> Before then every little village needed to have musicians around for their celebrations and parties, knowing how to play music was respected as a proper prof

> Before then every little village needed to have musicians around for their celebrations and parties, knowing how to play music was respected as a proper profession then unlike now. This isn't really right, I suspect. What is more likely is that before then, lots of people knew how to play some musical instruments, and most were rudimentary. Because music was foundational to cohesion. "Musician" as a profession is really quite new -- as a sibling comment suggests, patronage/donations/tips/busking would have been the only way. But then also it's fair to say that an entire class of reliable musical instruments produced at any kind of production scale is also quite new. Essentially all valved brass and wind instruments are less than about 200 years old in design. The first modern classical guitar is also not much more than 200 years old, surprisingly. The first pianoforte is only 320 years old or so. Many simple folk instruments are this sort of age -- the balaika is at most as old as the piano, the ukulele much younger. Few truly loud melodic instruments existed much beyond 1550; Amati's violin dates to then. Amazingly the rackett, an instrument often used to portray medieval wind music in films, is younger than the violin, and the crumhorn is not much older.