I would like to take the blame (away from Steve Schwartz) for starting this
thread with the monkey report, which I found in Science News.  I am not
very educated musically and my main reason for being a several year lurker
on the list is to try to learn and figure out my own musical tastes.  The
list in general and this thread in particular have been very helpful to me
and I would like to toss out an idea about it that has just dawned on me.
It helps me to explain why this issue produces so much intense feeling and
defensiveness and has helped me to explain my personal music collection,
which I have found increasingly mysterious since joining the list.

I believe the issue of tonality/atonality and dissidence/harmony is
strictly a matter of personal taste and has nothing to do with correctness
or goodness, or modernity, or anything of the sort.  As example, I would
like to use my own personal feelings about it and an analogy with some
other tastes that seem to have similar dynamics.  I believe that people
vary tremendously in their desire for and comfort with adventure and
surprise (e.g.  risk taking, unusualness, wildness, and out-of-the-
ordinariness).  I am personally an adventurous eater.  I like every ethnic
variety (including Alabama truck stop), gristle, pig feet, all kinds of
shanks and hocks, snails, raw oysters, plenty of garlic, etc.  To drink,
I like Guinness stout, the smokiest, bitterest single malt scotches, and
straight sour mash bourbon.  Several years ago, I discovered hot chilies
and now I don't like to eat dinner without at least some.  My preferences
horrify most of my friends and I am lucky to have a wife who tolerates them
(I would have real trouble finding another if anything happened to her).
I also like fried chitterlings, but I draw the line at the boiled ones and
people who like to eat them horrify me, in turn.  There is a similar point
in the hot pepper spectrum beyond which I would rather not travel.

Over the past few years, using comments on this list as a guide, I have
taken a long needed look at what kind of music I was buying.  All of my
life, I have bought music strictly by impulse and, after seeing many great
listers telling about how wonderful Brahms was, for example, I realized I
didn't have any.  I was also shocked to discover that over 80% of my (small
by this list's standards) collection was either J.S.  Bach or before, or
post-1900.  I absolutely adore most of my collection and I believe the
excitement and degree of adventure and unusualness I get from it is the
spice that gives me that feeling.  But, as with my food tastes, there is a
limit to how much surprise I enjoy.  I don't really care for some types of
serialism and I find that a piece that has too much randomness or is harsh
and dissonant beyond some (unspecifiable) point is exhausting.  Extreme
serialism is the boiled chitterlings of my musical experience and music
with nothing but harsh dissonance is my meal with four habanero peppers
or tablespoon of Dave's Insanity hot sauce.

However, plenty of things that I find exciting, others find excruciating,
horrifying, and painful, both in the musical and culinary areas.  That
doesn't bother me in the least.  I appreciate their tastes and, thanks to
this list, I am learning to love Brahms (not there yet!) and I can even
enjoy a delicate souffle now and then.

Bill Walsh in Auburn, Alabama