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From: janzen@sunfun.DEC (Thomas E. Janzen CSS GNG CWO  714 850-7849 SUNFUN::JANZEN)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Differences between pop and classical
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Date: Tue, 28-Aug-84 12:34:35 EDT
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Posted: Tue Aug 28 12:34:35 1984
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perience, and reinforcing social
	values (including when a rock song caters to adolescent
	pretense of rebellion - rebellion is part of our culture).
	Concert music and fine art make appeals to the exchange of
	ideas and the challenge of new experiences.  This accounts
	for persistent, even bitter, loyalty to old classical music.
	Non-musicians that listen exclusively to old classical music
	are using it in the mode of tribal reinforcement, repeating
	familiar experiences to reassure themselves that nothing
	important is changing; all the change in our dynamic world
	is superficial.  Leonard Bernstein as much as said this in 
	(I believe) a very old television program on Beethoven's
	Fifth, something like, "This is something we can depend
	on, where the notes are always right."  Of course the
	notes are always right, it's the same score he's 
	been indoctrinated into praising. 
	New music listeners are helping prepare 
	themselves for the coming changes in their lives, and also
	accustom themselves to change (they are better
	at living with uncertainty).  New music may be a more
	successful agent for social integration, but habit resists it.
	I have said elsewhere that old classics listeners use classics
	to define themselves to themselves and others as members of an
	educated, privileged class.

	3.  The sole aesthetic criterion for popular music is its
	success at generating corporate income.  The sole criterion
	for concert music is its success at pleasing its creator
	in the process of creation.  It is of no interest that
	the work pleases it author after it is complete, or that
	it pleases an audience, or that it pleases a critic.

	4.  Popular music uses familiar materials and gradually
	incorporates materials established by the experimentalist concert
	music composers (e.g., major triads and electronic synthesis were
	pionered by experimentalists).  Concert music discovers the means 
	of music and teaches it to everyone else.
	
	5.  Popular music is more usually persuasive in a complete
	theatrical context.  Concert music has often been presented
	as independent of theatre.  It pursues a pure music, just as
	other highly stylized arts seek independence (Ivonne Rainer
	dancing without music, paintings without actors, etc.).

	6.  I think I had a couple other differences when I thought
	about this eight years ago, but can't remember them now.

Tom Janzen
2300 Fairview Rd. H-201
Costa Mesa, CA  92626
Digital Equipment corp. Costa Mesa

Tue 28-Aug-1984 09:33 PDT