I believe that in the 19th, 18th, 17th, 16th, and 15th centuries, the general pattern of those hearing good music was to enjoy it for its neauty, its emotional power, its cleverness of rhyme and rhetoric, or its pleasantness of tone. So your visitor's criticism was roundly out of period and should have been chastised as being anachronistically solipsistic, and improper, to boot.

A