There are distinct differences between classical music, a general term for art music that utilizes mostly Western, old-world acoustic instruments, and pop music. Knowing these differences may make you a better listener.
In this article, references to pop music refer to what would generally be found on the US top-40 hits list.
Classical music vs pop music regarding the elements of music
There are several elements of music that make it distinct from other sounds placed in time. These are: melody, harmony, rhythm, meter, dynamics, texture, form, timbre, and tonality. However classical music and pop music treat these elements radically different.
Classical music tends to respect all the elements of music by both striving for their balance, and by exploring each to the fullest capacity of human skill and ingenuity. With these two prerogatives, classical music is able to achieve emotional, intellectual, and constructive depths not matched by other musical pursuits.
Pop music on the other hand has been built to sell a ‘unit product’ in a capitalistic system, and thus utilizes these elements of music in a manner that maximizes its appeal to its target consumer. Thus it cares little about the principled balancing of the elements of music. Instead it skews their balance in a manner that is designed to fully capture the attention and adoration of that consumer.
Further, these elements are, again by design, oversimplified, such that pop music is easily memorized and cognitively processed, that the listener always instinctively knows what will come next in the music, and is able to derive comfort and pleasure in such certainty, as time unfolds.
Let’s take a look at a few elements, with regard to this designed imbalance and simplification.
Rhythm
Almost universally, in pop music, a constant, unwavering, non-dynamic, minimalistic rhythm, or beat exists to appeal to the primitive side of the brain. This is the primary driver, regarding the reduction of musical uncertainty, and the consequential pleasure and comfort derived from such, by the listener. However this rhythmic ostinato in pop music is an albatross around the necks of all the other musical elements, regarding their ability to develop to their fullest artistic capacity.
Melody
In pop music, melodic polyphony does not structurally venture beyond small call-and-response, canonic ideas, so as not to overwhelm the listener, or cause them to have to make an effort in understanding what is happening musically.
The melody itself must be something easily put into short term memory and processed, and technically minimal, to allow the consumer to ‘sing along’ with it.
Indeed most of the creative labor, concerning pop melody, is spent when the lead singer applies idiomatic embellishments to melodic ideas in a technically skilled fashion. In this manner most of the focus is on the individual singer, rather than to the music itself.
This too provides an incidental distinction between classical music vs pop music: In classical music, aside from the occasional Paganini, the music itself is the feature, whereas in pop music, the music often serves to feature the skills or individualism of an given singer, to capitalize on an observer’s instinctive need to follow, or even attach themselves, to social leaders.
Harmony
Pop music harmony too is generally kept simple, not venturing much past the languages devised in the 19th century, and avoiding too much unpleasant or otherwise challenging dissonance.
Of course in the Western world, harmony developed for use in art music, i.e. classical music, is what we think of when we use the term. Because musical works in the ‘classical’ genre span such a large range of time, harmony in classical music ranges from very simple, as in the Medieval Era music, to very complex, as seen in the early 20th century, regarding composers like Arnold Bax.
Dynamics
Concerning dynamics, whereas classical music offers a broad range of dynamical information, ranging from very, very quiet (pppp), to very very loud (fff), pop music, again because of the relentless obligatory beat, has very little dynamical content, and what little there is gets squeezed out by a recording producer, so that they can make their product as distinctively loud as possible through a radio, tv, or stereo speaker, to keep consumers’ attention on it.
Classical music vs pop music regarding the functionality of music
The functionality of classical music has constantly evolved and had multiple streams through long periods of time. Thus its imperative to understand its history. What lies below is certainly incomplete, but for the interest of creating a short enough answer for the internet, I will attempt a summary:
Brief history of the functionality of classical music
At first it functioned as a way, or adjunctive way, to worship the Christian faith in the Western world. Simple Gregorian chants evolved to brilliant, overwhelmingly beautiful choral works that reinforced man’s faith, and their place as ‘the superior keepers’ of the Earth. For how could something so beautiful exist, were it not for the presence of a higher being, a listener might ask.
Artistic product of patronage
Once it achieved a given level of artistry, rich patrons began to produce, commission, and purchase music, similar to how the contemporary rich invest in visual art today. In these circumstances, the composer had no limit on how far they could take the music artistically, intellectually or emotionally, and large scale works of high musical art were produced, that depicted how far the most skilled composers at hand could take it. In other words composers were not bound to produce products that were universally appealing to the capitalistic consumer, but were instead focused on maximizing their products’ artistic value.
Middle class entertainment before pop
However, as capitalism began to overtake the Western world, and the middle class consumer became a source of income for the composer, works began to evolve to be even more emotionally, and dramatically connective to listeners. The full range of human emotions and conditions were accounted for to tell dramatic, appealing musical stories, that were programmatic by nature, while this institutionalized high-art capacity of the music was preserved, for no other reason than that once an element of society is institutionalized, it is much harder to cause it to evolve, or devolve, at a rapid pace.
After this brief moment in time, where a composer could make themselves rich through the capitalistic system, pop music began to evolve and take the market share of classical music. At that point the art music composer was slowly lost to society outside of academia, after having made a last stand in the film music industry. Folks like Vaughan Williams, Copland, Walton, and Korngold were indeed the last set of art music composers to attempt to live well by their pens, by creating large intellectual works for that particular medium in their original styles.
Modern functionality
Modern film, TV, and game composers that write for classical instruments have been reduced to producing minimalistic, intellectually decimated, generic idiomatic works that are highly retrograde, and whose styles only compete around the margins, not dissimilar to what the pop music industry presents as choice to listeners.
The functionality of pop music
The main function of pop music has always been to sell a ‘unit product’ like a concert ticket, a recording, or nebulous merchandise. It further feeds, and is fed by the broader pop entertainment industry to the financial benefit of all.
It secondarily functions, by design, as a medium for social conversation, and further for social connection among non-formerly trained musicians.
Another secondary function is to encourage shoppers in retail settings to purchase more products, via piped in music.
Classical music vs pop music regarding the expression of the human condition and emotions
Classical music has the capacity to explain or convey the full range of human emotions and conditions. It can describe fear, mourning, embarrassment, joy, excitement, anger, frustration, contentment, honor, bravery, hunger, pain, etcetera.
The late 19th and early 20th century placement of folk music inside the classical medium allowed listeners of composers like Vaughan Williams’ music to feel a sense of unwavering heritage to their forefathers, land and country.
Further, classical music can be descriptive of not just human maneuvers, but of nature, of distinct atmospheres or places, or geographical locations.
Emotions and conditions covered by pop music
Pop music, again because its built to sell a unit product to as many people in its total addressable market as possible, deals mostly with the commonly strongest emotional desires its target consumers: the youthful primitive sexual or emotional desire for partnership, and sometimes the loss of such partnership. Further, on occasion it may appeal to the desire to be dominant over others in society, or normalize the self-centered, egocentric approach younger pop-music consumers need, to form their own identities during their teenage years.
Hence pop music spends a great amount of time trying to musically illicit that dopamine rush one gets from interacting inside a novel interpersonal relationship.
Classical music vs pop music, regarding social and cultural aspects
Because pop music is interested in maximizing profit for its industry, it has explored every path to doing so, including willing into existence, through social cues in advertising, that it is one of the big elements that defines modern culture.
Visual elements
It leans heavily on visual pleasantries and novelties, pageantry, and the like. Pop artists that have been industry filtered to be highly physically attractive don novel and avant guarde dress, makeup and hairstyles; and own their own consultants on these matters. Consumers focus in on these physical aspects of the artists either to gather information on how they themselves should be up to date on style, so as to fit into to modern society better, or to have something socially appropriate to talk about with other people. As such music videos are a big component of the advertisement segment of pop music.
The classical music world leans on this, regarding its top soloists, to maximize their own profitability. Yet there is only so far these folks can take it, concerning dress, hairstyle, etcetera, within the confines of the propriety of the concert hall setting. Yuja Wang is likely up against the edge of what is possible in that respect:
Freedom of consumer expression
The music itself, in concert, is often presented as loud as possible, encouraging listeners to break from pre-20th century tradition, and get up and brazenly interact with it, both physically and vocally, that it becomes a safe space to be uninhibited emotionally. Such gives pop a gross advantage over classical music, where one must not express themselves in any fashion, as the non-amplified music is underway, past a few silent tears, during the overwhelming sections.
The classical world’s answer to this is to hold secondary pops concerts, still concert goes are expected to not shut off their frontal cortices, and let their primitive id do what it may. Thusly classical’s answer is a muted one.
Rugged individualism in pop
I go over this in my article, What Do Classical Musicians Think of Pop?, but pop also has more variance regarding a singer’s individual style, and such is itself a focus. A pop artist lets it be known that he or she is performing pop music in a manner that only they can pull off. The advertising segment of the industry tells its consumers that this singer should be worshiped or idolized because of it.
Classical Music vs Pop Music FAQ’s
I’ve looked up and down the internet for common questions and will post them below:
Why Should I Be Familiar with Classical Music?
You should be familiar with classical music as it goes beyond pop music in depicting a large spectrum of human emotions and conditions, it provides intellectual stimulation through the exploration of large scale sonic landscapes, promotes brain health, provides a great wealth of diversity regarding historical genres, and geographic origins, as well as a diversity of textures from anything between a short solo piano piece to a one hour work for a 100-piece orchestra.
Image if you liked to read, but all you read were 30 page books about how two young people met and fell in love during the honeymoon phase of their relationship; the end. No mysteries, no plot twists, no thrillers, dramas, no large scale stories, or character developments, or other elements of story telling you’d normally get from a 300 page novel. That’s basically what you are doing just listening to 3 minute songs that all have the same verse, chorus, verse, chorus form, about how it feels like you’re going to love someone forever. Classical music is like the 300 page novel, whose longer form allows for so many more things to happen that you can apply a depth of interest to it, that you practically can’t listening to pop music.
Why is classical music better than pop music?
Classical music is better than pop music because its universe of elements it attempts to describe is much more vast; these elements comprising of, but not limited to human emotions/conditions, places, events, or phenomenon in nature. Further classical music, in general, strives for the balance of all the musical elements, and to allow each of those to excel to the fullest extent of human ingenuity. In doing so it produces musical art that has no superior, regarding intellectual constructiveness and musical architecture, and emotional depth. It further needs no social context to be relevant.
But this doesn’t mean that pop music doesn’t have its own qualities is excels at. Sometimes enjoying fun sing-alongs is a way to reduce stress after a long day at work. And because pop music is built to be enjoyed by all, conversations around it can provide a universally agreed upon means of social interaction, especially among younger people, concerned with building social circles and interpersonal connections. Further because performing it often requires less skill and dedicated study, compared to classical music, it’s a means for young, or not formerly trained musicians, to get together, form performance groups, and socialize together through shared musical experiences.
Next Up
Thanks for checking out this article on classical music vs pop music. As I write similar articles I’ll post links to them from here, so check back from time to time. Thus far I have, What do classical musicians think of pop?
Otherwise check out my main page or blog for more musical postings.