Over the last few years, I've been fascinated with the ideas around literate cultures (cultures based on writing) and oral cultures. It all started with a book called Spell of the Sensuous: Language and Percaption in the More-Than-Human World by David Abram, then came Wisdom of the Mythtellers by Sean Kane, and finally The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain (recommended in that order). All three come from three different perspectives, and take their source material from different sources, but all come to the same basic conclusion that the innovation of reading and writing spoken language fundamentally changes the brain, our perceptions, and cultural assumptions. (Well, in Mythtellers Kane makes the distinction between hunting-gathering and agriculture, but writing and agriculture evolved together)

But I haven't seen anything on the effects of written music, though I imagine it must be related somehow... I know there are whole cultures of musicians around the world that don't even have musical notation. Has anyone ever done a cultural study on whether this affects musical structure and perception?