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 ==""Classical music"" discussion from  (October 2004)== 
 Hi FS, thanks for your reply. I think your point about classical music benefitting from having centuries to throw away the bad stuff is legitimate; I tried to polish prose a bit. Concerning your comments about ""The Nature of Classical Music"", here are some quick replies: 

 ===I=== 

 ;Classical music is meant to be experienced for its own sake. 
 :While the meaning of this sentence is somewhat vaguish, just ignore it. It is as true as saying that popular music is meant to be experienced for its own sake. 

 ;It is unlike other forms of music that serve as a vehicle for poetry or other lyrical content, or as an adjunct to other forms of entertainment. 
 :Ever heard about Opera? Oratorio? Passions? Operetta? Melodrama? Soundtracks (many of these use classical music extensively)? Fantasia? Ballet? Sleeping Beauty? 

 ::I agree, this should be changed or deleted. 

 :::Of course there is this concept of ""absolute"" music in classical music (Kunst der Fuge and the like), but that applies to a very limited part of the classical music only. Note e.g. that ""opera"" was as much the top of the entertainment business in 19th century, as ""Film"" was that top in 20th century (in 19th century, it appears, that composers and public alike considered non-vocal orchestral music, especially symphonies, as a much more elevated and demanding kind of music than opera. Today perception sometimes seems the other way around: a symphony you easily can listen to in the background when working on something else - opera is perceived as much more demanding for the listener today). 

 ===II=== 

 ;Performances of classical music often take place in a relatively solemn atmosphere, with the audience expected to maintain silence and remain immobile during the performance, so that everyone can hear each note and nuance. 
 :That's what you would do with any music that is a bit different from the music you grew up with, and that is performed for a life audience - e.g. you would do exactly the same in a concert of 15th century Villancicos, which is just the folk music of those days. Apart from the fact that some of the music that is now called classical, was distinctly intended to be talked through, and from the fact that who said the above apparently never attended an Opera in Italy, by the end of the 20th century more classical music is consumed as background music to other activities, than it is listened to as intensively as described above. When film music is performed separately from the film (e.g. Ennio Morricone), or when a musical with exclusively ABBA songs is performed, the behaviour of the public is not all that different than in concerts with exclusively classical music.  

 ::But surely the overall difference is there.  A popular musician who never talked to the audience and expected a hushed silence would never get anywhere. 

 :::Yes, yes I agree with you: there is definitely some difference, but should be approached maybe a bit different. Don't know where you're from, but where I'm from (Belgium), fairly, I can't remember a classical concert I've been to the last years where there was no-one of the performers (or at least some speaker on the side of the performers) addressing the audience, and much more casual than it used to be some 10 years ago or so. Something that can be said is e.g. that when a work has several movements, it is not a habit to applaud between the movements, and that audiences to classical concerts normally are not informed about that every concert again, its just a convention they know about when they come to the concert. Of course, the recording of Concerto for Group and Orchestra shows other things (and this would be ""classical"" music to your definition - I, on the other hand, just added this work as example to the crossover (music) article). 

 :::And than you have still those Italians in opera: cheering so loudly after every aria they like, that it makes the polite ""applauses"" after the solo's in a Jazz concert look very pale indeed. 

 ::Also, your examples are in a way just further examples of classical music.  The only people who perform centuries-old folk music are in fact classical musiciansearly music groups.  And when film scores get divorced from their films and played in concert halls, they essentially turn into classical musicthink of Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky, now securely in the classical canon. 

 :::Well, here you're in that difficult domain of film music: Prokofiev, yes, OK, but that was rather because this composer was in the classical music t