What I was trying to get at yesterday was that I have two ways of listening to classical music (I mean here classical in the narrower sense of 18th century). I can hear at as conventional, nice-sounding, structurally cohesive music, but without really being engaged with it beyond that, or it can really get to me. For whatever reason, Haydn's opus 54 and opus 74 (string quartets) that I've been listening to lately have just totally floored me. They are as sublime as anything in Mozart. I had only before heard Haydn the first way, as pleasant, upbeat, witty, and structurally balanced music. Nobody told me that Haydn was like this. The world was holding back this music from me until I was ready to hear it. What gave me the hint was the Mozart dedicated six of his most accomplished string quartets to Haydn. I thought that Haydn must have written something interesting in this genre.

It's the same with the baroque, one of my favorite periods of music. Some baroque music I hear as mere "scrubba scrubba."