I have a houseguest right now. One of my old high school friends with whom I used to play early music in my younger days. We've been talking about music a lot since he got here. He plays a lot of different kinds of music these days. He plays Klezmer on a wooden flute. He says that Klezmer is a form of traditional music that can be traced back at least as far as the 1600s.

He also plays some kinds of French folk (traditional) music on the hurdy gurdy. He played one of the pieces for me, and I told him I thought it sounded very much like something from the renaissance period. He said that some kinds of French folk music do sound very much like renaissance music.

With the early music sub-category of classical music, pieces (and/or songs) are assumed to have had an author or composer, but if the name of that person is not known, it is attributed as "anonymous". Does the fact that the author isn't known make it folk music? Maybe not if it was passed down through the use of sheet music. However, as in the case of the piece mentioned in my previous post, sometimes these pieces "escape cultivation" and start being passed along without the use of sheet music and become known as "traditional" in some circles, while still being regarded as "art" music in other circles.

I don't know. The more I see people trying to gategorize things, the more things I see that defy categorization.