[oraknabo]

Wouldn't this limit your study to only musicians that influenced current trends?

I've definitely discovered a lot of music from digging into the influences of groups I like, but this seems like a kind of survivorship bias to only focus on the ones that have direct lineage to what's popular at the moment you're engaging in study.

[falcor84]

I don't understand how it could be different. There has obviously been way too much music in the past to teach in it's entirety. We have to decide what to teach based on what we currently think is "important". And though we can try to fool ourselves that there is some measure of objective importance, at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it always boils down to popularity within some milieu.

[oraknabo]

Of course there have to be criteria for any course of study that leaves out plenty of artists that have to be considered not significant enough to cover.

If you were designing a course in either chronological order or in reverse, niether one might ever touch on groups like the Residents, Young Marble Giants, Donovan or Charles Ives--but what if you couldn't even get back to Mozart, Charlie Parker or Woody Guthrie from your current starting point?

[hrktb]

wouldn’t there be an issue of diversity, where the pool of studied matter would get smaller and smaller ?

I would contrast this to languages, where we still study ancient languages, as well as preserve “dying” languages for future reference. Teaching music genres that didn’t ‘survive’ would have its benefits.