Quote:
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Originally posted by Triton+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Triton)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I wasn't very clear on this.* Though the first use of the printing press was to print the Bible, the world was opened up to the ability to spread information of any kind quickly and easily.[/b]
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It was, but the number of people who actually had access to that information was nevertheless quite limited. Just because the books were available, that doesn't mean that everybody was able to afford them, let alone read them; the great majority probably wasn't.
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Music and theater were around, but the music and scripts were not available to all conductors and players before the printing press was available, so culture only spread so far.* Besides, the ability to print sheets of music allowed for music to evolve more quickly by allowing the composer more time to write new music and experiment with new ideas instead of copying music by hand and paying amanuenses to help.* With the availability of written music and printed scripts, other bands in other parts of Europe could perform music written by different composers or play stories by different playwrights.[/quote]
Actually I wasn't thinking about the sort of music you would hear in a concert, but about something on a slightly smaller scale. Keep in mind that in the 15th century most people lived in the country, so there weren't that many concerts to go to anyway. They did, however, have access to music in the shape of folk songs and dances and the like. You don't need print sheets for that, and you don't need to be literate for it either.
Theatre would only have had any significance in large cities like London, of course, but even then companies often didn't work with printed scripts (plays were mostly printed
after they had been successful on the stage), and not every actor was necessarily able to read.
About the spreading of music and plays: I'd say that until about the late 18th or early 19th century, travelling musicians and theatre companies probably played a larger role in spreading them than print sheets and scripts did. For example the 'Faust' story was at first almost entirely spread through such travelling companies.