The difficult thing about listening to both jazz and classical music in the modern era is that both genres spent a long time (centuries, in the case of classica

The difficult thing about listening to both jazz and classical music in the modern era is that both genres spent a long time (centuries, in the case of classical, about 1 century in the case of jazz) of modernist language-building (also deeply connected to each other). Every generation of composer felt compelled to improve on the last, ultimately leading to works that can be difficult for the uninitiated to approach. Some advice for appreciating both genres: - Do some learning about the functions of the music you're listening to; both jazz and classical music spans an enormous range of human musical expression and serves a huge range of needs, so knowing whether the music you're listening to was written for direct entertainment, background music at a party, the soundtrack for a play, or as a form of social interaction in itself can help to appreciate the music. - Similarly, gain some understanding of the traditional forms and formats of the music. For classical, if you have some understanding of the mass, the sonata, the concerto and the fugue, you'll be able to learn to recognize and appreciate more what the composers are trying to do. For jazz, if you can pick up on the 12-bar blues, you'll learn to hear it everywhere. Either way, the forms help you build a pattern recognition that you likely already have for pop. Lastly, both jazz and classical music are much more accessible from an entertainment perspective in their early forms than their later forms. If you start out listening to Bach and Louie Armstrong, it's a lot easier to build up to Schoenberg and Miles Davis than the other way around.