In your opinion, what seperates classical music from jazz?

These days, classical music and jazz can often get blurred.

For example, they are both studied on equal terms in many major universities.

But what I want to know is, what to you seperates some "art" music to "jazz" music?

Although much of jazz is improvized, there is jazz that is entirely written out. For example, look at any big band score.

They both can use complex harmonies, as well as interesting variations and modulations.

They bothcan use the same instruments as each other.

When you think about it, the music of Debussy is very much jazzlike. In fact, I hear that Duke Ellington learned a lot of Debussy and his applied harmonies. Look at the Prelude to the Afternoon at a Faun, and don't tell me it doesn't sound jazzy.

Then there's the Rhapsody in Blue. That had jazz motifs in it.

Just because a piece of music has a blues scale in it doesn't necessarily make it "jazz".

Jazz music and much of the late-romantic styles use modes as opposed to simple major and minor scales, from Ionian to Locrian.

I've often attempted to bridge the gap between classical and jazz. Listen to my "Blues - Dedication to New Orleans", "Husky Howl", and my piano sonatina in F, which are on the Major Works pages.

Personally, I prefer jazz because of its natural spontaneity, as well as its love of experimentation.

What about you guys?

Secondly, by saying that jazz music and popular music are worth less than high art music, would the string quartets and woodwind quartets that were written to be performed at Louis XIV's palace, since they were just meant for dancing, mere entertainment, would a good parallel them for today be, say, today's techno? Just a thought. I mean, they were just as formulaic - with the A theme ALWAYS modulating to the Dominant key, etc...

Well, for one Jazz is an purely American style of music... yes, it has it's deep roots in african rhythms and such, but what we know as "jazz" was started in New Orleans with the Original Dixieland Jazz band which was more of that ragtime kind of sound. That's literally the first group to be labled as jazz, but not the VERY first jazz style sound. Jazz was originally based on melodies and usually an AABA form but then it progressed (largely in part due to King Creole's band and Louis Armstrong in particular) to that improvisational realm and also to recognizing the soloist. Although there is a lot of jazz that is written out, it was mostly written through jam sessions and basic structures which bands built off of. Jazz was basically a Pop-type of music referring to the commercialism of it. Of course there were those that stayed away from that aspect (Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Miles Davis) but it was grown from popular background. It has had many incarnations today, but still revolves around that popular style of the time (Hot jazz, swing, cool jazz, fusion, acid jazz, contemporary, etc)

That's a brief history of jazz, and now classical: Classical is very very organized. It has a set pattern of notes, essentially, and there is no aspect of improvisation whatsoever (which may be overgeneralizing a bit, but hey). Classical is all about the art and jazz is all about the enjoyment, in my mind. Classical has many different styles as well, but obviously there is a totally different sound between the two, EXCEPT for George Gershwin (and of course others, but he's the major one.) He was really the first to incorporate both sounds and is arguably the greatest American composer for main reason of juxtaposing those two highly different genres into a uniquely american classical sound which has influenced countless modern composers.

Generally, classical has a certain level of being able to predict notes and beats... again, I stress "generally!" Jazz however is largely built on syncopation and NOT being predictable. A lot of jazz centers around the soloist, and classical largely centers on the whole group. Of course there are always concertos and such, but you get the idea. All in all, Classical just has a different sound and it very distinct from jazz.

I've been rambling a bit and I hope that clarifies a little bit, and I hope I may have made any sense.

I disagree here... IMHO jazz is actually more rigid than classical in many ways. Jazz never progressed much beyond the song form - while there's plenty of melodic and rhythmic improvisation, the harmonic progressions always fit neatly into a standard 32-bar format, possibly with some improvisatory extension. The logical next step for jazz, though, which it never took, probably should have been to extend the form into bigger pieces: to work on integrating two or more major themes into an improvisation, or to go multi-movement and build even an entire album on some common motif. This was attempted to some extent with "Take Five", where the whole album was built around a few interesting rhythmic figures, but instead of following up on it the jazz mainstream went in a different direction entirely, into jazz-rock, which tended mainly to simplify rather than develop the music.

Jazz never progressed much beyond the song form -

I would say that was (and is still) due to the economic requirements on American music. Except for a brief time in the early years of jazz, the radio has been the primary distributor of the product, not live performance. To make a living in jazz, one had to flood the industry with short songs that radio producers would buy and play. Composers of classical music had a much more flexible amount of time on their hands, and could compose works that lasted hours using the same themes, rhythms, and motifs. I'll bet an orchestral composer that really needed to have a 'single' to make money would write shorter pieces for the radio's sake which probably wouldn't fully develop the themes involved as much as one might like, and a jazz composer that had a royal commission in Europe could probably make a five-act jazz opera and have an extremely well-developed theme by the end.

This isn't a difference between Jazz and Classical music, however; it's a difference between pop music cultures.