[lbo-talk] class and classical music

[Matthias Wasser]

If I had to come up with a just-so story about the origins of music, it
would probably be something like this: because it leaves few words that can
be substituted in other than the original ones, putting statements in meter
and rhyme makes them easier to remember. So proto-humans subject Important
Statements That Should Be Remembered to poetic discipline. This means that
meter, rhyme, a regular tonal rhythm begin to function as a signal of the
importance of statements, making it adaptive to recognize these things.
Peacock's tail-type mechanisms take everything from there. This is about as
scientific as any other explanation of its type, I suppose.