There are pieces of music that follow us our entire lives. Perhaps we have an echo of memory from pre-speech of music and light on leaves; or a fragment half-heard, half-remembered. Perhaps there are clues to memorable music, details that may resonate personally.

Often though, the listener might not have formal music theory education—even if they had some sort of training in the playing of an instrument. The listener might just have habitual genres for their music and occasionally stumble on a song they like. Sometimes, a tune does not stand up to repeated plays; the attracting elements do not sustain repeat experiences. And sometimes there’s the history of music itself: predating written history, often erased in colonization or cultural eradication, waiting like a seed to bloom to consciousness.

Perhaps it is a sense of atavism, some ancestral echo, that allows a four or five generation leap in temporal awareness to find fresh joy in a piece of music written over a century ago. Nonetheless, even Wikipedia acknowledges the longevity and complexity of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. Some listeners may have half-heard this music in a variety of films, including Schindler’s List, while the minor key might hark listeners back to folk music. […]