Hard to know where to begin with this “Roger Scruton-lite” piece, which yearns for the time when romantic genuses ruled the cultural roost, and men were men! The authors lets their intent slip early one, wishing to rid a certain historical strand of music production of the “baggage of history, class and race” by rebranding. Sorry, that history, as debatable as we may think it is, IS the history, if you are embarrised by it, this requires confrontation, not erasure! The author moves to an insult of “the general public” (again showing his elitist position), in a claim both insulting and confused, “the general public” would not know what is meant by “composed music” (as an aside, I ask both my children, and assorted friend, and they all managed a pretty good “definiton” — the confusion is in the concept, not in the public!), and goes on to offer a “definition” of composed music as “music made for carefull listening and refined expression”. This reads like a student essay in a course by Scruton — does one really need to point out that his intentionalist definition is totally neutral as to the means of production of the music, via notation, or otherwise? The author goes on to bemoan the fact that composers are undervalued compared to performers, again reveiling an unarged for assumption — single authorship of composed music. This is a simple desire to return to a romantic notion of a genus composer. Much new musicology has addressed this, perhaps this is why the author wishes to erase history, and other baggage! We are finally told the real distiction is that composed music differs from ALL music for parties (guess the author is forgetting, yet again, that much composed music of the past was actually written FOR parties!), and asks for silence, which both runs counter to the intent of many composers/ensembles that the author apparent wants to let into his club, and again is highly ahistorical. The problem is not the name, the problem is with those, like the author, who refuse to actually interrogate the musical practices they (rightly) love, thinking that the ignorant public just needs a better term. This is all so tired and “been there done that”!