At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the thesis that all and only pleasure has positive non-instrumental importance and all and only pain or displeasure has negative non-instrumental importance.
Some things have both instrumental and non-instrumental importance, and in such cases their overall importance is a function of both.
From ethical hedonism, it follows that if our relationships, achievements, knowledge, character states, and so on, have any non-instrumental importance, this is just a matter of any pleasure or displeasure that is in their natures.
Your pain of being once bitten has non-instrumental negative importance, for example, but it might also have instrumental positive importance through the further pain you avoid by its making you twice shy.
During the Baroque period (c.1600 1750), interest in arrangement declined, perhaps because of the increased importance of instrumental music and the waning significance of vocal writing.
The development of opera, oratorio, and the cantata gave a prominence to vocal music throughout the Baroque era (c. 1600 1750) that made it equal in importance to instrumental music, with which these forms were closely allied.
Indeed, the very concept of musical "form," as generally understood from the late 17th century on, was intimately tied to the growing importance of instrumental music, which, in the absence of a text, had nothing to rely upon save its own organically developed laws.
