Classical music is a bit like a novel: it is complex and it takes a bit of effort to understand. Popular music is rather simpler and can be readily understood

Classical music is a bit like a novel: it is complex and it takes a bit of effort to understand. Popular music is rather simpler and can be readily understood (like, say, the movie version of the novel). If you just want to feel, classical music is too much effort. There is also the barrier that it is hard to write classical music. Anybody can pick up a guitar, learn I, IV, V chords and write a song (these days, the lyrics don't even need to rhyme). Fewer people can add harmony, and very few can write counterpoint. I think a classical music piece can take as long to write as a short novel. I suspect that classical music was never all that popular: the upper classes enjoyed classical music and the more numerous lower classes enjoyed the pop music of the time from traveling musicians. It's just that the traveling musicians didn't write their stuff down.