I can't take all these pastas anymore, I can't take all that Petzold spam anymore, I'm quitting this general.
I just can't stand Petzold. I must impress on you my extreme sensitivity to music. Not only do I have a sensitive disposition, but I am also autistic, which makes my relation with sensory stimuli far more hectic and precarious than what would be the case for the average person.
To give you an example of what I mean, my first encounter with Haydn’s last Allegro for Mechanical Clock (#32) was in the days when YouTube was still up and coming. I heard the piece played in MIDI format on the website [s4s].
I had to pause the computer-generated recording of the Haydn allegro several times, because I could barely hear the music over the sound of my own uncontrollable sobbing. Electric frissons danced down my head and neck. The famous “mechanical-clock” variation of the Allegro left me feeling like the sky and the stars were being downloaded into my body, swirling and dancing.
Even now, half of my lifetime later, it is difficult for me to listen to that piece without swooning or crying.
It is, in a word, good music.
To that end, my first charge against, say, Petzold’s Minuet in G is a purely empirical one: I feel revulsion toward it. Yes, there are impressive—even tolerable—passages in the piece, but then it erupts in cacophony or murmurs, and I wince at the dissonances and the unresolved notes.
I do not deny or doubt the ingenuity of the piece as a composition. Though Petzold was many things, lacking diligence or erudition was not one of them. Nevertheless, try as I might, I simply cannot convince myself that his works are pleasurable. I would very much like to be able to enjoy this, but I cannot. It is like with spicy food, or heavy metal, or the sound of an electric guitar: it fills me with undesirable, intolerable sensations, to the point where having no exposure to it genuinely leaves me feeling better in mind and body.