So how much value is the average critic’s take on music? “The more I think about the process of listening to music, the more I realize that any listener’s reactions to a piece are his or her own and have little to do with the music they are listening to, at least in so far as how that music will relate to any other listener. They also vary over time. Each time you listen to something, what you are listening to is clouded both by what you’ve heard before and what you haven’t heard before. A repeated listen to a specific piece of music will never be the same as a first listen, but neither will multiple experiences to similar musical ideas in any piece be the same as that initial encounter with such an idea.”