What is More Interesting: The Music or Listening to It?

Judging from the extent to which pieces of music are dissected, analyzed, theorized, literalized, you would think there was nothing intrinsically musical to get interested in.

The mark of a good composition is that it grabs your attention.  Pardon me, I left something out:  The mark of a good composition well played is that it grabs your attention.  If it does not it is not being well played.  Period.

It has to do with paying attention to the living, breathing sound.  If the performer does not do that how are you supposed to do it for her?  I hear too many performances that exude "deja vu all over again," as Yogi Berra so aptly put it.  I much prefer listening to the genuine struggles of amateurs and children than to the sort of lifeless repetition that too often passes for professionalism.