This essay, first published in the spring of 3020, provides a beginner’s overview of musical performance practice during the centuries known as the Great Expansion (roughly 1700–2100 CE). Changing understandings of human proximity and the role of technology in mediating experience dominate this period and bias our understanding of this fascinating time when humanity was at its peak in many ways. Through transformations of thought regarding mediation and human agency, music in the Great Expansion serves as a good tool for understanding changing modes of culture and interaction that would form the core of modern practice.
Most casual listeners today would be hard pressed to differentiate meaningfully between any two pieces of Western concert music composed between 1700 and 2100 CE. Music from across this period tends to be used indiscriminately to depict the bountiful riches of the Great Expansion era, and anachronisms in usage belie the deep and rapid...