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And pop culture is no help in this matter either. Case in point, the movie "Barnyard". In this cartoon we have male "cows" complete with udders. I've found myself in arguments with grown-ups (30+) that there is no such thing as a male cow.

When I was 5, I thought dogs were the boys and cats were the girls. Finding out that there were girl dogs and boy cats was right up there with no Santa and no Easter Bunny.

I also called pieces songs until I got to high school and was told otherwise. And I occasionally still refer to pieces as "songs," but that's more a philosophical opinion than uninformed habit. I think of pretty much all music as vocal, and I'm more likely to hear Elizabeth Schwartzkopf or Dawn Upshaw in my head than Richter or Horowitz. I also gravitate towards pianists who seem more vocal in their tonal concept - Rubinstein, Lupu, Fischer (Edwin), etc., and some of the modern pianists I admire most are primarily collaborative artists (Martin Katz, Howard Lubin, Bengt Forsberg.)

I wasn't really thinking about young people who change their usage of the word to match who they're talking to (using "song" for "piece" with their friends) which is definately not wrong. I was thinking more of the times I've seen new forum members who use "song" in the pianists' forum when talking about a piece and get corrected very quickly, sometimes nicely, sometimes not so, by forum members. I think many honestly didn't realize the difference until it was pointed out to them or at least did not realize how serious some people can be about it.

You're assuming there is a difference. Some don'think any "difference" exists anymore and that any seriousness about this supposed difference is silly and pretentious.

To claim that someone is "assuming" that there's a difference between songs and other pieces of music is to assume that an observable and definable distinction is but a supposition or a matter of opinion.

It's been said that language evolves, and indeed it does. But "evolution" usually suggests movement toward refinement and diversity. I think that the blurring of meaningful distinctions and loss of specialized vocabulary is actually devolution.

Maybe one day everyone will talk like Frankenstein, Tonto and Tarzan in those old SNL sketches. At least there won't be any more ontological arguments about our suppositions of reality when we lack the terminology to engage in them.

But for many(probably the majority at this point in time)there is no difference, so talking about things as if there is one is making an assumption and also a matter of opinion.

Meh. Whatever.

Vocabulary, and the use of nuanced vocabulary, is one of the choices people make for themselves. As odd as I find "song" to be as an all-encompassing default term, it's not worth getting exercised over.

So, if you hear a "musak" (instrumental) version of a 40-year-old song (say by the Drifters or whatever), and you say to someone "God I hate that song!", are you using the term "song" correctly or not? hmmmmm

But more seriously, I think "work" is the best term for classical pieces, if for no other reason it prevents one of the ugliest (or at least strangest) misspelled words in the English language from being typed. Okay, okay, I'll type it: peice....... Yuck!

Depends... If you know the song and hate it, and later hear an instrumental version of it and comment that you hate the song, you may be using the term correctly if you are referencing your memory of the original. But if you only have heard the instrumental, and not the original song, and don't know it ever was a song, you are using it incorrectly.

Hey, you asked...

I never liked the term 'work', only because it makes it seem as if the piece is absolutely no fun, and was just one big, annoying laborious piece of work. It also tends to set up an intellectual barrier, as if to say "don't even think of approaching this WORK in the same way that you would approach your "Oh Mickey You're So Fine" SONG! No dancing to the beat, please - this is Haydn, not MC Hammer." Though I DO tend to want to bust a move when I hear Haydn. There, I said it... Almost as if giving something the title 'work' or 'piece' puts it on a pedestal, because of the name.

I don't know - whenever I use terms like 'piece' and 'work' - I feel slightly robotic and hesitant. Maybe that's my inner hooligan yearning to call such things 'songs', 'dittys' and 'medleys'.

When I read notations in classical pieces like moderato cantabile, andante molto cantabile, I get the impression of singing. Would that make them songs?

that would them make cantabile pieces, or melodious ones, they are not sung, they are played.

I think you've answered yourself here. You say you've just heard an instrumental version of a 40 year old song...well, there you have your answer. You just called it what it is...a song, which it is, since it was written with lyrics, yes?

I'm not sayin what the right answer is! Cause...cause I really don't know. haha

So you are saying Beethoven's Variations on God Save the King is a song, correct?

Aren't they variations on a song?

It seemed to me that he was saying that an instrumental version of a song is still a song because the original had lyrics.

The other day, I was shopping. Let me mention that at that time I had long hair and was not really tall (well, I'm still a little bit short, but I'm working on it.)
Then, a shop helper comes behind me and asks, "Can I help you madame ?"

Obviously I was outraged in my all-roaring, profusely male virility, so I must share my deepest compassion with the poor pieces that are insulted every day and called mere songs. Having one's very nature mistaken is the worst injury and insult there is !
My ego might very well never recover... Can you imagine how those son--pieces feel ?

Which doesn't really make much sense, although I could see that the usage would occur. The instrumental isn't sung, so it may be the tune, but it is no longer the song. That's what happens when you take the singing out of a song, you are left with the tune or melody of the song.

No. The variations are not a song. They are variations on the theme of the song.