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:
“It is fatally easy for Western folk, who have discarded chastity as a value for themselves, to suppose that it can have no value for anyone else. At the same time as Californians try to re-invent “celibacy,” by which they seem to mean perverse restraint, the rest of us call societies which place a high value on chastity “backward.””
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?... Did you ever hear music up there?... It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)