Time was when I had a record player, a car radio, and a portable radio that all got cranked up pretty loudly. I’m sure my parents and co-workers and friends might have thought I’d gone deaf from listening to my favorite stuff at top volume, and possibly, mad from thinking of doing such a thing with even the most subtle and silky classical music. I think perhaps I did deafen myself a little, but that more likely was [ahem] situational deafness, the kind that causes young persons to lose the ability to hear and understand their parents, co-workers and friends, never mind their bosses. Even at my most ridiculous, I don’t think I managed to blast my records and radio devices as loudly as many of my peers did theirs.
Here I am, antique as I’ve grown, and very glad indeed that after all of that I can still hear the subtle and silky pianissimos of great singers and players, and yet I still do love to get my socks knocked off from time to time. What can be more exciting and energizing than a loud yet magically tuneful phrase belted out by a skillful symphony chorale or fabulous gospel choir when the text demands such dynamics? I can sit in the back of the rehearsal hall and just plain hug myself for happiness when the whole group gets to that gorgeous blastissimo peak of the piece. I love to hear that pulsing, pounding joy when a pianist or organist puts the pedal to the proverbial and actual metal for the topmost moment of a blues riff, a prelude and fugue, a smashing concerto. If it peels back my scalp just a little, who am I to complain when the music is so potent! A few paltry hairs off my head are small sacrifice for the great pleasures of blessedly blasting music.
As long as it’s good, well executed, and thrilling, loudness is not such a bad thing. It might even drown out some of the sadder sounds of the day if we let it. Children who have not yet learned the meaning of the phrase ‘indoor voice’ can exhaust us, but at times in their own boisterous ways they can simply fill us up with welling gladness by chirping to test the sound of their own voices in a large empty space, by squealing with amazement at beauties we’ve forgotten to appreciate, by shouting our names too loudly because we are all the way across the room and they love us so. How can we not love, too, the sounds of finely honed music in all of its patterns and rhythms and tones when they spin into vortices of loud celebration!
Art-Colored Glasses 
I love loud music as long as it’s my own. 😉
Naturally! 😀
To crank up the car radio when a favourite song comes on is heaven and being alone in the car I can sing along to my hearts content if I wish.
The *real* reason for car radios, if you ask me! 😉
Never been a pianissimo gal, either….Brava, Darling!
I’m totally stealing ‘blastissimo’, by the way…. 🙂
I get no credit for that yummy word; it’s fairly commonly used among the musicians I fraternize with these days, and that’s where I stole it myself. 😀 Belt away!!
Beautiful! Love this 🙂
Feel free to join in and sing along!!! 😀
La la la la lahhhhhh
😀
Good word: blastissimo. As for the thing itself, much depends on whether it’s forced on people who don’t want it.
Exactly so. And that delightful word is not my own, but I think it’s tremendously apt.https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?paged=2#comments-form
Loud music is definitely not a bad thing when it sounds good 🙂
Precisely! (Though perhaps best enjoyed with proper ear protection.)
Bach’s Fugue in D Minor must definitely be LOUD; Rock ‘n Roll, as well; but Heavy Metal makes me insane (perhaps that the general idea with that kind of so-called music?)…
It can indeed make me Heavily Mental! I suppose the same could be said of the Bach, though in a different way. 😀
I can’t take too much loud music. If there’s a loud, strong bass, I start to feel queasy. Weird, but true.
Not weird at all. I don’t like music to be loud all the time, by any stretch, but there are moments when I enjoy that seismic sensation of an all-stops-out organ piece or a choral blast of, say, one of the great Russian monsterpieces. But I can’t take protracted noise of any kind, and non-musical sorts generally require earplugs on my part. More accurately than I said it in the post, what I am thinking about liking over the top are the levels of passion and intensity, which can be incredibly delicate and subtle and even quiet, rather than of volume. 🙂