The music that is better than itself

In the 1930s, Pitirim A. Sorokin and J.W. Boldyreff conducted the most interesting experiment1. They told their participants that they are going to play two variations of the same theme by two prominent composers. They declared that musical critics say that the first variation is a masterpiece, while the second is an exaggerated imitation, totally deficient in self-subsistence and beauty. They said that that the aim of the experiment is to see whether laymen agree with the experts. Afterwards, experimenters played the same record twice2. The participants completed a questionnaire which had three possible answers: prefer first record, prefer second record, and no preference.