The invention of the piano with other instruments around 1700, brought the control of volume not previously available.
Suddenly musicians had another aspect of sound material to employ. With digital pressure or with increased breath pressure, volume could be made more and less loud.
Volume control allows for a different kind of expression of mood than if the hammer hits the string to produce the same volume. The variability of volume creates an emotional response in the listener. With the new instruments composers and musicians were able to release emotion.
In so doing a more basic nature of music was sacrificed, that being the capacity of the note and the interval to provide all the necessary tools to find expression, to give shape.
The addition of variable volume muddies the water and in so doing gives rise to the terrible excesses of late classicism and romanticism and most of the rest that followed.
Too many tools is a punishment and serves to gag the artist’s voice and the desire for formal clarity.
Volume control spelt the end of a beautiful beginning for Western music.
The urge to bring a tear to the eye represents a failure of musical nerve. Likewise the heart is susceptible to volume lifted and lowered.
To be ‘moved’ is to be distracted.
The Germans did beautiful musical work but they led the world astray with technical and musical innovation. The emotional power generated through that music was terribly applied to promoting political causes, causing people to be ‘moved’, and act in the world inappropriately.
The Italians contributed to this emotional well spring. They devised words which became emotional passports to musical excess.
Piano. Forte! Fortissimo! Allegro. Moderato. The die was cast.
We were led to believe we could trust our heart and in so doing we would be led to the kingdom of heaven. That portal is available only through going for the gut.
Just as the points of view of experts can sometimes be warped by different lenses, so too does ignorance warp with equal clarity. This musical theory may itself be susceptible to the tyranny of volume.