But he very much came out of a tradition. And, you know, we still have this idea which I think is a rather dangerous idea in the late 20th century, this great man idea. That there are a handful of people throughout history who did great things, and everybody else sort of looks at them in awe and say these are the great people. And I think that's one of the things that's hurt 20th century music because yes, this music of Europe in the 19th century is fantastic, it's wonderful, but it's not the only great music there is. There's a lot of other great music.
Music notation is the first document that was able to be sent elsewhere.
It was the first kind of idea of a tape recorder. He knew, he knew the material, he came with the material, he disseminated the material, he created his own, let's say, springboard, per se, you know, not only for himself, for all of that community of musicians who knew this material already. So the language was actually brought into, and recognized as something great. By the same token, I think that we are needing now at this point, that there have been other systems now all over the world, you know, with great other music that we don't know anything about, with other instruments, with other composers, with other types of sounds, you see, for us to admit that there is something other than the opera as we know it, and admit that in China, there was actually parallel to the opera in Europe there was another kind of opera going on, you know, which has tradition, which has great stars, it has, I mean, you know, great body of works. It was spectacular.