Mumbles,
To save time and effort, I responded within your post (I also spaced it for easier reading):
I think it's simple to understand that in single isolated cases, enjoying an experience is more desirable than not enjoying an experience. [That is too simple of a reductive dichotomy ("enjoyment", "un-enjoyment", and "desirable" are all rather complicated matters) but I'll go along with it generally to spare us getting mired in details. Also, I think you mean to imply a broad understanding of enjoyment which, if properly complexified, certainly seems "favorable" to an experience that is in no way evocative, interesting, alluring, stimulating, etc.]
Furthermore, In this case, it means enjoying listening to latter day Ulver, or not. [OK, but one must be careful to give justice to the complexity of "enjoyment"- it is not merely a "choice" nor an un-willed "response"- it, like most things, is a heady mix of sorts.] It would be to create a giant technical loophole to say that it is more desirable to NOT enjoy something (the very notion implies you WOULD be enjoying it) [Human consciousness is not binary- one can certainly enjoy disliking something. One can gain general "enjoyment" from the "un-enjoyment" of a particular. "Masochism" is in constant tension with this line] Every singular experience we have with music is an isolated case, based song by song, unless you make a habit of listening to more than one piece at a time.[This seems totally arbitrary to me, and I disagree. Experience is historical (not to be confused with the common notion of "history"), not isolated moments without context]
The isolated experience may be influenced by the events surrounding it, but in and of itself, there is a piece of music playing, and you are interpreting the current piece [This interpretation is neither isolated nor purely voluntary- there is no "pure" phenomenology]. Given such, your choices on any given piece of music are varying degrees of enjoyment. Enjoying, or not enjoying. I certainly do believe this is a choice.[I disagree. One's orientation towards something (which would include their perceptions, attitudes, etc.) certainly plays a large role, but it is not the only factor. Nor is it a simple, binary "switch"-like mechanism that one can simply "choose". "Enjoyment" is a complex total relationship to experience, not a simple appraisal that can be willed.]
To understand how this could possibly be a choice would mean an understanding of the fundamentals which constitute "taste" in music. [I assume you mean something akin to "aesthetic evaluation"] Obviously this isn't something that can be done easily, if at all, but there are certain key categories of characteristics which take differing levels of importance in any given piece of music. I haven't been able to fully pinpoint or explain them properly, but these would be things roughly referred to as "catchiness", instrumentation, performance difficulty, "mood", "complexity", etc. [I disagree with you on aesthetics.]
By redirecting the "weight" of importance for the listener of the categories, one could conceivably align more appropriately and change the quality of the listening experience. Obviously "taste" in music is not static, but I also believe it is elastic in ways that don't require time to change, but rather can change on a level as low as song-to-song, or even intra-song.[This would be the case if the privileging was arbitrary . If, however, thinking/reasoning is present, then the scenario becomes much less "elastic"- such elasticity implies a poor grounding in the evaluative process- things are "weighted", as you said, not randomly, but for a variety of reasons within a context, neither of which (reasons, context) are so fluid.] It would be impossible for a seasoned listener to equally weight ALL of the categories which they find the most entertaining, because doing so would rob all enjoyment from nearly every experience. In all music, there is too much missing from the majority of categories. There are very rare instances of any given piece of music containing ALL of the favored categories at full strength. If the listener does not adjust the weighting to give importance to the strengths of the piece instead of looking for strength in all the categories they have become familiar with and enjoy, the shortcomings will always outweigh the surpluses. [I disagree that there is a "scale" of ranking that can be blanketly applied to all aesthetic experience. Certainly, commonalties will be found, but it is not rigid, and cannot be coalesced into a "system". Again, evaluation shifts with each ever-new context- its grounding point is not constructed scales, but thinking itself.]
The reason for this is that some of the categories have countering sub-categories. "mood" for example is something which contains polar opposites which rarely, if at all, can coexist. Can a piece be simultaneously angry and happy? If so, does the combination actually take away from the strength of each one individually? Could a piece be both the saddest, AND the funniest song you've ever heard? Or would the intrusion of the "funny" somehow degrade the experience of "sadness"? I'm inclined to say yes, it does. If you are to equally weight the categories, there will always be an argument along the lines of "That song is so uplifting!" "Yeah but it doesn't stir intense sadness in me", and hence the music is failing in some category. [More difficult ground... The "moods" you speak of are not neat categories, and are indeed mixed. However, gradation does not mean absence of opposition- rather it brings forth opposition in a powerful way that mere binary posting cannot. Sometimes, what is proximal in some fashion can be quite distant, even repulsive, in another, etc. I agree that opposing things cannot be truly synthesized, but disagree with your simple categorical treatment of moods (I am aware that you may not think of them that way, and that this may be a result of the difficulty of writing, but this is what I have to work with...)]
Furthermore, the weighting of the categories is influenced by OTHER factors, such as frame of mind, environment, familiarity with the music, etc. These factors I think are our main ways of manipulating the different categories to provide an ideal weighting, as we do have some level of control over them. This is actually all related to the how and why I started doing that obscenely boring, uninteresting piece of shit known as Passion Immortal, which served the main purpose of choosing music which has weighting suited best to a "home alone, late at night, in the dark, feeling fragile" sort of environment, with equipment capable of creating a convincingly immersive sound environment. But this isn't about that horrible abomination; this is much broader so Ill digress.
One of the skills a listener acquires as time progresses is the ability to recognize more and more different categories of music. If this is not paired with the ability to appropriately weight the categories, an increasing level of disappointment will develop. Our tendency is, as we discover these "new" categories, to weight them more heavily. If these categories did not exist in previously enjoyed music, we "outgrow" this music. The problem here lies in the fact that one must also develop the skill of "pliable weighting". Doing so provides a much greater chance of not "outgrowing" old favorites, but instead keeping intact the "old" weighting system for the given pieces to yield the same experience (although admittedly diminishing over time most often, which is related to the "familiarity" factor). [I don't understand the motivation to enframe experience into a codifiable system. It simply won't work.]
I believe that to be the most valuable skill of the listener. It has the greatest potential to yield maximum enjoyment of a range of pieces of music without resorting to "looking for" or weighting heavily categories which are not the goal or not important to the given piece. This is, in my opinion, a failure on the part of the listener, NOT the piece. One thing that should be clear though is that I don't believe every piece has the same "maximum enjoyment" level, which can be reached if the weighting is correct. There must be a multiplying factor (a "degree of difficulty" in reference to certain sports) which changes the "maximum". I do believe however that this factor is much, much less important than attaining an appropriate weighting. A piece with a high multiplying factor with a poor weighting would be much less enjoyable than one with the lowest multiplying factor in which the weighting is ideal. [I disagreed with your framework, and now that you have built a system upon it, I don't have much to say. We have very different concerns.]
The real difficulty for this model is the identification of the categories, how they can be changed (via numerous controllable factors), and how the categories match up with each piece of music, or "moment" in the music. In fact, I think it's too complex a system to completely decipher and any objective understanding of them can only partially be applied to what is considered a subjective concept we call "taste". Regardless, I still believe it is very egocentric to assume that our ability to enjoy, or our inability to enjoy is because of our "proper" understanding of the music and those in contrast obviously have some "learning" to do to get to where we are. Unfortunately, very few people seem to acknowledge that.
One thing I can be sure of however is that using this "model" and trying to figure some of it out myself has broadened my own appreciation of music and provided me with more ways to enjoy music, for different reasons. I suggest that perhaps the most useful interpretation of music is the one which provides maximum enjoyment out of it. I don't deny however it may necessary to assume a position which scrutinizes the music under certain categories in order to learn and re-evaluate ones own understanding of the categories and hone listening skills for future experiences. This does not have to be a permanent state though! It may not be the biggest sin in the world to "hate" certain music, and refuse to attempt any alternate interpretation to enjoy it as others do, but I certainly do think it very wrong to ridicule others and try to sway them to also "hate". As Ive said repeatedly, and just spend the whole post explaining, enjoying music>not enjoying music.
To me it's simple: If I put on something from Perdition City for someone like polarity, what is the advantage of not enjoying it for the duration? How can that be better than enjoying it? I'm open to ideas, but the only one I can think of is the one mentioned earlier in the previous paragraph. Certainly that doesn't justify long-term hatred and trying to convince others they should feel that way also. [To sum: I largely disagree with your basic statements and concepts which form the framework for your system or "model". I am even more critical of the model. I find your conclusions greatly erroneous- so much so that any further elaboration on this matter would be fruitless.]
