Reevaluating the Principle of Expectation in Electronic Music
Jon Appleton · Perspectives of New Music · 1969
For all the height of excellence of the practical music of the moderns, there is not heard or seen today the slightest sign of its accomplishing what ancient music accomplished, nor do we read that it accomplished it fifty or one hundred years ago when it was not so common and familiar to men. Thus neither its novelty or its excellence has ever had the power, with our modern musicians, of producing any of the virtuous, infinitely beneficial and comforting effects that ancient music produced. From this it is a necessary conclusion that either music or human nature has changed from its original state.1