Stave of conquest

Page again: “The musical stave was a Latin-Christian invention and was confined, for many centuries, to the Occidental lands where Latin was the exclusive language of liturgical singing. It provided the means for an aggressively expansionist civilization to train singers relatively quickly so that the flag of the Latin liturgy could be planted in Spain, in Livonia, in the Holy Land, and in a great many of the larger hospitals and chapels, often in rural or indeed wild locations. There is something to lament here, but also something to laud. The world has the Passions of J.S. Back, and the late quartets of Beethoven, because monks, clergy and knights of the central Middle Ages sought a form of life with a rigour to match their consciences, then drained marshes, took boats along uncharted rivers or attempted to reclaim, at huge cost to themselves and to others, new lands for Christendom.”