Listening fascinates me. Hoping to glean insight into it from another point of view I began reading The Listener's Art. I find it has very little to do with what I call listening and a lot to do with the kind of literalized response to music which assumes that awareness of structure is a good thing.

It seems to me that structure contains its own message which you get the instant you recognize a phrase that you heard previously in the piece or that is quoted from another source. Structure is as structure does, one might say.