Concentration

@hilde45 

Certainly we listen to the sound and the music at the same time.  The point is how much you have to concentrate on the music.  In classical it’s more essential to do so.

Classical compositions appeal at multiple levels -- they have to, because composers at that time were, in large part, composing music for the public. They had to make a visceral connection. That’s why even the non-classical listener knows the tunes to many compositions.

@hilde45 

Classical composers - the vast majority of them, anyway - made music at the pleasure of European monarchies, courts and assorted hangers-on. The public was not concerned.

This built-in perception of elitism endures. While most folks may know the first 20 seconds of Beethoven’s Fifth because it is incontournable, classical is perhaps the only music genre that periodically faces calls to be either removed from the curricula of public universities or to have public subsidy of its study and performance curtailed or ended.

I have music playing 3-10 hours a day and I really enjoy having it on, but a few times a week I’ll hear something that peaks my curiosity and I’ll sit down with my eyes closed and absorb every note, every pluck, every sound and enjoy hearing all the nuances I may have never heard before.

@devinplombier jazz was prohibited in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s regime. It was considered decadent bourgeois, western propaganda and a threat to communist/socialist ideology. People were arrested for distributing jazz recordings. If they found someone performing jazz in an underground club there would be severe consequences. 

We’re definitely headed towards full de-evolution. I don’t know where you stand on the concept of what you just posted but it is a living proof that some are way ahead of the game. 

Classical music is as visceral as Jazz but in his own ways...

Musical time is not metronomical time nor acoustical time and in classical as in Jazz, the interpretation of what is written by the musicians or their improvisation together, together with or without a director, must create a time dimension of its own where our soul/body meet.

Music experience of any cultures is rooted in "timbre" experience and is universal. Our body participation as players or as listeners to the vibrating sound source resonate as a new timing and time dimensions...

Rythms are the root and timbre is the tree whose branchs are many  new time dimensions. Concentration is born in our body real or virtual response gestures to the music perceived and/or created.