Well. I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on quite a few points, danny.
As for your "unavailability of repetition" notion before the advent of recording technology, you are wrong here. The piano was the "stereo" of its day. Most middle-class households had one. Or two. And other members of the household routinely played other instruments.
During the 19th century, with the rise of the middle class, piano transcriptions of new works by composers were routinely prepared and published. Liszt, Brahms, as you know, were great transcribers and the great orchestral and chamber works of the time were made available to music lovers in piano transcriptions.
Yes, but it's just not the same. When I'm really touched by an orchestral work I just don't feel the same emotion and interests when it is transcribed for piano. Many things just disappear for necessaty, the sound is not the same and the piece ends up communicating completely different ideas and emotions.
Through these transcriptions, people could and did experience repeated listenings to gain a greater love of complex works, such as the Brahms' Piano Quintet, the Beethoven symphonies, etc., etc.
But complexity resides in the means by which music is created not in the end result.
No composer has or ever had the goal to be "complex".
A composition begins with the intention of the author of communicating something, whether this will be abtained through simple or complex means is just a matter of circumstance and just something which happens "behind the scenes"
I don't pieces created through complex techniques and means are less direct and immediately appealing than pieces created with simple means. In the end what matters is the end result, the content and there's little relation between the content, it's meaning, it's fruibility and immediacy and the complexity of the means and techniques by which it is conveyed.
And it was a universal given in the mid to late 19th century that music education was indispensable to perform on instruments. So repetition indeed was available before recording technology.
While it's true that piano was available to the middle class and many amateurs played it, the level of proficiency of the amateur pianists didn't always allowed them to play many pieces that required an higher technique and I still think that for orchestral pieces piano transcription were at most a surrogate.
Besides we're talking about music and the sensitivity and emotional depth required to really get the most out of it. And yet we're saying that in the past this music and the chance to listen repeatedly to it was a prerogative of the nobles and the spoiled middle class, which paradoxically are the people less likely to posses that kind of depth and sensitivity/empathy because of their emotionally repressive social background and general lack of scarring experiences.
I think it is idealistic to assume that art should be instantly accessible and attractive if it is truly art. That no education is necessary and, if it should be, then the work in question is overly complex and cerebral and, therefore, not worthy of study.
I agree that immediately appealing music IS a virtue and should be a goal of a composer.
And, as you say, everything is relative, therefore music's accessibility is relative to the listener.
What, to me, evens out that relativity of accessibility is education. To be able to be moved by Beethoven Opus. 110 requires a little more insight than that required to get into club music.
Not necessarily, both music can be felt in a instinctive and emotive way.
I still believe that the best listeners ever are young children.
When you look in the eyes of a young child who is listening almost in trance to a beautiful piece of music (be it classical or popular) you know you're witnessing the highest essence of music ever.
No, I'm not denying that there are other levels too. So for example someone studying music might eventually analyze the score while listening the music and appreciate it on a technical and harmonical level, but that's just a parallel path which is not required to appreciate the Beethoven or feel what Beethoven was feeling.
We must eventually not forget that not licking a piece of music we consider a masterpiece is not a symptom of having a dull mind or being dulled by other kind of music, but just the universal fact that what the music is expressing to you is not something you like.
One can acknowledge the beautiful writing technique of a book, the prose and fluidity of the narration, the refined language which never gets pendantic and the genius use of analogies ... yet this person may still dislike the content of the book, the morals of the book, the meaning of the book and what it is trying to transmit. In other words it's absolutely normal that the composer and the listener have different chords striken by different things (and are also very likely to have different personalities and ideologies) but this doesn't in any way is the fault of the listener or of it's lack of interest and insight.
Anyway I'm glad we can agree to disagree peacefully.
Disagreeing is important, healthy and constructive and even in the "war of opinions" we should always respect our "rivals" and "fight" for our ideas in an honest way, using our arguments and disagreeing with other's arguments without ridiculing them.
After all we all have the same goals in mind, we all want the best for music, the best for arts, the best for people, the best for the world, the best for the society ... we just have different well-thought opinions on how to achieve these goals.
Too bad in this forum there are people who take advantage of disagreement to vent their frustration, troll interesting threads and just create bullying on-sided fights.