Using what I was taught in Digital Signal Processing, where the Information content of a signal received, is directly proportional to what is Not expected, I realized and am going to explain why I get stirred more by classical music as compared to commercial music.

‍

Giving a piano players technical point of view, in commercial music it is easy to decipher the bass clef (left hand chords) once you know what scale the piece is played on, and what the treble clef(right hand notes) is.

‍

Now this is applicable obviously to not only pianists, but anybody listening to the music. In layman's terms, in commercial music, subconsciously you sort of know whats coming.The information content is just whats there in the melody, and not in the bass, hence the information content gets reduced to half.The expected part of it stems from those involuntary brain cells which act up sometimes, and what we call instinct.

‍

In classical music, the bass notes are totally unexpected, and they compliment the treble beautifully. Unless you see and hear and play the notes, there’s no way you know what’s supposed to be coming your way.

‍

Whats unexpected and pleasant, catches my attention more than otherwise. Its serendipity. I love what it does to me.

‍

This sudden realization happened while trying to play this piece to myself called Traumerei. Tis lovely.

‍

This is vladimir horowitz's (who i only came to know about through youtube) version of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq7ncjhSqtk