Appreciation precedes enjoyment.

I'm listening to one of my favorite metal bands as I write this. Scale the Summit plays technical instrumental heavy metal with a strong progressive element. Their appeal is twofold: first, each member of the band is a proficient and experimental musician, and second, in their music one can discern both a rational and an emotional element.

Like a lot of Classical music, Scale the Summit's compositions require careful attention. A cursory listen of many of their songs can be disorienting, for (like the best metal bands) despite their four-piece approach, Summit's pieces are complex in ways popular music is not. Each of the musicians is a virtuoso, but none is a prima donna, making their blend of two seven-string guitars, six-string bass, and drums nothing short of sublime.

That's not to suggest anyone who listents to Scale the Summit will (or should) have exactly the same reaction to their music. What I don't want to imply in my theory of music is that all music can be submitted to a single rigorous test which will force a given piece to have a single effect on everyone who listens to it. I do think all music should be rationally contemplated and judged accordingly, but once that has been accomplished I think a variety of reaction to a single piece actually serves to demonstrate its power, artistic effect, and beauty.

A lot of this goes back to a fundamental consideration in art criticism of any kind: the difference between appreciation and preference. There are many Classical compositions I can appreciate but that I have little predilection for or enjoyment of (most opera comes immediately to mind). The same is true of all music; there's plenty of music I don't listen to that I can nonetheless qualify as good art because it meets certain essential criteria.

Scale the Summit is one of the bands I both appreciate and enjoy. The appreciation is the rational level—throughout all their songs there is attention to melodic themes, an orderliness despite the occasional apparent dissonance, and a structured complexity, all of which point to a proper understanding both of the role of music (to train us to think and feel correctly), and the world in which music is created (a deeply complex though often confusing realm which nonetheless evidences an inherent teleology).

From this appreciation comes my enjoyment. And yes, much of that enjoyment is emotional: a song like Rode in on Horseback calms me even as it elates my spirit, both essentially emotional responses that are at the same time mediated through my intellectual appreciation of the song. Without the intellectual mediation, my "emotional responses" become mere animal instincts, and can be manipulated any way I want them to be.

Trading in rational thought leading to emotional enjoyment for immediate visceral response culminating in mindlessness or mere behaviorism is simply trading freedom for slavery. Good art ought to free our minds and spirits from the selfishness and nihilism of everyday life, but if we approach it with empty minds our only reward will be more emptiness, and its power will be effectually negated. To truly enjoy something, we must first be able to understand it and appreciate it; otherwise, we're ruled by it and kept in a consumerist subjection to the very thing that should elevate our minds, our hearts, and our emotions to a nobler plane.