There’s a lot of music out there that I fell in love with the very first time that I heard it. From Holst’s Hammersmith to Higdon’s concerto for orchestra, there are many pieces out there that I latched onto at my first exposure and never looked back. As you might expect, I listen to these pieces a lot. Not on a constant loop, necessarily, but considerably more often than I listen to other quality things that stock my iTunes and Spotify libraries. Whenever I have a strong, specific urge to listen to piece X, it’s almost invariably for one of these pieces.

There’s also a lot of music that I’ve disliked quite intensely from the first time I encountered it. Babbitt’s Philomel is not my jam, and neither is Schubert’s Schöne Müllerin (SORRY NOT SORRY).  Needless to say, I hardly ever listen to these things, unless they wind up packaged on an album with something else I’m interested in or I have to for an academic class.

But there’s another category, too, one that I may actually listen to more even than the first category: Works I don’t understand.