Artistic music!

And by "artistic" I mean music that is commonly referred to as "classical", but that term might be misleading (i. e. referring to music only of the classical period), and musicological articles refer to it as "artistic", so...

Anyway, now that that's settled, do you, people of EoFF, tend to listen to such music, or do you just settle with the more popular genres? If you do listen to it, why do you like it and what motivated you to listen to it in the first place? Which period appeals to you the best and which composer(s) do you like the most?

For me, I could not avoid contact with classical music, since I have attende music school since early childhood. That and the fact that my dad's family is quite close with music (while my dad is more of a rock-fan, my aunt is a music teacher). But even though, it's not that I like all of it. I'm not really fond of the classical period. What I love about the most beautiful pieces in artistic music is that they give you a feeling hard to describe... Almost divine. Whereas I don't get that from classical music. Though some stuff is fun - some of Mozart's operas are very witty and amusing (like "The Magic Flute") and Beethoven was just plain crazy (seriously, one of his etudes sounds like a ragtime). The period I love the most is, however, impressionism and contemporary music. Just listening to Debussy's Syrinx makes me feel enslaved by the raw beauty of the melody, and Arvo Part's minimalistic Spiegel Im Spiegel brings tears to my eyes. Oliver Mesiaen is also one of my personal favourites, and I dare say there are plenty of Polish composers (besides Chopin, but that's a completely different category, and he was a romantic), who compose beautiful stuff. One of my personal favourites is Górecki and his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs... :)