There are people for whom the term 'baroque' has very little meaning; there are people for whom the names of Bach and Tellemann have very little meaning. However, if I use the term 'classical' music in describing, for instance, a wonderful Bach organ prelude I'd heard in a church somewhere, there are people who would have a sense of the kind of music of which I was speaking, even though I'd known I was actually thinking of baroque music. For me to use the term 'baroque' would be to cause a log jam in understanding. If I'm teaching a lesson--well, that's altogether different. I'm an educator. But what a boorish snob I would be to educate a casual acquaintance who simply wanted to know, "Do you really like classical music like Bach's and Beethoven's?"

To turn the tables, I sometimes incorrectly refer to something my almost 21-year-old daughter is listening to as 'rock.' She becomes a little crazy when I do this. She begins to lecture me on why whatever she is listening to is not, in fact, rock, but something else. And then she lectures me on the fine points of what it is that I have incorrectly identified as 'rock.'

Her lecture is really lost on me, just as my own on baroque music would be lost on someone outside of the circle of 'serious' (hahaha) music lovers. My daughter's 'rock' music will always be 'rock' music to me since I really don't ever expect to spend my time trying to learn the differences in popular, often very loud music. And to most people who really don't gravitate toward 'classical' music in all of its forms and guises, that 'longhair' music is immediately identified as 'classical.' And I don't have a problem with their identification of it as classical, even though I know the truth. They can happily spend their time sorting and classifying their rock and I'll happily spend my time sorting and classifying my classical. And many of you here can happily spend time sorting and classifying both rock and classical. But we know of what we're talking, don't we?