The decadence of the rock music culture is notorious. Critics compare it with Dionysian dissipation1 and Babylonian corruption,2 and none lamented the shift “from Bach to Rock”3 more than the late philosopher Allen Bloom. In The Closing of the American Mind, he spoke warmly of the role that Bach and Beethoven could play in the “cultivation of the soul” in men “whose noblest activities are accompanied by a music that expresses them.”4 In contrast, said Bloom, “Rock music encourages passions and provides models that have no relation to any life the young people who go to universities can possibly lead.”5
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