What is Classical Music and Pop Music

People sometimes refer to serious or artistic music as classical music to distinguish it from so-called "popular" or entertainment music. This broad interpretation of "classical" leaves out historical periods and styles, so that works that belong to different periods and styles, such as those of Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and even Stravinsky, can all be called classical.

The classical period in the history of music belongs essentially to instrumental music, and the attention of the vast majority of composers was focused on the genre and form of instrumental music, with vocal music taking a back seat. Mozart, who dared to break with the archbishop, although he contributed to opera, his instrumental works were also substantial. As for Beethoven, he was purely an instrumental composer who used the heroes of the revolution as the heroes of his works, and for this reason he is sometimes called the revolutionary classical composer. The canonization of classicism established the multi-movement genres of sonata, string quartet, concerto and symphony, and the fast-movement sonata form. The rhythm and orchestration colors in classical style works are flexible and changeable, instead of being uniform throughout the movement; all the voices and even the intensity of the performance in classical works are written and marked by the composer himself, instead of being left to the improvisation of the performer during the performance. As for the expression of feelings, classical works, due to the influence of the spirit of reason, tend to be more restrained, calm, rather than fervent outpouring - from this aspect, the Baroque style is completely different from the classical, it is closer to the spirit of the later Romanticism.

Western classical music is an extremely important part of Western civilization. There is a vast array of Western classical music works, and in our traditional impression, due to historical and cultural reasons, Western classical music is difficult to appreciate, and it has become a kind of elegant culture of Yangchunbaixue. In fact, classical music has many popular musical works, fragments, in our lives for people to enjoy.

Ethnomusic

In the definition of ethnomusicology, often from the delineation of its object of study and methodology to start, whether it is initially comparative musicology or later ethnomusicology, and today's "Enthnomusicology" term translated into ethnomusicology or music ethnology, or simply called musicology, musicology, or musicology. The debate over the term "Enthnomusicology", or simply musicology or cultural anthropology of music, is closely related to the continuous change and expansion of the research object of this discipline since its inception. Therefore, this paper is only a historical review and reflection on the evolution of the research object of ethnomusicology.

What is meant by "ethnomusicology" classifies the research object of ethnomusicology, and he believes that this discipline "mainly explores three types of music, the first type of music of non-literate societies (music of nonliterate), and the second type of music of Asian and northern African cultures, i.e., China, Japan, Java, Bali, Southwest Asia, India, Iran, and other Asian cultures. Southwest Asia, India, Iran, and the Arabic-speaking countries (and regions), and the third category is folk music (folk music) can be defined as the music that has been passed down orally in the above-mentioned Asian high cultures and Western civilizations."

Pop Music

The so-called pop music refers to those instrumental pieces and songs that are short in structure, popular in content, lively in form, sincere in emotion, and are loved by the general public, widely sung or appreciated, and popular for a while or even passed down to future generations. These music and songs are rooted in the rich soil of popular life. Therefore, it is also called "popular music".

Pop music originated from jazz music in the U.S. At the beginning of the 20th century, a kind of jazz music emerged in the U.S., which was made up of multi-ethnic cultures. This new music, with its unique way of playing (singing), refreshed the listener's ears and eyes, stirred up the whole of the United States, and soon spread throughout the countries of Western Europe.

In today's world, popular music encompasses an extremely wide range of content. In instrumental works, it includes rich and colorful light music, jazz, swing, disco, tango, round dance, as well as a variety of different styles of dance music and all kinds of small opera soundtracks.

Instrumental works in popular music are characterized by distinctive rhythm, easy and lively or lyrical and beautiful, various methods of playing, varied sound, rich colors, simple weaving levels, small orchestra size, and modern works using electro-acoustic instruments. Vocal works are characterized by: a strong sense of life, lyrical, fun, range is not wide, the approach is commonplace, the tune is smooth, easy to sing; lyrics are mostly in the language of life, shallow and easy, easy for the listener to accept and sing; singers are mostly self-contained pop stars, vocal methods have their own style, not subject to the constraints of the school of vocal music, singing emotionally heavy than the sound skills, movement and free and uninhibited, natural and cordial, easy to cause the listener ** ** song; small orchestra of strong vocal method of a variety of variations, colorful, simple weave levels, modern works using electro-acoustic instruments. *The strong accompaniment of the small band is integrated with the songs. Because pop music has the above characteristics, so it can be connected with the masses, regardless of the cultural level, are easy to accept.