[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Andyrondack

You can't understand music by just hearing it either you have to read books too.

I suspect you're misunderstanding me.

What I meant by "understanding music" is the way that a non-musician understands music. Music communicates its essential meanings to everyone, not just to musicians! You don't need to read a book to pick up what a piece of music is trying to tell you. You feel it!

This is really important, because all human culture has music of some kind, and every member of each culture understands its music.

With more complex music, we don't always get it, at least not deeply. E.g., I don't really understand a lot of classical music. I can kind of guess what it's trying to say most of the time, but because it's not my culture it doesn't really mean anything to me. I could probably understand it better if I read a book explaining what the composer was trying to do, but I still wouldn't get the actual musical message, because to me it's like a foreign language.

But when I listen to any 20thC popular music, I get it straight away, I know exactly what it all means. I knew that before I became a musician. Any fan knows what their favourite music means, they understand it perfectly, on its own terms.

Music is made for non-musicians. If they didn't get it - in its entirety - there would hardly be any point in making it. This is what I'm getting at. It's nothing to do with music theory. Music theory is not interested in explaining music to non-musicians. It's for helping musicians discuss their craft, and to help them learn the rules.

But musicians themselves also understand music in the same way non-musicians do - they appreciate the same kinds of meaning. Naturally we have greater insight into its underlying machinery, but that's different.

Originally Posted by Andyrondack

Medieval monks wrote music to be be sung by choirs trained to sing early musical notation.

Yes, but early notation was not something you could learn music from. It was taught by ear; the notation was just reminders once you had learned the tune. (That's a different point anyway)

Originally Posted by Andyrondack

Gregorian chant pre-dated harmony but the melodies were composed using predefined modes, thus church music in the medieval period is considered the begining of music theory in Western history.

Yes, it's still beside the point I'm making.

Originally Posted by Andyrondack

Gregorian Chant was sung not just in monasteries but in churches too, if church music influenced secular music and church music was composed and notated by the professionals of the day ​then it must be true that music theory has influenced traditional music.

No disagreement there.

Originally Posted by Andyrondack

If you were not familliar with the traditional Irish song She Moved Through The Fair and you heard it for the first time translated to Latin and sung in a monestery or chuch would you not believe you were listening to Gregorian Chant?

Well if it was sung in that style, of course, but what's your point? It sounds like you're saying traditional folk music would not have existed without medieval modes!
All I'm saying is that folk music followed its own rules. Not all of it was influenced by the church modes. Those same modes occur in the music of other cultures, not connected with the Catholic church.