lasu Margulis - On repeat: how music plays the mind:

Cone (1977) examines repeated listening through the metaphor of three archetypes: a First Reading "based on total or partial ignorance of the events narrated" that is "purely experiential: one knows only what one experiences" (i.e., is being told); a Second Reading, in which "mystery and suspense are banished" and there is "no emotional involvement"; and a Third Reading, or "Ideal Reading". "The Second Reading aims at an analysis", Cone writes, "treats the story, not as a work of art that owes its effect to progress through time, but as an object abstracted or inferred from the work of art, a static art-object that can be contemplated timelessly. Paradoxically, the Second Reading achieves its goal when it ceases to be a reading at all - when it becomes the pure contemplation of structure."

Temporally, in the Second Reading, "the trajectory of thought is zigzag, or even discontinuous, constantly shifting back and forth between the planes of memory and experience". It is only in the Third Reading that experience once more gains supremacy:
"The reader follows the actual narration; but this time he is in a position fully to enjoy the journey; for he is now both confident of his direction and aware of the relative importance of each event along the way. He cannot fully suppress what he already knows, for he travels at the same time on the plane of memory; but he tries to ration what he knows in such a way as to make the path of experience as vivid and exciting as possible."

Cone's Third Reading privileges a certain kind of abandon; the listened must possess enough information to have the capacity to orient to relevant features, but can't be mired in the explicit work of identifying them. (..) (in Cone's Second Reading) a conscious engagement with conceptualized thought about the piece interferes with the kind of unmediated vividness achieveable in a Third Reading, when the analysis has been sufficiently internalized. (..) Few listeners explicitly analyze their favorite music, but many nevertheless come to have deep and rewarding experiences with it. Repetition itself can work to involve listeners with music in rich, new ways.