to make “whistles” out of a blade of grass or the basic urge to create rhythm of some kind using almost anything. As kids my sister and cousins and I used to play a game where we would get a humming drone going and create those resonant tone combinations then branch into patterns. It was untrained and just by feel. We would hit on things that, while not conventional music were pleasing to us and sounded and felt good.
An explanation of free jazz would go a long way for the family and friends, I think. It can be work to listen to because it takes focus to hear the time signatures shift and whatnot and appreciate how the instruments are coming in and out and layering. I think it’s almost better when you care about the players because it isn’t sit back and tap your toe music. The free jazz that I have heard in concert (a smallish sample) does have touch points that the listener can pick out and come back to. It can be fun to watch the relationships between the performers as they are so intertwined. This isn’t necessarily the case but I’ve found that free jazz can fall back to some of those more primitive musical feelings where the act of making it is pleasant and cathartic in the moment - it just isn’t a “song” in the conventional sense.
I have very little knowledge of contemporary “classical” composition. I was basing my comments on the post of @compmajor and the other thread about the challenging composition and the patrons who pulled the performance. @compmajor brought up the idea of channeling negative or unpleasant emotions at times with composition and I was responding to that directly. I am assuming that he/she know something about this as a composition major.
As noted in post #15, I did go straight to free jazz as I know her son to be a jazz bass player. I pointed out that while it can be challenging music to appreciate, shifting context and expectations ahead goes a long way.
For what it’s worth . . . my son was in a festival combo last summer that performed a very avant-garde set with interesting instrumentation (for someone more accustomed to a standard jazz combo) and some free jazz representation . I was not able to travel to hear the concert but my parents did go to hear him and schlep him home. My mom declared it to be “different” but she loved seeing him up there and hearing him play in a different context than she was used to.
When my daughter started playing in a small new music ensemble (cofounded by Huang Ruo) at the age of 11, new music was all very new and different for the kids and parents. I was open minded but had limited knowledge . A lot of the parents were confused by those first pieces (one of which was Terry Riley’s “In C”, which someone mentioned, and which I grew to really like!), some complained, and even some of the older, more traditional-minded instrument teachers at the school were openly antagonistic and disparaged the program to the kids in their studios. From those humble beginnings, the 15-kid ensemble has grown over the past 8 years or so to number well over 150, and they pull from the major precollege and high school programs (classical and jazz) throughout the city (true, some at the precollege programs who aren’t interested mock it still, but it’s a smaller, quieter mocking). They rehearse like crazy (this music can be extremely TOUGH to play) and perform ALL the time at the city’s coolest venues and festivals. This year Kronos Quartet is in residence. They work directly with composers like Nico Muhly, Caleb Burhans, and Judd Greenstein, have collaborated with Alarm Will Sound, I.C.E., and others, had masterclasses with Todd Reynolds and others, and the list goes on and on.
Point is, my daughter and her peers now live for new music (she’s two years gone from that program now, in music school, and on Friday will perform Henry Cowell’s 26 Simultaenous Mosaics with a percussion group and a professional dance troupe, part of which will involve moving around the stage and interacting with the dancers), and the parents are way more on board than they were at the start.
Point is, after listening to new music in an increasingly immersive way over the past 8 years – to works by Phil Kline, Dan Becker, Michael Gordon, Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzolli, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kevin Puts, Arron Jay Kernis, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Reich, Jakob TV, David Lang, Michael Hersch, Miguel del Aguila, the list goes on and on – one thing is clear: there is a wonderfully huge variety of music being written today --atonal, tonal (which is not to say it’s not dissonant sometimes or a lot of times), microtonal, minimalist, post minimalist, neo-[insert whatever you want], jazz influenced, rock infused…etc. etc. Some of it is accessible immediately, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Some is more like a person you have to take the time to get to know – but it can be well worth it.
So, if I’m any indication, liking new music really isn’t particularly difficult, but it does take exposure to it. And the more you listen, the more you’ll find to like, I think. And the more you’ll find what you do like. Your ears and mind will change. Sometimes, with individual pieces, it’s a process; I learned that by watching that ensemble perform the same pieces multiple times. Who knew I would go head over heels for Jefferson Friedman’s String Quartet No.3 (check out the whole thing, second movement especially)? Well, I did. Or Steven Mackey’s sprawling and wildly exuberant “Physical Property”? Me. Guilty. Watching this stuff live helps enormously, I believe, but if you can’t always do that, Q2 is an online feed of new music, and spotify (for all the bad things people rightfully complain about) is a good way to find out about new music (there’s a ton on there).