Music through history; an holistic point of view #edcmooc
A comment on Reductionism
https://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tdet03.html
In music history it is well known that the music of every civilization is influenced by a lot of factors ; for example, it is influenced by social-economical organization and structure, technology, scientific achievements, even climate. The way of expressing feelings through music, the way people treat musicians, the kind of sound that is produced by a particular musical instrument ,vary between different regions and historical periods.
Starting from ancient Babylon, China and Greece, until nowadays , all these conditions that make up the socio-cultural frame of each period contribute to music's evolution as an whole. Through all these centuries thousands of people worked and experiments took place as far as concerns physical phenomenon of sound ( acoustics) on one hand and on the other hand concerning the improvement of musical instruments; not only musicians, but also scientists and philosophers worked together. Why? because they wanted to investigate nature and because they wanted more music, more rich music. History is full of a huge try to understand the physical sound phenomenon. It is full of arguments about philosophical aspects of music and music's influence to the society. Many beliefs were expressed about which kind of music or what kind of musical instruments are appropriate for each social group. Plenty of discussions and many experiments took place to be found out how different musicians (with different instruments) could play together properly, without producing chaos; and composers constantly were looking for a better patron because they could not stand as independent professionals (because of social and economical reasons)
It would not be accurate if someone would suggest that music evolution is only a result of technological innovation concerning instruments. It is a complicated phenomenon formed by several conditions.