A catholic music taste - Conclusion

I think I've gone as far as I can go on this subject (for the time being at least and to, no doubt a sigh of relief by all), so thought I would take this opportunity to summarize.

I'm not keen on putting music (or anything else for that matter) into "pigeon-holes" and only use music genres to help me catalog my music collection. I do not consider myself a music snob, although I probably was when younger. I am of the opinion that "good or indifferent (to others), if I enjoy it, I do, if I don't enjoy it, I don't". That applies to many other things in life - food, beer, wine, theater, movies, etc. I remember well that in the 1960s peer pressure drove me mad. "Mod or rocker?", "trad or modern (jazz)?", "The Beatles or The Stones?", "Dylan or Donovan?" (in the latter case, neither). Today's youngsters almost certainly have even more peer pressure than I ever did.

From the simplest country song to the intricacies of a Mahler symphony, I have a love and indeed a need of it all. A few opening notes of say, Herman's Hermits "I'm into something good" and my mind immediately brings images of a Saturday evening at our local dance hall, the opening bars of "Tales from Vienna Woods" and I'm transformed to the New Years day concert in the wonderful natural auditorium of St. Michael's Caves, Gibraltar in 2003, and I cannot hear the Harvest Festival hymn "Come, ye thankful people come" without remembering my very first processional hymn as a choirboy many years ago.

I watched one of my favorite movies a couple of weeks ago on TCM, Carol Reed's The Third Man. I hadn't seen it for many a year and the minute I heard the amazing zither playing of Anton Karas, who also wrote the score, I recalled literally the smell of the burnt methanol exhaust of motor cycle speedway meetings in Great Yarmouth. That movie theme was extremely popular and played at every (weekly) meeting for a considerable time after the movie's release in 1949. Remarkable in that I was only five years old then!

I've used these examples just to emphasize what music means to me.

New Year Day concert, 2003, in St. Michael's Caves, Gibraltar - a wonderful natural auditorium.