@isaacgreene That makes sense. There can even be the same misunderstanding from a pop level schema of classical Ed. As though you stopped memorizing after Grammar (though I don’t think that’s usually done in practice).
I think your point about how written scores vindicates Music in the face of STEM is really interesting/correct. Sight in Western philosophy is often viewed as the highest of the senses (starting with Plato, frequent encomiums to sight in Greco-Roman philosophy). Hearing took second place and other senses were lower down. (Coleridge would later argue for touch as the primary sense, which I tend toward). Our knowledge words tend to revolve around sight (“looking into it,” “insightful,” “visionary”). No one has an “ear for detail.” I definitely felt in music theory that the “real” analysis is done on the page.