When did "pop music" become synonymous with "music"?

[Woodgardens]

Since Schönberg

[jancivil]

There is one person in my area who has been a thoughtful curator, "composer, percussionist, sound poet and radio producer Charles Amirkhanian is a leading practitioner of electroacoustic music and text-sound composition".
I don't actually know any of his work but the radio programs 'as curator' tend to have been compelling.

I haven't given a lot of thought to what musical authority there is in the world, except for musicians. I would take seriously anything Pierre Boulez said, it be baffling or disagreeable or not. I went to school for a couple years in order to gain some access to people who knew more, and ostensibly to gain proximity to a cogent program. But I didn't rely on opinions from my professors or care very much somehow. A couple of the 'elite' here were very accessible. David Bar-Illan used to write pornography for a living, one learns. OTOH I did not try to chat Henry Meyer up after he judged my Bach suite, you know. Scary. But this is where I got a clue as to what serious composers did in the sort of late 20th century. This is before minimalism, nota bene.


It looks like no one so far has the context you began with in the OP. I did see the very issue reiterated as though in explanation of why pop is synonymous with music: "Almost everyone listens to music, and mostly they listen to contemporary music of some form" rather than, you know, serious music or teh elites.
When Babbitt made those remarks, guess what, he was contemporary, being still alive and working and like that.

[Dasheesh]

Holy Jesus what a question. Look, this is 20 years of asking myself this question and I'm going to answer as succinctly as possible.

1: Pop music is not bad and is NOT your enemy. There is a lot of skilled and advanced song writing in pop.

2: music became boring when pitched based music became timbre based music. (think about that one... it's deep, and at the heart of the problem).

3: The more we rely on an ideal standard of perfect, the less human music becomes... and the less human it becomes, the less musical it becomes. There is music in imperfection. I'm giving away a lifetime of education in this post... unreal.

4: Learn everything you can about music.. to the nth degree... and then throw it out the window. The people who matter know you know.

[jancivil]

1: Pop music is not bad and is NOT your enemy. There is a lot of skilled and advanced song writing in pop.

Pop music is bad when it's bad and when it's inflicted on me just because I need to buy something, it's an enemy. In starbucks, which I rely on for a couple of things, it's an enemy a lot more than a friend or passing acquaintance you have no particular desire to murder horribly.
It's usually not very good, in my experience.

2: music became boring when pitched based music became timbre based music. (think about that one... it's deep, and at the heart of the problem).

At the heart of WHAT problem? That's just a disposition, it's opinion. Pop music is a-ok and our friend but there is a problem in music anyway*, one supposes, and at the heart of that mystery issue is attention to timbre instead of to pitch. You have yet to articulate what's deep about that (*: "boring"?) and life gets shorter every second.

I had a nice little rant on the potentially huge mistake of using the term 'music' rather than 'pop music' (if one wants to convey that is) but decided against sending it, as though I might have just been talking to myself.

[vurt]

to say "music" as a whole got boring for one reason is missing the fact that there is still awesome music out there being made, including "melody based" which i guess is what you meant by "pitch based". the good stuff just isn't maccie ds fasts food type music, the kind of stuff the radios feed you. you need to look for it.

and, if you don't find it, f**king make it and stop whining, are you a musician or a mouse?

[fluffy_little_something]

Pop is short for popular, in other words, it appeals to a lot of people. Why is that? No idea, probably because it hits some sweet spots we are not aware of. Just like some people are popular while others are not. And those that are not often envy those that are

[Michael L]

Alternate Multiverses:

1) Babbitt has a legit complaint about his larger genre not being advertised in the New Yorker, if that magazine is responsible for helping people understand "non-simple" music. However, if the purpose of the New Yorker is only to sell magazines, it is Babbit's responsibility to increase his audience to the point where they are a big enough market, and then the New Yorker will write about him.

2) Tom Scholz (composer/performer/producer/engineer of the one-man-rock-band Boston) grew up with classical music and had no interest in rock until he heard the Kinks, Yardbirds and Animals who motivated him at age 21 to learn to play the guitar while he was studying engineering at MIT. After graduating he worked as product manager for Polaroid and used his salary to build a basement recording studio where he also built analog guitar FX that he manufactured after his second Boston album.

3) Your story

4) Fish

[vurt]

i don't have a story

im a blank page.

[jancivil]

Alternate Multiverses:

1) Babbitt has a legit complaint about his larger genre not being advertised in the New Yorker, if that magazine is responsible for helping people understand "non-simple" music. However, if the purpose of the New Yorker is only to sell magazines, it is Babbit's responsibility to increase his audience to the point where they are a big enough market, and then the New Yorker will write about him.

One may, on the other hand notice that 'New Yorker' magazine at least has pretensions beyond the implication 'its real function is to deliver eyeballs to advertisers'.

[jancivil]

2) Tom Scholz (composer/performer/producer/engineer of the one-man-rock-band Boston) grew up with classical music and had no interest in rock until he heard the Kinks, Yardbirds and Animals ...

So this does one thing for me and one thing only: It makes Mr Scholz less interesting than he was before reading that.

[Michael L]

So this does one thing for me and one thing only

My point was there are many different interesting paths rather than one....

[vurt]

no need for a personal attack.

[jancivil]

So this does one thing for me and one thing only

Well that certainly makes you less interesting!

I could not possibly care less about your notions, if this is any sign.

[jancivil]

1) you couldn't be arsed to get anything of the context but it was time to tell us Milton Babbitt had no right to his opinion having not been very commercial or much of a peddler.
2) whatever Tom Scholz has to do with the topic, I found him more interesting before reading that is all.
Not a fan of his music, but I bought the Rockman in the early 1980s.

[Michael L]

1) you couldn't be arsed to get anything of the context

No. I was pointing out --in an indirect way--that his expectations of the magazine were likely not shared by the magazine (contributing to the current death spiral).

2) whatever Tom Scholz has to do with the topic,

There is a direct connection: Scholz often said that he applied his classical "music" knowledge to "pop music" (with only the intention of making music that he personally liked) thus blending genres in his own way.

Babbitt started in "pop music" but was a voracious learner, and had ongoing misunderstandings with magazines because he believed "the formal conditioning of potential and eventual musicians and their audience demands informed guidance."

Interviewer: is your work received more enthusiastically if it is preceded by some sort of discussion or pre-concert talk?
Babbitt: Yes, it is. It usually is. Enthusiastically may be an exaggeration. But more calmly, and with more acceptance. Because they realize I take seriously something they weren’t prepared to take seriously. Either they think it’s a hoax or something totally meaningless.

But here's an audio/text interview with Babbit http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/f ... bbitt.html

So it seems one answer to the OP is, "When it made a lot more money by appealing to the simple taste of the largest and thus least-informed market" which is the big difference between Babbit and Max Martin's formula....