Jos Janssen: >So here is the question: what exactly makes a piece of music "wear out"? >Simplicity of form? Bleakness of melodic shapes? Predictability? Any >thoughts? None of these. I think it is the listener, not the music, that wears out. Overindulgence in anything leads to tedium or fatigue, for psychological or neurological reasons I do not fully understand. If you do not overdo a piece of music, you can come back to it repeatedly and find it fresh and exciting even after many years--assuming you like it in the first place, of course. But if you wear yourself out listening to it too often you may have difficulty paying attention to it on later hearings--even many years later--and when your mind wanders from it, the piece is lost to you. At least this has been my experience--in both kinds of cases. Jim Tobin