[Paul]

Yes, you are making an excellent point here Samuel. If I may be so bold, what we think of as “Classical Music” is probably quite a different thing to what is was originally. It was just music and played to varying degrees freely. I don’t think this is much of a mystery really because culture (particularly textual, language based and hierarchical culture) tends to close down variation over time.

I do think that where this culture produces really remarkable musicians and performances, there is probably a large degree of free expression of which the listener is only tangentially or implicitly aware, something that runs probably counter to the general point I was making.

But then I also think this isn’t typical for most musicians.