When Classical Music Mattered

“As a common language of celebration or eulogy, as a means of expressing collective joy or sorrow, classical music is indeed a dying tongue. Would 2,500 people cram into the nave and transept  of the National Cathedral today to hear Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War, as they did in January 1973, when Leonard Bernstein conducted a concert in protest of President Nixon’s second inaugural?” – American Scholar