Classical Music vs Rock

Classical music vs Heavy Metal is a struggle between the "old" and the "new" style.
Classical music
It is a traditional genre of music conforming to an established form and appealing to critical interest and developed musical taste. Classical music, strictly defined, means music produced in the western world between 1750 and 1820. This music included opera, chamber music, choral pieces, and music requiring a full orchestra. To most, however, classical music refers to all of the above types of music within most time periods before the 20th century.

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period.
European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music (compare Indian classical music and Japanese traditional music) and popular music.

The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to "canonize" the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.
Rock Music
It started when Black Sabbath merged heavy guitar rock with the soundtracks from horror films. They did they by exclusively using power chords, which because they do not contain the notes that mark them as major or minor chords, lend themselves to moving in streams, like a melody played in chords.

Although many media figures have been howling bloody murder about mp3s, metal has remained relatively untouched. This is because metalheads are obsessive collectors who like to have all of the music from their favorite artists close at hand. Buying a metal CD means getting artwork, lyrics and the experience of striving for something and then getting it, and also lets you place a vote for what bands you think should be more appreciated.
Heavy metal seems at first a strange label to apply to a form of music. A little investigation into the symbolism behind makes it seem a rather obvious choice though.
'Heavy' was coined in the beatnik area of the 1950s to mean serious or profound. The term 'heavy music' was then and later applied to music that was in that vein. Of course it's clear to see that meaning of heavy is derived from the usual meaning, i.e. weighty or massive.
Well, metal is heavy, especially the metals favoured by the bands who played that genre, e.g. Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly and Quicksilver Messenger Service (quicksilver is mercury). Also, the term 'heavy metals' in the chemical sense include mercury, lead and cadmium, which have just the right image of toxicity to suit the musical style. It's interesting, although probably just co-incidence, that many of the British heavy metal bands came from the two principal centres of metal manufacturing in the UK, namely Birmingham (e.g. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne) and Sheffield (Def Leppard). With the decline of that manufacturing tradition, most of the 'metal bashing', as it was known, is now done by these bands rather than by men with big hammers.
So, heavy and metal are ideal candidate words for this genre. Add that to the fact that heavy metal had already been widely used as a military term for heavily fortified tanks/guns etc. and it starts to look like an ideal choice as a label.
The expression first appears in print in William Burroughs' 1962 novel The Soft Machine. His character Uranian Willy is described as "the Heavy Metal Kid". Burroughs later re-used the term in his 1964 novel Nova Express: "With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms - Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes - And the Insect People of Minraud with metal music."
It isn't clear who first appropriated the term to refer to loud rock music, although several lay claim to it. The widely quoted description of Jimi Hendrix's music as 'like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky', while being a fairly accurate assessment, isn't the earliest.
Some claim that the US rock music critic Lester Bangs, while working for Creem magazine, used the expression in 1968 to describe a performance of the band MC5 (Motor City Five) from Detroit. Creem magazine themselves attribute the term to Mike Saunders, in an article about the 'Kingdom Come' album, by Sir Lord Baltimore, in the May 1971 edition of the magazine: creem: "This album is a far cry from the currently prevalent Grand Funk sludge, because Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book. Precisely, they sound like a mix between the uptempo noiseblasts of Led Zeppelin (instrumentally) and singing that’s like an unending Johnny Winter shriek: they have it all down cold, including medium or uptempo blasts a la LZ, a perfect carbon of early cataclysmic MC5."
This has the benefit of being a traceable citation, as copies of the edition are still extant. So, until other hard evidence is found, that has to be the current strongest claim. It would be surprising if the term had never been used in the musical context before 1971 though - after all Steppenwolf used it in the lyric of their 1968 song Born to be Wild:
"I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under"
The musical style remains popular, although less so than in its heyday - the 1980s, and has spawned sub-genres. These include 'death metal', 'thrash metal', 'grindcore' and even 'folk metal' (aka 'heavy wood').
Polystylism
Polystylism (or musical eclecticism) is a growing trend in the 21st century. It combines elements of diverse musical genres and compositional techniques into a unified and coherent body of works. Composers will not necessarily employ their entire canon of style and technique in one single work, but rather the composers' body of works as a whole will reveal many different and diverse "styles". While anticipated by earlier trends that incorporated elements of folk music or Jazz into classical works, Polystylism started in the latter part of 20th century, but as more and more styles are embraced in the new century, the movement is becoming more important and diverse. Composers have often started their musical career in one discipline and have later migrated to, or embraced, other disciplines while retaining important elements from the old one. It should be noted here that a composer now labelled "Classical" may have started out in another discipline. Karl Jenkins, for example, started out as a Jazz musician, then moved to writing for TV advertisements, and is now becoming established as a major composer of large-scale choral works. His works The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, Requiem and Stabat Mater are well-known and incoropate elements of the various styles he used in the past. Paul McCartney has made a similar move from Pop music: he started his main career as a member of The Beatles and has recently composed Standing Stone and Ecce Cor Meum. A specific label for John Zorn's music is difficult to choose: he started out as a performance artist and moved through various genres including Jazz, Hardcore punk, film music, and Classical, and often embraces Jewish musical styles. All of these diverse styles appear in his works.
Julian Anderson combines elements from many different musical genres and practices in his works. Elements of modernism, spectral music and electronic music are combined with elements of the folk music of Eastern Europe and the resulting works are often influenced by the modality of Indian ragas.
Tansy Davies writes music that fuses elements of Pop music and Classical music. Prince and Iannis Xenakis are both major influences.
Contemporary situation
There are surprising benefits to developing an interest in a broad range of musical styles.
Musical prejudice is strongly associated with social prejudice; breaking down musical prejudices is a powerful way to start breaking down cultural prejudices such as racism and sexism.
The musically cultured person in the U.S. (and, apparently, most Western/European countries) is no longer a classical music snob, but a musical omnivore who appreciates quality in any kind of music from bluegrass to bebop to Baroque opera.
Music preferences become more set with age; for the general population of school children, music preferences seem to become quite set by the age of 15 or so. However, students younger than this age are amazingly open to many different kinds of music. In general, the younger the student, the more open the student is to new kinds of music.
This hardening of musical taste with age is (surprisingly!) an important part of the learning process. Without this development of definite musical preferences, refined taste and discrimination cannot develop.
Heavy metal fans and classical music aficionados have always considered themselves world's apart but new research suggests they have more in common than they might think.
What is interesting - is that they didn't differ from each other. It's almost as if these musical types transcend national boundaries.

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