On 'classical' and 'popular' music

On this short piece of writing I put forward a thesis about what the terms actually mean.

The terms 'classical' and 'popular' are evidently problematic. They are adjectives apt for individual pieces of music, not a tradition. The first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is much more popular than a fair bit of 'popular' music. And certainly the last albums by The Beatles have a much better case to be considered a classic than Louis Spohr's symphonies. All proposed terms, like 'serious', 'commercial', 'art', and such are unsatisfactory, for they generalise without actually naming what makes both traditions different

And this is the important point. We have to think about traditions. Traditions are passed from one generation to the other through specific means. Traditions have their classics, conventions, cliches, periods, styles, institutions, performance practice, etc.; which have changed and evolved through the years and ages. They have been permeated by one another and by many other different musical traditions throughout the years and the ages. But the permeations do not affect and have not affected the tradition's ontological status as a specific tradition. The genealogy of the tradition persists even after transformation, in the same way that happens with languages, or with species in the evolutionary sense.

"Classical music" refers to music in the Western-Tradition-of-Written-Music. It is possible to say that tradition properly started around the 11th century, when Guido D'Arezzo started to systematise what later became music notation. The instrumental means of the music have varied a lot in 1000 years, but can broadly talk about five different instrumental categories: vocal, chamber, symphonic, solo and electronic/electroacoustic pieces. One can very clearly track the development and evolution of form and harmonic procedures through the centuries. Musicians who write in this tradition have a knowledge of it. Every single "classical" composer knows Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. and has studied them. Every single "classical" composer knows western music notation. Most of them study in conservatoires. They compose music in a specific style that is both influenced by the immediate musical zeitgeist and part of a bigger tradition.

On the other hand, what we call "popular" music is a different beast. This point is a bit more convoluted, as, with the more-or-less worldwide unification of listening habits following technological and cultural transformations in the 20th century, it appears that what is perceived as one big concept is actually a myriad of (usually) popular^[1] (and sometimes not so) traditions from all over the world, that in some cases might be thought as having, up to some point, merged. The most visible tradition from “popular music” comes initially from the North American blues and it may be called western-North-American-oral-tradition of music. What most people mean by 'pop' music comes usually from this branch. Most of the musicians that write in this tradition know about the classics (some examples include The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, etc.). The "traditional" way of studying this music is not the same, as it usually implies that the "student" learns songs by ear and starts to compose mostly in a selftaught manner. Formally, almost all of this music is based on the song format, but not all of it. Progressive rock has played a lot with form: Pink Floyd's "The Wall" which is more akin to a song cycle. Echoes is a long-form piece.

I think this is the best way to make sense of the differences of the two most well-known musical traditions in the West. Knowing this you can just go ahead and keep calling them 'classical' and 'pop', it's way shorter. But don't lose sight of what is what actually differentiates the two.