Classical Music Rules!

Well, if the masterminds behind http://www.musoc.org/ are to be believed, art music rules, this being its preferred term (and one, naturally, pooh-poohed by the editors at Classical Music magazine). Taking its place in a centuries-old tradition of polemical writing about learned music, musoc.org has nailed its cholers to the mast and decided to speak up.

In so doing, it has come up with seven conditions, all of which a piece of music must fulfil to be classified as art music*. In summary:

1 Must be written for acoustic instruments or unamplified voices**
2 Must be by a single author and be an original work***
3 Must be written down in traditional score, with the composer having sole right to amend it****
4 Must take its place in a long-established musico-historical tradition (western or equivalent)
5 Must remain faithful to the composer's intentions, performers obliged to follow the score as closely as possible*****
6 Must be musically complex, making use of a range of manoeuvres, techniques and characteristics (an unhelpfully inexhaustive list is provided) to the extent that its performers will require advanced musicianship and musical education on the part of its performers, and 'high levels of concentration, understanding and competence from listeners for appreciation and (even basic) comprehension'; and 'be susceptible to theoretical analysis'******
7 Must communicate 'transcendent reflections on the human condition', thereby satisfying the listener emotionally and/or intellectually.

Alas, we have neither the time nor space to delve further into musoc.org's ideas and motivations here. But Barlines is particularly taken by the way the e-pamphleteers insist that music is art music or it is nothing, hence their use throughout of the formulation 'pop "music"'. But if there is no other form of music than art music, then isn't the very term 'art music' itself redundant?

*although a piece which does not satisfy these conditions may be counted if most of its composer's other work does
**although mechanical/electronic devices are allowable in some unspecified circumstances
*** although it is not a requirement for the composer also to have written any verbal text used
****unless he/she dies before completion.
*****except where improvisation or ornamentation is explicitly allowed or tacitly expected
******although making its susceptibility to analysis a defining condition of music seems, in more ways than one, rather too much like defining someone as a musician by his/her susceptibility to being punched in the face