Scott Johnson: "The Western Classical Tradition was so successful at binding together a fairly large group of cultures within a fairly consistent set of practices that it is wasy to forget that it began its recorded life as a patchwork of regional styles and segregated genres, with strong feelings about the religious qualities of the human voice, and powerful taboos about when and where and within what style or technique it was appropriate to blend them with instruments. [...] A thundering Romantic finale combining chorus, percussion, and pitched instruments would have seemed an abomination to many of the originators of the tradition."
"[T]he assembly of a common practice was accomplished through gradual and successive transgressions against common sense; against gut instincts which said this technique or sonority does not belong with that one. Much of this could be accomplished by Trojan Horse incursions, 'barbarous' Turkish percussion, imported into Viennese classical pieces for sound color and cultural references, gradually lost its exotic connotation and gained a new European one. But it retained the sound color, which became a permanent part of the orchestra."