In the first place, all the writers dealt exclusively with what we today would call the western high-classical tradition and accepted without question the assumptions of that tradition without seerning, for the most part, to show any awareness that they were just assumptions, or that out there might be other equally valid sets of assumptions. Never, not once in the whole five hundred pages of the book, was there a single glance outward to the experience of other cultures, not even as far as western popular traditions. And in the second place, the theories they developed were all terribly abstract and complicated, reminding me in their often quite elegant intricacy of those cycles and epicycles that astronomers used to use m order to explain planetary movement before Copernicus simplified things by placing the sun at the center of the system. I just could not make myself believe that so universal, and so concrete a hurnan practice as music should need such complicated and abstract explanations.
I think this is an incredibly important part of the reading. Many people use a western or Eurocentric lens to analyze aspects of other cultures or even other cultures as a whole. This often often applies to music because music from other cultures is held to the standards of critics and scholars that feel that "Western" music is what all music should be. It's one thing to have a certain way of thinking but Small mentions that there was no attempt to take in mind the experiences of other cultures. I feel that this section was important to include because I think this has been a serious flaw of many scholars throughout time, taking something universal to all people like music and trying to turn it into something so complicated that can only be appreciated if it meets the standards of someone with a preference for western music. I think it's very ambitious and honorable of Small to challenge this "traditional" and outdated way of thinking.