Pretentious, Toi

SINCE THE TERM WAS MISUSED HERE, the term "a cappella" is misused for a solo vocal performance unaccompanied by instruments.  It is a very specific term in that the "cappella" was the Sistine Chapel and, more specifically, the Sistine Chapel Choir during the height of modal polyphonic composition for choruses without instrumental doubling or accompaniment and, especially, as that was imagined by later musicians and commentators on music.  This online definition of it is pretty good for being pretty short so I'll post it.

A term referring to choral music without instrumental accompaniment. During the Renaissance the performances of the Sistine choir in Rome were considered exemplary; and since the use of instruments was forbidden by its statutes, the term came to be used for any performance in a manner similar to those in the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine tradition of unaccompanied voices stems from the monophonic, purely vocal style of plainchant. Although musical historians of the 19th century believed that all music before 1600 was a cappella, they ignored the vast amount of evidence, especially that of paintings, to the contrary. Even in liturgical performance the older procedure was to double vocal lines with instruments of disparate tone colors, thus enhancing the individuality of the parts and accenting the music's polyphonic character. The a cappella practice is related to polyphony in what is called the "Palestrina style," a term referring not only to works of G. Palestrina but also to imitations of his style, e.g., the stile antico of the baroque era. Though the concertato style with instruments became widespread during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Sistine Choir continued its a cappella tradition, thus furnishing a performance model for the revival of liturgical polyphony in the 19th century (see caecilian movement).

The assertion that someone singing a song without accompaniment, especially doing it well enough to hold the attention of someone who doesn't understand the words (without having a line-by-line translation of those in front of him) is doing something "pretentious" is ridiculous.  What's pretentious is using a very specific term badly so as to fancy up your stupid scribbling so as to make your fellow ignoramuses think you're erudite.  That's what so much popular music scribblage is.  

As Aaron Copland said, when a literary man writes two words about music one of them will be wrong, it was probably more likely to be an adjective that was the clunker.   But, then, he said it before the serious inflation of pretentiousness among mid-brow college-credentialed scribblers who dabbled in music.  And even more so the talking heads on TV and radio and, now, online.  Though I will acknowledge the ability of those idiots to change the actual definition of the word as their damage expands and becomes common place among those who learned the word from them, I think it's important to point out how that happened and who was responsible for it. 

 Update:  Zute Dunje is an old Bosnian folksong, it's apparently been sung and recorded by a very large number of people, you can hear them on Youtube, Spotify, etc.  He didn't write the song though I'd imagine most of the people who have sung it sang it without any instrumental accompaniment.   Stupy thinks the singer wrote it.   I forgot he dislikes people from Eastern Europe to go with his disdain of the Roma People.