But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.

Tilson Thomas contrasts many kinds of “musics” with what he sees as classical music’s distinctive ambition: large-scale form—an “architecture in time” built through development, recurrence, and long-range harmonic and thematic planning. The remark implies that some popular or vernacular genres may excel at immediacy, groove, color, or songcraft, yet typically do not aim at the same extended structural argument found in symphonies, sonatas, and operas. His closing clause—“whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean”—acknowledges that “classical” is a contested label, but suggests listeners still recognize a shared ideal: music that sustains meaning across longer spans and rewards deep, repeated listening.