Serious music

Art music (also known as Western classical music, cultivated music, serious music, canonic music, and more flippantly, real music or normal music) is an umbrella term that refers to musical traditions, implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition. "Serious" or "cultivated" music are terms frequently used as a contrast for ordinary, everyday music (popular and folk music, also called "vernacular music"). After the 20th century, art music was divided into two extensions: "serious music" and "light music".

This term is mostly used to refer to music descending from the tradition of Western classical music. Authors associated with the critical musicology movement and popular music studies like Philip Tagg tend to reject the elitism associated with art music; he refers to it as one of an "axiomatic triangle consisting of 'folk', 'art' and 'popular' musics." He explains that each of these three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria. Musician Catherine Schmidt-Jones defines art music differently, 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."

The term may also refer to:

The term "art music" refers primarily to classical traditions (including contemporary as well as historical classical music forms) that focus on formal styles, invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In strict western practice, art music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notation, as opposed to being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings (like popular and traditional music).

There have been continual attempts throughout the history of popular music to make a claim for itself as art rather than as popular culture, and a number of music styles that were previously understood as "popular music" have since been categorized in the art or classical category. According to the academic Tim Wall, the most significant example of the struggle between Tin Pan Alley, African American, vernacular and art discourses was in jazz. As early as the 1930s, artists attempted to cultivate ideas of "symphonic jazz", taking it away from its perceived vernacular and black American roots. Following these developments, histories of popular music tend to marginalize jazz, partly because the reformulation of jazz in the art discourse has been so successful that many people today will not consider it a form of popular music.

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