>Beethoven wrote music from the 17th-18th century, and Brahms in the 18th. That's essentially modern music, when the comparison is with the 11th century. It's recorded on paper, and we can reproduce it easily.
Totally wrong. It wasn't recorded electronically, and you needed a whole orchestra of highly skilled musicians to reproduce it. Your average guy on the street in 1885 did not have this. Your average guy on the street in 1985, however, could just turn on his Sony Walkman and listen to a cassette tape of whatever music he wanted to, or to FM radio. This makes the music industry entirely different. The ability to record sound and play it back on a mechanical (or electronic) device without any musicians changed everything, and brought music to the masses in a way they never had access to it before. Before this, the average person either had to pay to attend a concert (probably not a frequent occurrence, just like attending concerts isn't exactly a daily activity for people today), or maybe he had his own (not very high-end) instrument and tried to play some things by himself or with some friends. That's an entirely different culture than one where people can listen to professional musicians play music at almost any time or place thanks to stereos, headphones, etc.
I don't think it's "totally wrong". Yes, you need a competent musician to play organ, or a skilled orchestra to repeat the partiture of a 18th century composition, but we have a good idea of what it sounded like. The tempo may be a bit of guesswork but probably not too far off. And if it can be played, it can be recorded and listened by anyone.
No, it can't be. Maybe you're rich enough to hire a symphony, but some random laborer in 1885 was not. That's the whole point: everything has changed because music is accessible to the common man now, in a way that it never was before the invention of recorded music.
Simply being expensive doesn't make my point "totally wrong". It's not expensive, anyway: the cost is shared between all who buy the recording, or attend the concert.
Early Medieval music can't be reproduced at any cost, with the few exceptions we have requiring years of study before they were understood.
Also, I think people would have heard lots of music. Pubs in Britain used to have pianos, Irish pubs are known for having musicians, folk dancing was common, etc.
>Also, I think people would have heard lots of music. Pubs in Britain used to have pianos, Irish pubs are known for having musicians, folk dancing was common, etc.
How often did these pub-goers hear Brahms or Vivaldi? Probably never. They heard whatever music that local musicians played, or whatever they figured out how to play as amateurs, and that was about it. They didn't have companies finding talented musicians in different regions, countries, or continents and marketing them, recording their music, and making it available for them to buy a copy so they could listen to it while driving to work.
Totally wrong. It wasn't recorded electronically, and you needed a whole orchestra of highly skilled musicians to reproduce it. Your average guy on the street in 1885 did not have this. Your average guy on the street in 1985, however, could just turn on his Sony Walkman and listen to a cassette tape of whatever music he wanted to, or to FM radio. This makes the music industry entirely different. The ability to record sound and play it back on a mechanical (or electronic) device without any musicians changed everything, and brought music to the masses in a way they never had access to it before. Before this, the average person either had to pay to attend a concert (probably not a frequent occurrence, just like attending concerts isn't exactly a daily activity for people today), or maybe he had his own (not very high-end) instrument and tried to play some things by himself or with some friends. That's an entirely different culture than one where people can listen to professional musicians play music at almost any time or place thanks to stereos, headphones, etc.