the invention of music

The phonograph was the very first technique for representing music that was autographic - musical notation and other forms of 'transcription' up until then were decidedly allographic, according the sounds of speech and music to a system of 26 letters and a subsystem of seven notes - from A to G - "thereby categorically excluding all noise sequences" (Kittler 1999: 3). Once a technology can represent sonic singularities, then music is finally freed from the reign of composition/symbolism. Jazz, Rock, Disco, Pop, etc. are not possible without the phonograph.

(But what of oral transmission?)