I've always wondered why we prefer visual art that looks like familiar things (mondrian never quite as pleasant as monet) but also prefer audio art that does not sound like familiar things. When someone makes music that uses recordings of familiar things as elements, it sounds like cheap crap (cats and dogs doing jingle bells comes to mind!).
What's up with that? Why are the sounds we find "sweet" so alien to the natural world?
I actually don't agree with this. The best "art" music through time was a reflection of culture. As a result, the best classical music has deep roots in peasant music, and many composers would use folk tunes as a basis of their music, relying not only on the familiarity of the tune but all the emotions that said tune would evoke.
In the 20th century and beyond this was especially prevalent. Some of the best contemporary composers (Ives, Bartok) used only folk music as a basis for their concert music. Some composers, like John Cage, experimented with the idea of using "found sound", that is, the sound of the natural and man-made world surrounding us, and presenting it in artful ways. Other minimalist composers (and this is true for pop today, as well) gain recognition by repeating the same sounds so many times that they are fully engraved in our heads.
Though the ear may enjoy new ways of the familiar being presented, so do the eyes. If we didn't, why the fuck would people do still-lives? If I know what a bowl of fruit looks like, why would I want a picture of it? I'd want it because I may enjoy how the artist represents something I'm already familiar with. This is why music is so cyclical (trends in music tend to repeat because people long for something familiar that they can grasp), why the symphony is still the king in Europe, and why pop music uses the same harmonic structure and movement that was popular before Mozart.
In summation: no.
