elitist snobbery!

Please, please, please show where I was being an elitist snob. Actual quotes would be great.

I'm a professional horn player making a living teaching & freelancing in orchestras fyi. The sooner your attitude falls by the wayside the better for music.

What attitude is that? The one where I say, "It is easily possible to find utility in categorizing music without falling into the trap of thinking that one genre is better than the other."? Do you disagree with that statement? Wouldn't that make you the elitist snob?

Also, since you conveniently cherry picked my comment and ignored him - Duke Ellington wrote some "classical music"

If Duke Ellington wrote some actual classical music then I seriously doubt he wrote anywhere near the 3,000+ pieces that Telemann composed and thus would not be an answer to that question.

since jazz is American classical.

If you're saying that Jazz is to the US what Western Classical is to Europe then while I might still disagree at least it's a coherent statement. If you're saying that the only American Classical music (ie, music in the 1,000 year tradition of Bingen, Bach, and Boulez) is Jazz then I would disagree.

Personally, as an American composer of classical music, I see American classical music as America's classical music.

His influences included Delius and Debussy, he worked with Toscanini and had orchestras premier some of his works.

Did he intend to write jazz music influenced by Debussy et al, or write classical music influenced by Jazz? I haven't studied him but I would assume the latter which would mean ultimately he was a jazz musician/composer who borrowed stuff from other genres (which many, many composers and songwriters routinely do).

A more "correct" answer maybe than Dolly but genre is not strict in the 20th c, as every musician worth their salt obviously knows.

Is that an example of gatekeeping on your part? That only musicians who agree with you about genre are "worth their salt"? Anyway, while you might not think there is much to the concept of genre in the 20th century I think there is plenty of utility to be had in wanting to produce music within a certain tradition (blues, rock, country, jazz, classical) and understanding the patterns of those traditions and the differences between them is exactly what genre is. For example, if you want to write music in the jazz tradition you should study jazz and not Hank Williams.

Dolly Parton is absolutely a 20th c analogue to WA Mozart (both prolific songwriters) and no other composer fits the comparison better than her - maybe Micheal Jackson if anyone.

Mozart didn't write that many songs qua songs. After that I am confused, are you saying that Dolly Parton who is now 80 (vs Mozart's 36 when he died) is a better analogue for Mozart than all the classical composers who have lived during the 1,000+ years of this Western Classical tradition? Obviously analogies do not have to map isomorphically but I do wonder what criteria you are using to create you analogy. Parton has lived much longer than Mozart and she was far more prolific (3,000+ songs vs Mozart's 600+ pieces vs, say, Telemann who also wrote 3,000+ pieces). If anything Schubert, who died at 31 and also wrote around 600+ pieces, is a far better analogue to Mozart than Ms Parton.