European art culture

[Clef_Burton]

I'm learning the piano and stumbled across this in the book I'm using:

"J.S.Bach's Art of Fugue, whose instrumentation remains unspecified, epitomises the tendency to focus on formal aspects of musical unfolding at the expense of instrumental colour and dynamics - elements that are more dependent upon how the music is actually performed. This way of treating music as a self-contained art with an almost abstract character, independent of it's social context, is possibly unique to the culture of European art music, and is important to some modern music."

True European music stands alone and transcends social triviality. In modern times the blues followed by rock have both attempted to reverse this ideal, and they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for heavy metal.

[More Celt Than Sassenach]

If your learning the piano one needs not look further then Bach. He wrote keyboard music for all of his children, both sons and daughters and for his two wives. Thus you see some music that is catered for their current skill level which allows a learner of the keyboard to never be bored, overwhelmed or underwhelmed. Also music such as his inventions focus on a particular technique for each piece so as to make it worthwhile learning of all them.

Makes me wonder why I do not play such an instrument.

[ASBO]

Looking at higher IQ societies like Northwestern Central Europe and Northern Asians, we can see this emphasis on abstraction in all things, because you can't step into the same river twice so memorizing a fixed pattern is less useful than understanding a principle.