Wearing Goggles

As I drove my nephew to his place of daycare, I immediately recoginized the piece on the radio. Yesterday I had heard an announcement on this same station that they would be playing Dvorak's piano quartet in the nine o'clock hour. Although I did not so much recognize the actual piece, I remembered that the radio station would play this piece. Then I began to listen to this piece with Dvorak ears... you know who the composer is, so you try to see if the piece fits into his largle puzzle, with this piece being only one part of the whole picture. Then I got to thinking about it and I felt like my mind had been tainted. I didn't have the chance to listen with my own ears, to figure out who might be the composer of this piece. I didn't get the opportunity to listen open-mindedly to this before judging it.... it was simple... this was Dvoraks piano quartet. It just pisses me off. So is it better or worse to know who the composer is? Not that I probably wouldn't have figured it out, but still... the answer was already engraved in my mind... the punch line was given away already. My question is this, if we are told who the composer is, do we automatically put on our "Beethoven goggles" or "Brahms goggles" which guide us in our listening? Or is it possible to be as open-minded about a piece knowing the information we do? As I listened to this piece, I immediately started to think, does this piece have the characteristics of Dvorak... does it sound folk like, are there certain dotted rhythms he always uses, and the list goes on. Maybe I'm just the fool who had my own goggles on, impairing me from actually seeing the big picture. hmmm... too much to think about.