Apparently all I know is that in the western music, any composition that went through a painstaking process that which require the listeners much effort to understand/experience, is considered art. The same can be said in all other art forms.
Meanwhile in the edge of 19th century Philippines, a musical genre, simple binary form, for solo voice and piano accompaniment, was declared a classical-art form. In the standards of Philippine aesthetics, of course. They called it the Kundiman. Characterized by passionately lyrical melodies that expresses nothing but love. Usually in a nationalistic disposition expressing love for country, but later evolved into love for a person. What it lacks in formalist complexity it compensates with sheer, evocative emotion in content. "Traditional" musical elements remain cemented. The romantically complex harmony, passionate melody, and the regularity and symmetry in rhythm. To a westerner, it would probably sound like a German lieder, or art song by Schumann or Schubert or those other Schus. But nonetheless, It is now one of the major art forms in the Philippines.
My point; Western composers and artists, particularly in 20th-century Americans, tend to be very formal towards their music and art. Prioritizing more the intellectual complexity and technical process, and less emphasizing on intuition and emotion. On the other hand, here in the pearl of the orient, we don't give a rat's ass about the brain so much when it comes to music.
For instance, if we look at today in the world of contemporary classical music in the Philippines, we seem to have evidence of the separation between the intellect and the emotion. We have the modernists and the "traditional". I have nothing against avant-garde music such as Maceda's and Santos's, but if you listen these young group of choral composers, (who I categorized outside the modernist group mentioned earlier) such as Consolacion, Pamintuan, Alcala, whose works (mostly choral) have the power to pierce profoundly through the heart of the listener and manifest the existence and greatness and beauty of God, there we see a towering evidence to the main ingredient of Filipino classical music.
As opposed to the Americans and the Europeans who aim for formal perfection and academic noteworthiness, we Filipino composers aim for nothing but the power of music that speaks directly to and from the HEART.