Long haired music for a popular culture

Modern culture, some would even call it, post-modern culture, today's culture of
rock and roll, rap, jazz, is best described as culture for the populace, popula
r culture. This ambiguous yet identifiable culture is the one we are most famili
ar with and what we oppose to the 'old' culture, the culture before Elvis Presle
y, the Beetles, and B.B. King. With music, in particular, we can easily identify
the modern culture over against the culture that produced such music as comes f
rom classical music composers such as Haydn, Handel, Lully, or Purcell. We immed
iately note that these older composers worked primarily with orchestral expressi
ons, with full symphonies of oboes, bassoons, wood winds of every sort, a variet
y of brass instruments, even harps, and of course concert pianos. While we occas
ionally will find modern music employing this range of instruments, most of us c
onsider a lead guitar, a rhythm guitar, a bass and a set of drums all you really
need to make beautiful music in our age. While that may be, and while today's m
usic may move us as did the work of the classical music composers of ages pass,
we would be doing ourselves a disservice not to give an ear occasionally to the
work of the 'long hairs' who once thrilled royalty, the aristocracy, the people
of a culture from which our own has sprung.
Yes, classical music composers produced a music that seems at times overly compl
ex and subtle, as if you needed a Masters in musicology to understand it, but th
at is because our ears have lost the refinement, the careful attentiveness that
these classical music composers presupposed of their audience. If we approach cl
assical music with our hearts and minds as well as with our ears, we can easily
appreciate the monumental works of a Mozart or a Beethoven. Music addresses the
heart first, the emotions, and these are something that are at the very heart of
every human soul. Classical music is no different than modern music in its purp
ose, namely, to move the heart and mind towards an apprehension of beauty in sou
nd.
Modern music composers and classical music composers both aim to stir the mind a
nd the emotions with the same elements of music, with melody, polyphony, harmony
, rhythm. The very principles that define the classical genre, those of measure,
unity, clarity, balance, proportion, have not been superseded by modern music:
the classic principles or art, poetry and music which were elucidated by the anc
ient Greeks such as Plato or Aristotle, and taken up when these were re-discover
ed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries still condition the music of our own
day. If you doubt this, just compare some of today's music with that of the Baro
que, the Rocco, the impressionist, with classical music composers such as Debuss
y or Stravinsky. What you will find is that in both styles, modern and classic,
the ideals of careful craftsmanship, idealist control, and formal beauty exist i
n both.
Give an ear to the long hairs of old. You'll find that they describe much the sa
me emotions, the same wonder, the same delight in sound that today's long hairs
do with metal and electronic vibrations. The instruments may be somewhat differe
nt, the goal, the apprehension of beauty, remains the same.