[eeronen]

Classical music as a genre is quite hard to define. Especially if you try to find some clear boundaries of where classical ends and jazz begins. That is the case for basically every genre.

Personally I would try to approach it like this: If it needs the particular band/artist to play it live, it's not classical, if it can be played by anyone with the notes and still be considered the same as hearing the original, it's classical.

I think the free dictionary puts it well:

> In technical musical usage this means music composed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, characterized by the development of the sonata by such composers as Mozart. In popular use, however, the term is used to mean any serious art music as distinct from jazz, pop, or folk.

Looking at the article, I think their definition is based on the instruments used and the form of the piece (there's a whole lot of operas there).

[analog31]

I think this raises a good point about separating the composer and performer. It's almost like a symbiosis. If you're a composer, and you want there to be any chance of someone performing your work in a live setting, then you have to stay within certain parameters. If you're a musician, you're looking for interesting material that you can play on your instrument without getting killed.

There are other practical concerns such as being able to hire from a pool of musicians who can all do similar work. So it leads to a large repertoire that is hard to define in a formal sense, but develops similarities out of practical necessity.

There are other examples as well. The string quartet and the "big band" of jazz, where a particular instrumentation and performance setting guarantees a limitless supply of repertoire for the musicians, and a hope of getting performed for the composer or arranger. I play in a "big band."