I tend to see music as an idiosyncratic language. I know from experience I can't hear harmonies that well, and that I had to find out about chords in Wikipedia

I tend to see music as an idiosyncratic language. I know from experience I can't hear harmonies that well, and that I had to find out about chords in Wikipedia and was completely deaf to them until I trained myself. Meaning and emotions that I can hear in music are most definitely culturally learned, even if I won't fight anybody swearing a major C is so much uplifting than a minor one and that that is an essential part of Creation--to each their own. With that said, just as languages tend to have culturally accepted "proper form" --grammar and spelling--so does music. Music theory is about what spelling and grammar the locals accept and like in their music, and is worth studying for that reason alone. Now, I wonder what would Pythagoras think of our current musical genres...