Art and Music

Definition

This term is mostly used to refer to music descending from classical tradition. This is the common definition referred by many musicologists and scholars including Susan McClary,[6] Lawrence Kramer,[7] Theodor Adorno,[8] Deryck Cooke,[9] Joseph Swain,[10] Nicolas Cook, Nicola Dibbens,[11] Philip Tagg[12] or Gregory Booth and Terry Lee Kuhn.[13] Many of these authors, however, tend to be critical or prudent with respect to certain implications of this classification. Those authors most particularly associated with critical musicology movement and popular music studies like Tagg tend to reject latent social elitism that has sometimes been associated with this classification.
Some other authors interested in music theory may define art music differently. Musician Catherine Schmidt-Jones for example defines art music as "a music which requires significantly more work by the listener to fully appreciate than is typical of popular music." In her view, "[t]his can include the more challenging types of jazz and rock music, as well as Classical."[14]
While often used to refer primarily to Western historical classical music, the term may refer to:
The classical/art music traditions of several different cultures around the world;
Modern and contemporary art music, including serialism, electronic art music, experimental (art) music and minimalist music, as well as other forms;
Some forms of jazz, excluding most forms generally considered to be popular music. Jazz is generally considered as popular music. (Adorno for example refers to jazz as some kind of popular music.[15]) But some more technical forms of jazz have blurred borders between art music and popular music.
While earlier musicological approaches tended to consider art music in an elitist way, stating art musics superiority over other forms of music (for example Adorno[16]), many modern musicologists (most particularly ethnomusicologists) dispute the notion of superiority. In a recent... [continues]

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