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Originally Posted by starrynight
Not completely sure, that's why I said probably. But I assume the very first humans to use sound communication had less potential than we have now after a few million years of using this in our species. I would have thought our brains would have developed in that time to become attuned to musical aspects of sound.
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not criticizing what you're saying, just sort of food for thought. Personally, I've always seen rhythm as the domain of humanity. As it's something that we've owned and developed entirely through experimentation, and it's the one try defining trait of a genre.
I've actually seen a special on this awhile back and they say that of all of the instrument types(woodwind, brass, strings, etc.) the only one that finds itself generally universal is percussion. Of course, an obvious exception to this would be gregorian chant, but I digress...
If anything, I think a large portion of music's potential has been lost in the increasing demand of 'perfection'. IE. 100% even metronomic/drum machine rhythms all of the time. I think something gets lost in the translation process when music development comes further, and further away from staring by 'banging on something with a stick until you like it'.
With that said, music knowledge is at a pinnacle with the speed, and size of the Internet. So, I can fully see where you're coming at with increased potential. Just feel that there were advantages to the more humble, primitive, approach of the old days.
I mean, after all, I read a section in a Bela Bartok book a bit back where he was explaining that utilizing his infamous repertoire of native Hungarian music, that he actually had to simplify it quite a bit for an orchestra to pull it off. Even if Hungarian folk music is a generally sophisticated form than others, it's definitely not constrained by the metronomic perfection of it's Viennese inspired 'classical', and not considered anywhere as mature.
I also think for that reason(IE. folk music sometimes actually being the resulting roots that enhance the potentials of more developed music) that music cannot be an accident. I also have to bring up the fact of birds. I've heard musicians all the way from Beethoven to Eric Dolphy were inspired by imitating birds for melodies, a fixture of nature, that's fairly universal to all cultures.
Perhaps, in that way, music is man's way of communicating his relationship to nature, and is less an accident, but a way to imitate things word's can't truly describe.