Macker: I appreciate the cheer!
fatis12_24918: I see. Be that as it may, I am not wrong in what I said in the context I established, I believe. As far as the anthropological/neuroscientific studies are concerned, I agree that the more basic the musical element, the more common it will be cross-culturally (much like the ring vs. the brutal noise). The same could be said of phonemes. Vowel cries on their own are probably shared amongst people on all continents. And then, as language/musical language develops into more sophisticated expression, we notice significant differentiation across cultures - for example, you mentioned melodic culture. It is because we were talking about orchestral music, I thought you meant instrumental timbres/colours as your second element and that's probably where the misunderstanding occurred, as this aspect of orchestral writing is one of the more recent developments, i.e. a more recent rung in music's evolutionary ladder.
Insofar as Orkestral music is concerned, since it has chronologically "developed" after the most sophisticated orchestral possibilities (let alone form, harmony, polyphony, etc.) had been invented, its primitivistic features are not merely a step back, but leaps back. Hence, logic dictates that if it is true that people prefer Ork music to Debussy or Stravinsky, it is because their musical cognition and appreciation stems (pun intended) from a chronologically much earlier stage of mental/chromosomal development. We -as a symphonic culture- have planted our flags on the highest peaks. Are we to compromise and sit on mole hills, simply because this kind of orchestral writing is more "inclusive", as everyone and a trained monkey are capable of such tripe?
