Is classical music in any way “better” than popular music?
I have been thinking about this, and could produce five hundred words on my understanding of class-based and cultural answers to that question, my own experience and my changing answer to that question over the last forty-two years, and my current view.
Instead, I am asking you.
Clare Flourish 
It’s more complex. It’s longer and deeper. I think it can be more emotional and beautiful. But pop music is simply cooler and more danceable, which probably makes it better, don’t you think?
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No, not at all. All genres of music have their merits and demerits, and classical music is no different in that respect.
I do think there is a snobbery about classical music, that if you don’t listen to it, you are somehow ill-educated. Oh please. Like all genres, there is some I like and some I dislike intently. I adore Beethoven and Tchaikowsky but I can’t stomach Bach, which is way too flowery for my taste.
Worse still however is that “inverted snobbery” of some people who will never listen to classical music, because it is indeed associated with the gentry and high-brow. I think that’s saddest of all, because they don’t know what they are missing.
I can listen to anything from concertos to Thrash Punk, and I love them all.
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Classic is better for me in the sense that as I set about to listen to classical piece I expect to have an experience of a certain kind of an intense, lasting and pleasing adventure of focusing and paying attention to the music, giving myself to it while popular music is momentary and fleeting although enjoyable but not memorable necessarily
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For me, it depends what I want at the time. But really, I could not put it better myself. Thank you.
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