What Is Classical Music?

The term is applied to radically different compositions across more than 1,000 years of history. We need a better definition.

- By Matthew Aucoin

If most music lovers were asked to identify the defining characteristics of their favorite genre—jazz, folk, rock, hip-hop—I would guess that they might simply say, “Well, it sounds a certain way.” It’s music, they might go on, that tends to have a particular rhythmic feel, or that usually features, say, the saxophone, or the electric guitar, or the sitar. Presented with exceptions to these patterns—what about a cappella jazz ensembles? what about “unplugged” rock albums?—most listeners would likely offer some variant of I know it when I hear it!

But, counterintuitive though it might seem, I don't think sound is always a helpful way to understand genre. I'm a composer and conductor in the field that’s broadly known as Western classical music, aterm that’s routinely applied to radically different idioms across more than 1,000 years of musical history. Within this huge array, you'll find the engulfing sonorities of William Byrd’s choral music; the intimate revelations, too private for words, in chamber works by Franz Schubert and Anton Webern; the majestic topography of Jean Sibelius’s orchestral landscapes; and, more recently, a multitude of works by composers as different from one another as Chaya Czernowin, Tyshawn Sorey, and Thomas Adès.