[rejschaap]

I appreciate the complexity and ingenuity of Bach's compositions, but I can't really enjoy listening to them. I always feel like I'm missing out. So occasionally I try to get into it again, but I fail every time.

edit: talking about the organ works here

[tzmudzin]

It is an acquired taste.

One needs to invest some time into the listening (and preferably: some music appreciation courses/ material) to start picking up the nuances. BTW -- the analogy with IT systems holds here. A layman will not appreciate the beauty behind some of the designs...

My personal experience with Bach as a beginning player is that a piece that sounds just fine becomes really interesting when you start playing it, and then at some point you get the extatic moment of enlightment... even if you still don't know it how Bach got there...

[soundwave106]

This is probably a style choice thing, which I understand. While I consider Bach the best of the Baroque style (although there are a lot of worthy composers in that era), I personally often find that style a bit rigid (it relied pretty heavily on a well defined set of voice leading rules, fairly strict counterpoint, etc.). Some Bach pieces (and other Baroque composers) are great for my personal tastes nonetheless, but my personal preference for music tends to come from late Romantic to early "modern" era composers.

I can easily see why programmers could get into Bach though, or other pieces that show amazing contrapuntal / strict voice leading type skills in particular -- that type of music skill is very "head oriented" / logic oriented to me.