First, give up the expectation of beautiful melody and harmonious harmony. All music from the Baroque period to before Schoenberg (or, a little further back, before Debussy) was almost written according to a set of music theory (that is, traditional harmony). Therefore, under this set of rules, the harmony and melody trends of more than 95% of music works are completely followable. (T-PD-D-T’s harmony function circle). Therefore, if you listen to this kind of works many times, even if you have not studied and understood music theory, you will have a roughly accurate expectation of the music produced under the support of this theory. But the theoretical system of modern music can be said to have completely broken the traditional and acoustic system. Therefore, on the one hand, the harmony system of traditional works is different, so the direction of music is completely contrary to your expectations; on the other hand, maybe you have not done much research on the musical vocabulary and style of works written under the guidance of modern music theory system. Thinking that traditional works are so familiar is one of the reasons why you can't accept them. Therefore, I think that when listening to modern music, we should give up the expectation that there is no melody and the one-four-five-one functional system harmony, and regard the various surprises that modern music brings to the listener as a whole. This habit may help you accept modern music.

The questioner mentioned that "there is no melody at all, and the whole piece is full of sharp harmonies and chaotic rhythms". To a certain extent, it is both correct and incorrect. First let’s talk about the melody. For contemporary music creation, melody is indeed a very, very, very unimportant factor. Because, first, predecessors have already written so many good melodies, and there is no need for current composers to repeat those melodies. Second, modern people’s emotions cannot be expressed simply by beautiful melodies. For example, the Expressionism, Decadence, and Symbolism trends of the early 20th century were closely related to the atonal music headed by Schoenberg. Because traditional functional harmony and beautiful melody cannot express these trends of thought. These trends of thought emerged in a specific historical period at that time, and the aesthetic taste contained in atonal music can fit well with these trends of thought. Regarding sharp harmonies, the reasons are somewhat similar. Because in traditional music creation, the same system has been used for hundreds of years, which is actually quite boring when you think about it. The way for art to maintain its vitality is to constantly innovate and break through the original boundaries of creation. Therefore, innovation in harmony is bound to appear. However, in just 100 years since the development of modern music, the new harmony rules have been supported by complete theories. The harsh harmonies were not written haphazardly. Every harmony will have its own musical meaning that needs to be expressed and carried. Regarding the "chaotic rhythm", I cannot agree with this. What the questioner calls "chaos" actually means that there is no stable rhythm like in traditional music (such as strong and weak beats on the 43rd beat, strong and weak beats on the 44th beat, etc.). However, the absence of a stable sense of rhythm cannot be equated with rhythm chaos. On the contrary, writing rhythm with a sense of rhythm that breaks the strength and weakness of traditional rhythm patterns in contemporary music requires more accuracy. Because the composer will place the attack of each part or note at any point on the timeline of a beat (such as starting from the last beat of a triplet, or starting from the second of four sixteenth notes) , etc.), therefore, for both composers and performers, the precise grasp of rhythm needs to be more stringent. Therefore, the suggestion to the subject is to give up the expectation of a stable rhythmic beat, which is also an important aspect of appreciating modern music.

So, the summary of the above point is: give up the expectation of harmony and stability in traditional music, open your arms, and embrace the uncertainties that you cannot predict in modern music. You never know what you will hear next, which is such a fun thing!

Second, relatively speaking, the meaning of traditional music is more inclined to please the audience, while the meaning of modern music is more inclined to the composer's self-expression. Therefore, the former prefers the composer to cater to the audience (or at least the aesthetic tastes and music listening habits of the composer and the audience are roughly the same), while the latter prefers the audience to cater to the composer (or the composer's aesthetic Taste is different from the audience). Therefore, when appreciating traditional works, your attitude may be: This piece of music is really nice and feels really comfortable to listen to. This composer is really good. But when appreciating modern music, you may need to change your attitude appropriately. You should listen with the attitude of trying to understand the composer's musical thoughts through the works you listen to (but I emphasize one point!!! What I mean here is understanding the composer. The musical thoughts are simply about understanding the composer’s musical thoughts, rather than guessing the composer’s writing purpose, which is the central idea of ??primary and secondary school Chinese classes! In contemporary music works, the composer's musical ideas may be all kinds of strange. If you hear something particularly novel and strange, you should realize that this is a reflection of the composer's talent and unique thinking, and you should not think: This is not what I expected, so it is not good. This, on the one hand, goes back to the point made above. On the other hand, I would like to emphasize again: modern music is full of strange things, and there must be some that you like or dislike. If you like it, you can listen more. If you don't like it, there is no need to force yourself to listen.

Because although the composer cannot be said to be bad because his creations do not meet his expectations, the audience has the right to say that they like or dislike a certain composer (in a nutshell: do not say whether a certain composer is good or not) , but you can say whether you like a certain composer or not. )

Third, in fact, not all music in modern music is atonal and dissonant. There are still many important composers who are famous for writing harmonious works. Such as Arvo Part, Gorecki, Philip Glass, Aaron Copland, etc. Therefore, don’t reject all modern and contemporary composers with the preconception that “modern music is ugly”.

But it still needs to be emphasized that although there are still many contemporary composers writing harmonious music, the harmony system used by most of them is still no longer the previous functional system. In other words, the composition has tonality, but the harmony has no functionality.