Western music may refer to:
- Classical music, a genre of art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music from the 10th century onward. The canonical common practice period was from 1550 to 1900, although the style continues to be performed and developed to this day.
- Music of Western culture (see Music).
- Western music (North America), a style of music that celebrates the life of the cowboy. Originally a form of folk music with English, Irish, Scottish, and Mexican influences that developed in the western areas of the United States and Canada.
Famous quotes containing the words western and/or music:
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)