> Re "potential": As long as music was _only_ for dancing (or ritual)
> there were constraints on it -- to take an extreme example, 4'33" was
> hardly possible.
It's not clear to me that there ever *was* a time when music was "only" for dancing or ritual. Are there any extant societies where this is the case? Any historically attested ones?
As for 4'33", silence has always been possible. But people do seem to have different tastes at different times. It seems unlikely that Frederick the Great would have been much amused by 4'33" or that Bach would have thought of performing it for him. But possible? Why ever not?