Associated with artsy pretension, classical music held a largely functional position until the early 19th century. Composers like Haydn and Mozart worked for the royal court, producing music for worship and entertainment purposes. Thus, Bach is said to have dedicated his \"Brandenburg Concertos\" as a job application of sorts for a potential employer, while Haydn intended his \"Sunrise\" symphony to wake up patrons dozing off after a big meal.
Denounced as cheap and flashy by his critics, the emergence of virtuosos like the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt during the mid-19th century changed perceptions of classical music. Liszt broke new ground by performing from memory, and refusing to take the stage with other musicians--an unthinkable act at the time. Liszt's success with popular audiences made him the first in a long line of stars that a newly emerging recorded music industry began looking to mass produce and market.
Caught between the 1940s-era big bands, and dawning of rock 'n' roll during the 1950s, classical music sales began tapering off. Matters improved during the freewheeling 1960s, when luminaries like Frank Zappa were apt to call themselves frustrated classical composers. In 1968, the British heavy rock band Deep Purple made headlines in becoming the first popular music outfit to play with an orchestra. This experimentation continued into the 1970s, as progressives like King Crimson and Yes sought to merge classical music's compositional discipline with rock music's improvisational abandon.
Critics of modern classical composers like Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg--who became known for rejecting strict musical formulas and tonal centers--draw support from academics like David Huron, a music cognition expert at Ohio State University. Huron claimed that his studies showed the ability to appreciate music became compromised when exposed to the random approach of composers like Webern, according to the Daily Telegraph. Other researchers, such as Dr. Aniruddh Patel, agreed that traditional classical music uses similar mechanisms required for processing language.
Weary of the limitations of commercial rock music, guitarists like Deep Purple's Richie Blackmore, and the late Randy Rhoads--whose employer, Ozzy Osbourne, shared his Baroque and classical passions--sought to express themselves in unorthodox ways. A relevant example is \"Mr. Crowley,\" in which Rhoads combined his love of 17th century Baroque organ music with the aggression of 1980s-era heavy rock. This stance has been upheld by neo-classical rock guitarist like Yngwie Malmsteen, whose extensive use of alternate picking techniques and soloing over chromatic scales shows how rock and classical musical genres can coexist.