> So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'. Unless they are an active scholar in pre-Baroque era mu

> So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'. Unless they are an active scholar in pre-Baroque era music I'd question that. There are just too many cultural cues for common practice music (i.e., from Bach to Mahler) and too few for everything before. It's almost a certainty that the commenter will prefer the music with forms and harmony baked into them that hold the most cultural significance. E.g., if an action filmscore has Berlioz-style brass and a big field drum, everyone is instantly on board. What about if you play the L'homme armé tune that Renaissance composers went gaga over? Those composers would take that tune, stretched it out into really long held pitches, and then write entire sections of the mass around it with faster moving melodies. Was it just a trend like the vocoder? Did monks get psyched when they heard it embedded in the mass? I know a lot of those masses, but I honestly have no idea.