[Gloin the Dark]

Yet nevertheless we all don’t learn to like something either.

Indeed – my argument is against assumptions of inevitability in any of these matters!

Who knows… we sure don’t.

Hence my scepticism about the “innate response” hypothesis.

One of the reasons I find the issue significant is that I sometimes see the opposite position brandished as though it were an established fact by people seeking to denigrate modern atonal or avant garde styles of music. I know from direct (and recent) personal experience that it’s possible to go from perceiving a given work as an incomprehensible jumble of random notes to hearing in it the sort of spine-tingling poignancy one might expect from Beethoven, or Mahler, or John Williams (or whoever the big popular musicians are nowadays – The Beatles, is it?).

I’m pretty certain I wasn’t born with an innate (but somehow latent) liking for the music of Milton Babbitt or Brian Ferneyhough; the responsiveness is something which developed over time through exposure to their works, because musical faculties (like linguistic ones) are flexible and adaptable. And, given that, I would conjecture that it’s quite possible something similar happened in my development of responsiveness to the elements of standard Western tonality, as an infant staring at Top of the Pops…

(Oh, wait – except for “Danny Boy”. I think I might have an innate hatred of that.)