Snapshot: Four Views of Music in the United States

The term concert music is a useful phrase in the context of late-twentieth-century musical life, for we all know what a concert is: an activity that focuses on the live performance of music. The liveness of the performance is an important distinction, for live performances today (most of which are concerts) have a special status distinct from the much more ubiquitous recordings or broadcast music that fill our lives (and that often function as background sound). Also implied by...