Bill Pirkle:

>About that, lets me say, I have posted a question to the ams-l and will
>give it a try here.  The term "classical form" is the issue.  I asked
>"where did the term classical musical originate and does it have
>a specific meaning".  ...
>
>Does anyone know where this term came from.  I'm talking classical vs
>popular, not classical vs baroque vs romantic, vs modern.  Did Bach think
>he was writting classical music, did Mozart? If some one asked Beethoven,
>"What kind of music do you write", how would he reply?

I don't know when the term came into use or why.  However, let me quote the
opening sentence of a favorite book, Donald Clarke's The Rise and Fall of
Popular Music:  "In the beginning, there were two kinds of music:  sacred
and secular."

Up until roughly the 19th century, nobody divided music into popular and
classical.  If Josquin wrote masses, he also wrote frottolas.  Arne wrote
symphonies and popular ballads.  Beethoven, however, said that he wrote
music for "connoisseurs." I think Mozart would have said the same.  To me,
this indicates the beginnings of a shift, which exaggerates toward the end
of the century and the rise of a mass-market music industry and in the 20th
century with the invention of recording and broadcast.

Today, classical music isn't as specific a term as popular music, as
Bill notes.  To some extent, the designation is a matter of whom you
call your ancestors.  The composer who thinks of himself as Beethoven's
great-great-great grandchild probably writes classical music.  The composer
who thinks of himself as Chuck Berry's grandchild probably writes popular.
On the other hand, I doubt it's a matter as specific as form.  There are
the examples of Gershwin, Milhaud, and George Russell - all of whom have
written both blues and classical.  I live in southeast Louisiana, and the
idea about what's classical vs.  what's popular reminds me a lot of how
people decide what race they are (for the record, I think dividing the
world by racial distinctions is mostly stupid and irrelevant, when it's not
downright harmful and evil - why, for example, specify race on a driver's
license?).  I've met very light (even blond), very Europeanish blacks and
some very exotic whites down here.  To a large extent, you belong to the
people you think you belong to.

As for the specificity of pop (as opposed to classical), that seems to me
a matter of marketing - the identification of a market certain recordings
would appeal to.  Again, I live in southeast Louisiana.  New Orleans
musicians don't normally distinguish among types of music:  to them,
gospel, jazz, r & b, rock, and so on is all "the music." In the US, the
real distinction in popular music seems to be urban vs.  rural.  Marketers
divided rural music along racial lines:  "hillbilly records" vs.  "race
records," white vs.  black.  "Hillbilly" became "country and western,"
while "race records" became jazz, gospel, r & b, and so on.  On the other
hand, there are far more musical similarities among Chuck Berry, Doc
Watson, Zachary Richard, Dolly Parton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins,
Charlie Pride, Michael Doucet, and John Lee Hooker than differences.

Steve Schwartz