A lot of music appreciation involves an arc of progression. In Jazz, for example, complex solos sound like random wankery to the person beginning their journey.

But after you acquire a grounding in the basic forms like blues and rhythm changes, then suddenly, more complex music stops sounding random. It makes sense when played with the simpler music as a backdrop.

Then after you’ve listened to that for a while, even more complex music suddenly makes sense. And so it goes for a while.

Then you listen to a simple piece again, but you hear something in the simple piece that you literally didn’t notice at first. The complex music has trained you to notice a certain note or phrasing, and you realize that what you heard wasn’t simple, it too was complex, but it was complex in a subtle way.

Music is not absolute. It is a conversation between performer and audience that changes both.