Before the Baroque era (which started in 1600) there was no thing as instrumental music for performance purposes. All music was used to accompany vocals.
(Great Courses – How to Listen To and Understand Great Music)
Tony's Trek
His ongoing mission, to learn more today than he forgot yesterday
This just doesn’t ring true with me. Although my surfing found nothing to dispute the fact you posted, it’s hard for me to believe people who could play the flute didn’t use the instrument–even thousands and thousands of years ago–to soothe/comfort/console him/herself at sad or lonely times.
Thanks Judy, I believe that the context of the post was in regards to performance of music for an audience. I have edited my original post to make this more clear.