when people are trying to explain why 'classical' or art music is so much better than popular music, they often focus on relative complexity: pop is simplistic; classical not. alright, first of all, sheer complexity is of no aesthetic value in itself, correct? compare, say, high renaissance to rococo painting. lately i have been receiving more sympathy for the rococo than i ever had before via la irish, but if someone were to argue that fragonard was better than michelangelo on the sheer grounds that his compositions were more complex, that would be a bad argument. you'll have to bring something else to make your case. your'e not going to show that de kooning is better than judd just because there are more lines and colors in de kooning. judd (as michelangelo, also mozart, for that matter) were not dedicating themselves to maximum complexity.
also i think that the point is both false and question-begging. so, if you were representing a schoenberg composition and an aretha song on scores, it may be that the schoenberg would bristle with more notes, though perhaps not. but you could not possibly represent a performance by aretha, or janis, or tammy wynette in a score: they far exceed the capacities of notation. if you actually took your very best shot at capturing all of aretha's dynamics, textures, or even actual notes in a score, it would bristle indeed, and you'd quickly realize that what's going on utterly exceeds any notational representation. that there is complexity. show me the libretto that compares in complexity to the next eminem album, etc etc. it's question-begging because what can be adequately represented in notation is the measure of classical but not of popular music.
so, you're going to need another argument. or maybe ditch the arguments and just listen to whatever turns you on. that would lead me - it has led me - to avoid schoenberg and the places where i might run into schoenberg, while listening to a lot of tammy and eminem. but that's just me. that classical stuff is just too simplistic for my tastes. also i've noticed that europeans just don't understand this music thing.
