Just yesterday I started to read Samuel Huntington's book, "The Clash
of Civilizations".

I do not want to go into details or even his hypotheses, but one
generally accepted paradigm (it seems) is that there are currently
around eight 'large civilizations', which are: Western (or rather
North-Atlantic, but it also includes Australia and New Zealand, and
my risky addition, Israel); Japanese; Sinese (China, Taiwan, Vietnam,
etc.); Orthodox (Russia, part of the Balkans, etc.); Islamic;
Latin-American; Hinduistic and African.  There are also smaller
'civilizations' (this is a very technical term in his book), like the
Anglophone Caribbean.

What occurred to me is that apparently mechanical musical instruments
(in the sense of the MMDigest) seem to be confined to that small part
of the world which is defined by the "Western" civilization.  Moreover,
it seems to me that 'mechanized instruments' -- in the sense that
'mechanics is needed by them' (like the piano, but also slide
trombones, trumpets with valves, and of course the mechanized
instrument par excellence, the organ) -- were also purely invented and
built in the 'Western' civilization, with the usual 'bleeds' to other
nearby civilizations; these would be foremost the Latin-American, then
the Orthodox, and smaller ones like the Anglophone Caribbean.

Another factor Huntington brings in is the relative impact of
civilizations during history.  One major result from many statistics
(production, number of people governed, traffic...) is that the "high
time" of the "Western" civilization was around 1910, with still
significant impact until around 1940.  This time frame suspiciously
overlaps the one of the heyday of mechanical instruments...

I wouldn't want to start a discussion about Huntington here (can
I claim that after this?!), but it seems very appealing to connect
"mechanical instruments" and "North-Atlantic civilization" ...

Harald M. Mueller

 [ "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order",
 [ by Samuel P. Huntington; paperback, 368 pages (February 1998);
 [ Touchstone Books; ISBN: 0684844419