A great TED talk I found related to your thoughts on classical music, here: http://jeffparks.ca/index.php/community/classical-music-and-shining-eyes/

Cheers
Jeff

These kids can sing! What a great find! Music, well orchestras more specifically, came up as inspiration last night in a conversation w some folks. If only online could reach the kind of synchrony and coordination you can get around live music performance. This is a kind of group collaboration and shared experience in which the rules are so embedded as to barely even count as rules — rhythm and harmony, a wondrous thing. The history of music is fascinating — one could compare group collaboration to the evolution (in the west) of polyphony out of the gregorian era, prior to which the church permitted only homophony (it was thought the music shouldn’t overcome the Word). And then w the arrival of the piano came the well-tempered scale. Tho “unnatural”, the well-tempered scale permitted equal tuning among all instruments in all scales.

Check this performance of Bowie’s Space Oddity by the Langley Schools music project — kids were taught how to play one instrument each, and their version of this classic is uncanny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inQlxNy3wdk