ABSTRACT
In the study of music we can detect two approaches which may be characterised, for the sake of clarity, as 'ideal types'. One of these approaches focuses on the organisation and execution of musical 'notes', and the other, on the 'social contexts' of musical production, distribution and reception. Both approaches inevitably confront some problems in making claims to be the route to evaluating music. For example, within the classical style, the 'greatness' of various pieces has been analysed by critics and musicologists over the years, aiding their sedimentation into a musical canon which has been more taken for granted than explicitly questioned. The approaches seek to evaluate individual pieces, or individual musical events. But musical evaluation might equally well be addressed, not to individual pieces but to whole musical styles by comparison with each other. One of the most influential pieces of research suggests that musical developmental stages are not so much age-related as logically sequenced.
