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Final Essay

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Even though the benefits of classical music are extremely significant, Americans still prefer visual entertainment over the intense, intelligent listening that classical music demands. Classical music requires significantly more attentive listening than most modern pop music. Although it is true that some pop songs contain thoughtful lyrics and music that connect the listener on a deep emotional level, most do not challenge the listener intellectually. According to Daniel Asia, an American composer of classical music, in his article published in Academic Questions titled “Classical Music and the Academy,” listeners cannot give most pop music very many intelligent thoughts because songwriters base pop music on such simple ideas both lyrically …show more content…

For instance, more intelligent individuals tend to value exclusive relationships instead of the old practice of dating many people at once. Criminals tend to have below average intelligence. Although crime is not an evolutionarily new concept, the modern judicial system is. Kanazawa claims that intelligent individuals prefer “evolutionarily novel” ideas because they can think about them and comprehend them. Less intelligent individuals do not share these preferences because they do not understand the idea. This idea of evolutionary novelty transfers to classical music because early forms of language were a mixture of music and speaking; this idea of language eventually resulted in music to convey feelings and language to share information. Since music was initially vocal, the idea of purely instrumental music is relatively new, which is why Kanazawa considers it evolutionarily novel. Classical music is also more complex than other music genres, so it draws intelligent people towards it since they can comprehend

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