# Modes of Musical Enjoyment



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

If this is already a topic in another thread or a topic someone has already brought up, I apologize. Some of these ideas are based on what I have been reading in the threads in this section. 

There have been a lot of threads recently dealing with why do you like so-and-so, what makes so-and-so great, or "explain the fascination with" so-and-so. All these threads along with comments some have made got me thinking about different ways in which one experiences and enjoys music.

I've thought of three ways in which we enjoy music: sensory, emotional, and technical. Sensory appeal is a satisfaction from the sound of the music itself. We here something and think "I like that sound" or "that sounds pretty". It's the sounds themselves and not necessarily anything else. It's like tasting food. Emotional response is how we enjoy music not purely because of sound, but beyond that. It is enjoyment of music because of its ability to make us feel different emotions such as happy, sad, scared, sentimental, etc. Technical appeal is something likely more accessible to those with knowledge of music theory. It is enjoyment not necessarily based on sound and emotion, but on understanding how the music works to thus recognize the skill of the composer or maybe the performers. These ideas can be closely connected too. Likely everyone who listens to music experiences each of these to an extent.

Some ideas I would like to discuss are:

1. Are there other modes of enjoying music other than the three mentioned above?

2. Do you personally have a primary mode of enjoying music?

3. How do these modes of enjoyment affect one's musical preferences? That is, how does a person's primary mode of enjoyment or mixture of modes determine which styles or composers a they prefer?


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Interesting thread. I don't personally know if technical is quite a way or a very common way of listening to music for most people. I had recognized 3 predominant ways of listening to music in another thread, that correlate to The Big 3:

*Aesthetic.* This is the mode of JS Bach, which manifests as a hyper-aware state that purely grasps the dynamic flow and timbre down to every subtle difference happening in a piece, following the periphery of sound without missing anything. If you don't care for Bach, it helps to practice this type of listening, by turning _off_ thought and really taking everything in as one.

*Emotional.* This is the mode of Mozart, which manifests as a strong awareness of the psychological and humanitarian implications in the artistic process, as well as all possible feelings that music can portray and cement into one's psyche. If you don't care for Mozart, it helps to practice this type of listening, by tuning into a highly sensitive approach--by tuning into your emotions while listening to music.

*Imaginative.* This is the mode of Beethoven, and there's a different underlying implication than emotion, that seems to zoom out of the detailed aspects of listening, and summon a universal ideal of potential meanings behind music, that when sounded, come to the surface of consciousness. If you don't care for Beethoven, it helps to practice this type of listening, by letting the music flow within some larger, core internal vision.


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## Guest (Aug 24, 2020)

adriesba said:


> I've thought of three ways in which we enjoy music: sensory, emotional, and technical.


These three seem reasonable 'modes of enjoyment'. I'd add Ethereality's 'imaginative'; the idea that you can enjoy the flow of thoughts and ideas that the music prompts.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I think there is a process. So, the proposed emotional mode really refers to an "end result" (it may be no more than a few milliseconds later) of other modes. For example, you hear a sound and (then) like it. And, as the enjoyment of a piece music - especially classical music - is a result of how it develops over time, I think one can go through a number of these modes as the piece unfolds. Also, of course, as familiarity with a piece grows the enjoyment you get from it changes.

Beyond these thoughts I need to think further about what is involved in liking (or not) a piece of music.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Enjoyment (or maybe just connection) comes first.

The other three are just attempts to understand or undergird why.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

"Modes of Musical Enjoyment"

For me, the experience of music _enjoyment_ is always changing. When I was a teenager, I was attracted to melodies and movement, stuff like the finale to Tchaikovsky's _1812_, and Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_. Early on, I also had a feeling for grandiosity (i.e. Wagner's _Miestersinger Overture_ or Sibelius' _Finlandia_), maybe this stemmed from my being totally caught up in the mythology and message of the original _Star Wars_ trilogy and John Williams' big and brassy classically-inspired score. Slow movements would bore me until I happened to hear a recording of _Swan of Tounela_ by Sibelius (it came on the same LP as _Finlandia_) and was able to hear the beauty in the orchestral colors and the shadings of sound, as I pictured in my mind, the swan slowly moving through the marsh. Likewise, while I was first attracted to Wagner's sense of bombast and power, it was the slow and tender _Siegfried Idyll_ (a piece that once bored me), that showed me that Wagner's genius is made of more than just loud and lush sounds.

Symphonies often mystified me, until I began learn how the movements fit together. I loved Beethoven's 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th; but I couldn't seem to get a hold on the other less popular Beethoven symphonies until I started to listen to symphonies a whole, and not just try to latch on to catchy melodies. And yes, I know, that Beethoven's 3rd _Eroica_ is supposed to be one of the biggies in the symphonic repertoire, but for some reason it took me a long time to connect with it.

Debussy represented a new plateau for me, as the music seemed more about mood than melody. Atonal and serial works by composers such as Schoenberg and Varese seemed to help me to understand how colors and rhythms are important. When I heard _Connotations for Orchestra_ by Aaron Copland, I thought of it as _Rodeo Suite_ turned inside out, so that even without the cowboy melodies, I could see and enjoy all of Copland's use of colors and rhythms in it's abstract form.

I like exemplar craftsmanship. Early on, I was bored by Mozart, and even more bored by Brahms, and even though I loved Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_, I was completely mystified by Stravinsky's Neo-Classical works, and this lasted with me for a very long time. Then I began to understand these composer's as great craftsmen; how Mozart's sense of seamless balance and beauty almost makes the music seem as if it writes itself; how Brahms' sturdy and solid style stands like some fine old German-made clock; and how Stravinsky's Neo-Classical works make use of Classical forms in interesting new ways, and also makes very good use of orchestral colors.

One of the joys of classical music, I think, is that it's always taking us to new levels of understanding.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think all music is sensory to some extent. So for me, it's only the 2, emotional and technical or a balance between the 2.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

adriesba said:


> I've thought of three ways in which we enjoy music: sensory, emotional, and technical.


I'd like to add 'intellectual' to that list, too. I mean, that moment when Superintendent Budd sings 'give me a criminal case of rape' and the orchestra sings out the 'Lucretia' theme from 'The Rape of Lucretia', and you go 'Aha!'. Or any number of moments in Wagner, when a leitmotif is recognised and you wonder why it's there, and then you remember when you first heard it and that adds a new dimension of meaning to the circumstances in which you now hear it. Or when you read the score of Death in Venice and realise that the theme you're hearing at this point is the _mirror_ inversion of the theme you heard at that other point -and that the libretto is talking about _reflections_ on a canal. Or you hear the strawberry seller singing music that sounds oddly familiar -and then you realise Britten borrowed it from Shostakovich, and there's a momentary pleasure had from knowing your Shostakovich well enough to get the reference.

There is "brain pleasure" that is not sensory or emotional to be had in such moments. I've often said to friends that I enjoy many operas because they are like crossword puzzles: you can work away at them until a penny drops here or there and meaning is elucidated.

This isn't my primary mode of music enjoyment, which I think is either sensory or emotional. But it's probably why I struggle with symphonies, because their intellectual content is so dense and so abstract, it's harder for my brain to work it out.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> I think all music is sensory to some extent. So for me, it's only the 2, emotional and technical or a balance between the 2.


Yes, it's 2 aspects for me as well, the emotional (how does the music make me feel) snd technical, i refer to it as intellectual - the craftsmsnship, the artistry of composition....my favorite music appeals to me on both levels....


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Perhaps by the end of this thread something real will have been codified.

I consider that I react aesthetically to music, but differently depending on various factors. For instance, I appreciate the opening movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata in a different sense than I appreciate the opening movement of Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire." The former evokes decidedly a more emotional response linked to the melody, haunting that it is. The latter provokes an appreciation of "sound" or, more precisely, "color" -- the composer's selection of tones and timbres. Both prove beautiful aesthetically.

Then there is an aesthetic of harmony. Melodies and colors can remain the same, but harmonic shifts (as occurs often with jazz musicians rethinking standards via different harmonic palates) can produce entirely new aural ventures.

Take the above mentioned Beethoven piece and reharmonize it, as in a jazz improvisation manner. It will likely provoke a completely new aesthetic appreciation. Which is one reason I have long enjoyed hearing jazz renditions of popular classical tunes.

Form is another way to appreciate aesthetically, and I often solely to the sonata-allegro form of a movement, interested in tracing the melodies and key shifts, the development, recapitulation and codas. Some may term this a technical aspect.

My initial thought for "technical appeal" had to do with production values, with quality of the sound, whether that be in terms of recordings or live venues (where the environ or space alters the very sound). Compare an old radio broadcast sound of a recording compared to a later stereo analog tube production and/or to an even later digital production. Differences, all appreciable in a technical sense.

I can understand technical also as concerning the composer's choices in creating a score. But I prefer to think in terms of aesthetic appeal. Xenakis's works exhude a specific sound-texture which is appreciable in ways unlike that of most other works of music, which often don't seem to have much concern for sound-texture itself.

Much can be said of emotional responses to music, whether the music makes one weep or leap in ecstatic dance, or whether it provokes thoughts that do lie too deep for tears but prompts one to punch the wall (literally or figuratively). Such response may be studied separately from the abovementioned sense of aesthetic appeals, but I suspect the aesthetic drives the emotional response.

Perhaps these few remarks will assist someone in further thoughts on this topic. Or merely confuse. Or lead nowhere.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

You got it so wrong about JS Bach. You should understand how the composers lived in his times. Why people always have to take the ancients as stupid? Why baroquiers love to listen to the same repertoir over and over again? never get tired? It is some kind of the acquired taste, an almost stoic attitude, an austerity in emtional expression, while being passionate in the detail and dedication. We reject the effusiveness in music. If being in the pursuit of aesthetics, then austerity is our standard of beauty, ideological conservativism is our personality background, dedication to something we believe in is our motivation. Not to be just a transcient passenger on superfaciality, in a short word. In this regard, the technical redundancy is repulsive and ugly as same is the emotional effusiveness.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

For me it's sensory and emotional (I have no technical background on music). Sensory goes further than "ooh, that's pretty" though - I can appreciate soundscapes that are not conventionally pretty. I have the strongest connection with music that works for me on both of these levels.


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## Guest (Aug 25, 2020)

Ariasexta said:


> *You got it so wrong about JS Bach. *


Who did? The OP didn't mention him


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I'd like to add 'intellectual' to that list, too._

I agree with this. I know music I don't particularly care for emotionally that still does a lot for me intellectually. I listened to a 35-minute 12 tones piece yesterday because it was written in threes: triple meter time, three movements, three different tempos, triadic content, it celebrated three composers, etc.

In my opinion the emotional rush or high one gets from music is wonderful but isn't as long-lasting as the intellectual kick.

In addition one of the new skills learned in music is problem or conflict resolution that isn't taught in other forms of academia. This is particularly true in sonata form that resolves to the tonic or key signature. This is one of the lost arts as music and arts classes have been discarded from school programs.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Who did? The OP didn't mention him


Sorry, I mistook the second post to be OPs. All the tree modes of listening categorized by OP hugely misfit the baroque, especially nothing can be further from the truth than the sensory which can be easily mistaken by people to be fit to baroque and people did prove themself thus. While baroque is indeed beautiful, but to the pedestrian minds it surpasses nothing than catchy words in commercials, everything comes down to either harsh technical analysis or pure sensory department. It is what people get when they follow the marketing masterminds behind modern music making.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Actually I feel almost nothing besides calmness when listening to baroque music, and this is what I want the most from listening to music. Yet, I pass not a single day without music.

Sensory? definitely no. Emotional is out of the question and technical and imaginative are both of secondary consideration if still necessary. 

There are mixed approaches in one person to the same kinds of repertoir, one can employ various modes of course. But when listening, I feel horrendous to analytically reflect on my own ways of listening. All technical savors come after the listening only. For example, the same harpsichord suite by Froberger played by 2 different players offers different insights into phrasing, however, I never compare between them while listening, I simply listen. And then when have a rest, I compare their styles in my mind, and the savors of variability in styles come up. When listening, nothing else but calmness is playing up in my mind, refusing to be taken apart in an analystic way. Meditation? no, just calmness of mind, and let music pervades the whole space-time, let the music speak for itself, and I do is just listen.

I even feel sick as I am writing this, the total focus on listening music is of tantamount importance for me, and I can not focus enough yet, because I almost want to fall apart on my own, like melting ice, just melting, and thinking about nothing. Like sex almost, the things just come to you, how can you analyze anything during the time you make love to things you love.

Why it is not emotional while clearly responsive? because listening experience is special to the time only, never taken outside of the time of listening. Like you do not experience orgasm in the public, not to thinking about it when alone. It just comes irresistably, destroys me and recreats me again. Like death and reincarnation, the emotion is unnecessary. But so far, only early music can do this to me.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ariasexta said:


> *Actually I feel almost nothing besides calmness when listening...*I feel horrendous to analytically relfect on my own way of listening. All technical savors come after listening only. For example, the same harpsichord suite by Froberger played by 2 different players offers different insights into phrasing, however, I never compare between them while listening, *I simply listen, *and then when have a I rest, I compare their styles in my minds, and the savors of variability in styles come up. *When listening, nothing else but calmness is playing in my mind, refusing to be taken apart in an analystic way. Meditation? no, just calmness of mind, and let music pervades the whole space-time, let the music speak for itself, and I do is just listen.*


Very good! This is similar to my way. Although I must concede that "sensory" is a factor, if I want to relax my nervous system. This would more or less affect my selection of music for that moment.

That's an equally valid query: What factors influence your selection of music to for a listening session?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ariasexta said:


> ...All the tree modes of listening categorized by OP hugely misfit the baroque, especially nothing can be further from the truth than the sensory which can be easily mistaken by people to be fit to baroque and people did prove themself thus. While baroque is indeed beautiful, but to the pedestrian minds it surpasses nothing than catchy words in commercials, everything comes down to either harsh technical analysis or pure sensory department. It is what people get when they follow the marketing masterminds behind modern music making.


The only stumbling-block to my sensory enjoyment of Baroque music is an overly-bright harpsichord. :lol:


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

larold said:


> In my opinion the emotional rush or high one gets from music is wonderful but isn't as long-lasting as the intellectual kick.


This is a good point....i find that the intellectual aspect, as one explores it, actually enhances the emotional kick...it's the intellectual that inspires me to keep exploring the work in question.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

I'm not quite understanding what the imaginative aspect is that some have mentioned. Is that like how pieces such as _Eine Alpensinfonie _or Beethoven's Sixth Symphony help create mental pictures of scenes?


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Very good! This is similar to my way. Although I must concede that "sensory" is a factor, if I want to relax my nervous system. This would more or less affect my selection of music for that moment.
> 
> That's an equally valid query: What factors influence your selection of music to for a listening session?


Oscar Wilde one of my favorite thinkers, once he said that: "Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." Like many of his quotes, this oration is controversial, as he exploits at the maximum the potentials of the English grammar, a lot of nuances is left for rumination. I do not know how people would understand this oration, to me, it is the approximation to the truth, and sex is the gateway to truth; "about sex" is about the approximation to sex, which should be taken as something as perfection of human happiness. If ou read Oscar Wilde, you will know his out-spoken hedonism. So, you can be assured to follow my interpretation on his views on sex. Everything wants to imitate sex, but sex itself creats power.

Sex is perfection, let us say, beyond human control of rational and sensual departments. And there is still a debate as to the physical nature and mental nature of orgasm, can we say that sex is beyond both? So is the best music, as the highest form of art, it culminates in creating the sexual orgasm to human consciousness. Afterall, music can be a power generator, as the best art pieces are not still artefacts, but real powers. Isn`t it a blasphemy to call sex a total sensual thing? if we all exercise it with people to whom we are affectionately attached? while we can not deny there are many sensual foundations, but we do not want to let them run amok, and we can be motivated by the sex into all 
the creative fields.

My selection in music genres had been moulded by the greatest artists like Gustav Leonhardt, he showed me the proper taste in instrumental and vocal music, although I developped my own listening tendencies based on his enlightenment, the foundation laid down by him is almost untouched. This is not nostalgy, he showed the perfection in music, and yet to be surpassed.

So, the choices for listening session is all random, depending on the mood, which thanks to long time listening, stays pretty stable. But, anyway, JJ Froberger is always something of daily music bread, and all the rest will just to be routinely an assorted program of vocal and instrumental music. The interest for vocal music came to me quite slowly, and I admit it is a kind of acquired taste, maybe Gustav Leonhardt was also a kind of acquired taste too, but surely without artists like him and Jordi Savall, I might not have come this far. The quality of performers, artists, conductors is of extreme importance. I am in fear of bad artists now, also of bad recording engineers which produce lacklustre sound reproductions.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> The only stumbling-block to my sensory enjoyment of Baroque music is an overly-bright harpsichord. :lol:


It took me 7 years to love baroque cantatas, but I never stop learning to love them, now I am a voracious musical parasite on them. I do not quite understand too much why would I try thus far, thinking of reasons just wreck my nerves and braincells. Sorry. :lol:


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> I'd like to add 'intellectual' to that list, too. I mean, that moment when Superintendent Budd sings 'give me a criminal case of rape' and the orchestra sings out the 'Lucretia' theme from 'The Rape of Lucretia', and you go 'Aha!'. Or any number of moments in Wagner, when a leitmotif is recognised and you wonder why it's there, and then you remember when you first heard it and that adds a new dimension of meaning to the circumstances in which you now hear it. Or when you read the score of Death in Venice and realise that the theme you're hearing at this point is the _mirror_ inversion of the theme you heard at that other point -and that the libretto is talking about _reflections_ on a canal. Or you hear the strawberry seller singing music that sounds oddly familiar -and then you realise Britten borrowed it from Shostakovich, and there's a momentary pleasure had from knowing your Shostakovich well enough to get the reference.
> 
> There is "brain pleasure" that is not sensory or emotional to be had in such moments. I've often said to friends that I enjoy many operas because they are like crossword puzzles: you can work away at them until a penny drops here or there and meaning is elucidated.


I can relate to that. I love the chain of associations that a piece can evoke, provided its mood-setting affects me in the first place. For example: *(3:47-end)*






Here we have, densely packed: a callback to an earlier scene closing an arc of a struggle (the Oliphaunt menace) providing a resolution, the title of a track highlighting a character arc (the former was "Dernhelm in Battle", the heroine Eowyn's guise, while this is "The Shieldmaiden of Rohan", her revealed identity and destiny), a callback to a scene in The Empire Strikes Back (where Luke destroys the hulking mech), a callback to Max Steiner's Gone With The Wind (escape from Atlanta amidst monumental fires), the Warner Bros fanfare by Max Steiner (Warner Bros is the parent company of the film's distributor, New Line Media), which fanfare was one of the signature influences the exiled European composers brought to Hollywood, and all such fanfares originated from a common ancestor: the famous Austro-Hungarian march "Unter dem Doppeladler" by Josef F. Wagner, which is awesome in its own right. Then it grows beyond a typical fanfare, and evokes nothing less than the 'Symphonie Fantastique' finale, very apt for a fantasy film scene created purely as a spectacle celebration after a 100 years of cinema. Finally it transforms into a variation of the "Fellowship Theme" which marks Howard Shore adding his name to the long history of music, and is also a sort of "Tolkien's victory", because the theme has been forged from a theme of Sibelius' symphony to honour Tolkien's musical tastes.

And it came just before great symphonic music written for films, the last living hold-out of the long line of western orchestral music, slowly stopped being commissioned. Out with a bang.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Fabulin said:


> I can relate to that. I love the chain of associations that a piece can evoke, provided its mood-setting affects me in the first place. For example: *(3:47-end)*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I like it ^ though I wouldn't say some of the examples I posted here are worse composed, but rather, Shore is a different style focused into orchestrating for symphony; people tend to give more credit to orchestrative works but it's just a type of bias ime. In any case, nice music, and I think I'll more likely take an example from John Williams:

When I made the case for why Debussy is actually considered the 4th greatest composer in the mainstream and elite Classical community nowadays, here, this also pulls along Williams into about 29th place overall. That's great considering it's a tabulation from both the Classical community and the professional Greats today--they're in agreement over the quality of these composers. Not from any strict analytical perspective imo, such as "these aren't Classical composers, they don't compose in the same style", but from actual open-mindedness towards all types of quality and genres of Classical. So according to all ranks of various people, that seems to heavily include Williams.


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## Guest (Aug 26, 2020)

adriesba said:


> I'm not quite understanding what the imaginative aspect is that some have mentioned. Is that like how pieces such as _Eine Alpensinfonie _or Beethoven's Sixth Symphony help create mental pictures of scenes?


I take it to mean any flight of the imagination stimulated by the music, regardless of any prompt given by the composer. Some people listen to Sibelius symphonies and 'see' forests, lakes, wind and ice. In fact, they are quite disappointed if the conductor doesn't bring that out in their interpretation.

Whilst it's true that there is a 'process' by which one could examine how music gives enjoyment, let's not get confused. I think the OP asks a valid question and gives a decent answer that explains the different facets of 'enjoyment'. Terms such as 'aesthetic' are, IMO, too broad.

Oh, and I wouldn't say that one mode dominates overall in my listening enjoyment.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

MacLeod said:


> I take it to mean any flight of the imagination stimulated by the music, regardless of any prompt given by the composer. Some people listen to Sibelius symphonies and 'see' forests, lakes, wind and ice. In fact, they are quite disappointed if the conductor doesn't bring that out in their interpretation.
> 
> Whilst it's true that there is a 'process' by which one could examine how music gives enjoyment, let's not get confused. I think the OP asks a valid question and gives a decent answer that explains the different facets of 'enjoyment'. Terms such as 'aesthetic' are, IMO, too broad.
> 
> Oh, and I wouldn't say that one mode dominates overall in my listening enjoyment.


That makes sense. In that case, I think imagination is rather weak for me. Overall, I'm not a super imaginative person. Unless, I have made some association between the music and something in my life or the composer is intentionally trying to evoke something, I can't imagine much more than the performers when I hear a piece.

As for aesthetic, a lot of that sounds like sensory appreciation. A composer creates a certain soundscape or structure, and you like the way it falls on your ears. It could be appreciation of melodies, colors, format, etc. But perhaps there is another factor in there somewhere.

For me, my appreciation seems to be mostly emotional. Most pieces I enjoy elicit an emotional response from me. But it isn't necessarily always that way.

This is my new hypothetical list -

Sensory
Emotional
Technical
Intellectual
Imaginative


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