[adw]

> I don't think it's about simplicity at all

I'd go further and say that "simplicity" is the wrong way of thinking about it. Arguing that Western classical music is more complex or requires more understanding — and that complexity on a particular axis is more valuable inherently than complexity on another one – is a poorly informed viewpoint. You can't separate the cultural deification of the Western classical canon from traditional great-man historiography.

A lot of classical music is in meaningful ways much simpler than a lot of pop music, as long as you pick the right axis. Western classical music is, if you were to caricature it, about the elevation of harmony above the other elements of music. It is, particularly, much less prone to developing complex rhythmic ideas. Even within Western music, George Clinton's work is more rhythmically inventive than the majority of the Western canon; John Coltrane's work is arguably more _harmonically_ complex and inventive too. Many high-culture art-music traditions (jazz, Carnatic classical music) are fundamentally improvisational.

This doesn't mean Beethoven sucks, quite the opposite; a lot of music in the Western classical tradition is _really really good_. It doesn't mean it wrong to _prefer_ that music. It does mean that dismissing other musics as intrinsically lesser is fundamentally more about bigotry than aesthetics.

While we're here, let's defend Eurodance too. Modern music in the pop tradition, which I'm going to argue starts somewhere around Joe Meek, has used technology to enable unprecedented _timbral_ complexity. (Yes, yes, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Messiaen, Penderecki; but they're exactly the sort of classical composer this author would reject out of hand too.)

[tgv]

> Western classical music is, if you were to caricature it, about the elevation of harmony above the other elements of music.

While that is definitely important, don't overlook structure. Bach is the quintessential puzzler, Beethoven is nothing without cells and development, Brahms follows both, and the serialists you mention tried to push it even further.

> let's defend Eurodance too

Too bad its timbral complexity never leaves the boink boink boink phase.

[adw]

> While that is definitely important, don't overlook structure.

Yep, you're right – but the two things are connected, in that the structure of Western classical music is absolutely tied in with the idea of _resolution_.