While the earworm of pop music songs burns out after fast repetitions like a 24-hour-flu, it doesn't seem to give us any resistance to it the next time it hits. Classical music, on the other hand, is more like a long term thing, maybe a genetic ailment that hits most people late in life. Every generation succumbs to it in their middle age! (Or at least some percentage do.)
Personally, I've been a big Beethoven-head since my first quarter at the university when an introductory core course for music majors happened to be about him and his life (and at the time didn't include the theories that he was black, though knowing that his name is Dutch rather than German, I always speculated that there were possibly Indonesian or African-via-Surinam genes in the mix somewhere.) I did have some fallings-out: once I got high and saw the Eroica performed and was taken by the rigidity and uniformity of the orchestra! Fascists, man. Everybody playing the same thing all dressed in uniforms.
Anyway, as far as "our generation's " exposure, you missed one: Walter Murphy's "Fifth of Beethoven," which as kitsch as it was has been redeemed by his work on "Family Guy," complete with a one-time reference to said disco single.
While the earworm of pop music songs burns out after fast repetitions like a 24-hour-flu, it doesn't seem to give us any resistance to it the next time it hits. Classical music, on the other hand, is more like a long term thing, maybe a genetic ailment that hits most people late in life. Every generation succumbs to it in their middle age! (Or at least some percentage do.)
Personally, I've been a big Beethoven-head since my first quarter at the university when an introductory core course for music majors happened to be about him and his life (and at the time didn't include the theories that he was black, though knowing that his name is Dutch rather than German, I always speculated that there were possibly Indonesian or African-via-Surinam genes in the mix somewhere.) I did have some fallings-out: once I got high and saw the Eroica performed and was taken by the rigidity and uniformity of the orchestra! Fascists, man. Everybody playing the same thing all dressed in uniforms.
Anyway, as far as "our generation's " exposure, you missed one: Walter Murphy's "Fifth of Beethoven," which as kitsch as it was has been redeemed by his work on "Family Guy," complete with a one-time reference to said disco single.