thoughtcrumbs

Attentional capacity for classical music

In the "Fun" chapter of Emotional Design, Don Norman talks about the ability of a good design to be perceived and interpreted differently over time, rather than becoming passé like last week's orange low-rise jeans. He discusses "well designed" classical music:

I believe [classical music's] longevity derives from the richness and complexity of its structure. The music interleaves multiple themes and variations, some simultaneous, some sequential. Human conscious attention is limited by what it can attend to at any moment, which means that consciousness is restricted to a limited subset of the musical relationships. As a result, each new listening focuses upon a different aspect of the music.