Charles Dalmas invites comments, so here goes:

>To me, the difference is self-explanatory.  Popular music is just that,
>popular.  It is the music of the masses.  Generally, it requires no real
>thought, it doesn't express intellectuality or real emotion, and it doesn't
>require much in the way of composition.  There are exceptions to this, of
>course.

There are a *lot* of exceptions.  At least as many as there are in
classical music.  I've heard lots of classical music as mindless and
bubble-gummy as "Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" (names
furnished on request).

>...  Before coming to my class, the kids never even heard of classical
>music.  I had one girl ask me during a study of Beethoven how a dog
>could write music.  I am NOT kidding.

At least she was listening to you and interested enough to risk making a
fool of herself in public.

>The groups of today are also successful because of the huge advertising
>machine behind them.  People are generally sheep, and want to be led.
>Niccolo Machiavelli saw that 400 years ago, and it is still true today.
>This comes from a sort of societal laziness, which breeds the "The
>commercials say this music is good, so I should like it." attitude.

For heaven's sake, we see this same behavior in classical music, at least
in the US.

>I find classical music to be music of the individual, while popular
>music of the popcorn/bubble gum variety to be the music of the masses,
>as I already said.  It's almost as if classical music lovers are
>non-conformists, since we were the ones in school labelled as nerds or
>geeks (they weren't aware enough to realize that geek meant "a circus
>performer who bites the heads off of live animals").  We weren't cool.
>We weren't "hip," or "with it."

What bothers me about this most is the willingness to judge character
solely on the basis of the music someone listens to.  I don't know about
you, but I myself have met plenty of dolts who listen to classical.  I may
even be one of them, for all I know.  I find that we classical music lovers
aren't all intelligent, charming, witty, emotionally deep, extra profound,
crustily independent, and so on.  Furthermore, judging a genre or style by
its weaker examples strikes me as argumentatively unfair.  After all, one
would hardly damage the worth of classical music by tearing down Pachelbel,
Giordano, or Auber.  Why not talk about Oscar Peterson, Alison Kraus, Doc
Watson, Bonnie Raitt, Kathy Mattea, or Alan Toussaint?

Steve Schwartz