If you want to better understand why you like some compositions more than others, I can suggest nothing better than a series of lectures by Leonard Bernstein at Harvard University in 1973. During his year as visiting professor at Harvard University, Leonard Bernstein had various duties, such as being in residence and advising students, but historically the most significant of these was to deliver a series of lectures. This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives,
The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse.
The real thing about these lectures is this: he talks about how music came to be so important to humans ("Whence Music"), the phonology and linguistics of music, and where it is going ("Whither Music"). It's amazing, but it is, after all, university level and almost 12 hours of listening. (I've listened to it about a dozen times -- so far.)
The series of six lectures (each over 1.5 hours) is available for free on Youtube at