Deryk Barker writes:

>...I'm not quite sure how music composed in the 17th and 18th centuries
>can possibly "reflect a philosophy or worldview" held by any significant
>number of people today.

All music belongs to history, for the present is evanescent and the future
speculative.  The present has significance only in the sense that it's
the perch from which we view history.!7th and 18th century music and its
underlying meaning have relevance to us in that sense, as does the landing
of the Pilgrim Fathers, the enactment of the Constitution, and, proceeding
from there, the writing of Thoreau, the painting of Whistler's Mother, and
our present view of Friedrich Nietzsche's view of the ponderings of
Zarathustra.

Denis Fodor