ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on purported differences between 'classical' and 'popular' musics. It examines the activity of analytical musicology, and explores its use to date in discussions of 'rock'. The chapter outlines three further ways to consider the difference between rock and classical musics, none of which necessitates the assertion of the superiority of either. In 1956, the influential musicologist Leonard B. Meyer described two modes by which meaning can be considered to be conveyed in music. The first he termed 'absolutist': it describes the belief that 'musical meaning lies exclusively within the context of the work itself, in the perception of the relationships set forth within the musical work of art'. The second, the 'referentialist' mode, asserts that 'in addition to these abstract, intellectual meanings, music also communicates meanings which in some way refer to the extramusical world of concepts, actions, emotional states and character'.
