If it is America's _the_ classical music, then you're going to need a new box for Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Harry Partch, Brain Eno, etc. I guess Glass and maybe Eno can go in the semi-pop box but the others are going to be a problem. They aren't jazz and they aren't pop and many people take them very, very seriously.
Justin Schwartz:
> I disagree. Several people even here, including me, have been attacking this
> Marsalian line. Making jazz into classical music preserves it the way an
> emblamer preserves a body. That is why, in part, Marsalis ain't got no
> swing. It may be that jazz has exhausted its idiom and outrun its milieu,
> and that museums are all that is left for it; there are signs that support
> that--a damn shame if true. But classical music it's not; at its best, it
> doesn't involve more or less precise renditions of more or less complex
> pieces from standard scores produced by performers who creativity is a
> matter of fidelity to someone's idea of a composer's intentions. It involves
> active creativity right then and there, living interaction by performers
> whose own intentions matter often more than the "compsoers" whose work they
> exploit. I don't say one is better than another. They're different.
> ...
One could define "classical" differently, of course. Indian classical music is improvised, and in my ignorant opinion, highly vital. What differentiates classical from pop in Indian is discipline, ambition, and context. There is some Western music like this among the avant-garde, but not much of it is jazz (too bad), and I don't think anyone calls it "classical" any more (just as well, with all those hungry embalmers around).