What Classical Art Teaches Modern Minds

The Ache for Beauty

There are moments when art doesn’t just entertain — it stuns you into silence. The first time I sat with Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale, I felt that weight. The violin carried raw emotion, almost like I could hear the performer’s breath in the strings. No words, yet a whole story: a tragic love told by the one left behind. You don’t just listen to a piece like that; you feel it press into your chest and leave a longing for something higher, something more.

That’s what classical art does. Whether it’s Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo, or Homer, it isn’t designed to take from you. It’s meant to give — to dignify, to elevate, to capture what words cannot say. These works were born of patience, discipline, and reverence for beauty. They stretch the human mind and soul to their limits, and they leave us fuller, not emptier.

In the modern age Art is complicated, and quite needlessly I might add. If the properties listed above are only a fraction of what to expect with classical art, you would think it possible to find similarities in all art from all ages. Right?

Wrong...

Today, Art is convoluted and duplicitous. Don't get me wrong there are some modern artist that truly just want to feel, think, express, and explore the limits of creativity. on the contrary, it has become commonplace to create for the sole purpose of a payout. This has sparked the conversation about the death of art, and even of beauty and the soul. I recently wrote a post that could be the cousin of this current piece, named "Finding Meaning in a Secular Age." I dive into this a bit and it is meant to spark that debate in its readers.

I don’t believe humanity’s soul has died — but the flame is dimming. It’s a gut punch to hear Bach and then compare it to Cardi B’s W.A.P. and call them both “music.” When did we lower the bar? Maybe we didn’t. Maybe our perception shifted. But I know this much: classical art still stuns us because it was aimed at beauty, truth, and transcendence. Much of modern art, by contrast, numbs us, distracts us, or simply sells to us. That is the difference — and that difference is why classical art will endure long after the noise fades.

When Songs Were More Than Sound

I feel strongly about the contrast in classical and modern music. Even in the semi-modern era, the soul was still alive. Miles Davis bent the jazz world so far that the entire genre had to race to catch up. The Beach Boys pushed vocal harmony to places no one thought possible. Johnny Cash embodied the human condition in every song. Michael Jackson redefined pop itself, and still puts much of today’s “pop” to shame. Adele, Chris Stapleton, Nina Simone — artists like these remind us that raw emotion can still bleed through the microphone and speak across generations.

And yet, these aren’t even the greats. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Tchaikovsky — their works didn’t just push limits, they defined what art could be. Their music is breathtaking, poetic, utterly unique, and it speaks with or without words. This is what beauty sounds like. This is the expression of the soul.

Harmony vs. Noise

But here’s the difference: much of modern music doesn’t ask us to feel anymore. It asks us to consume. It’s designed to distract, to loop endlessly in our heads, to keep us scrolling or streaming rather than stopping to breathe.

Every once in a while, though, something cuts through the noise. Ludovico Einaudi’s Una Mattina, especially with Gautier Capuçon on cello, feels like a modern masterpiece. It slows you down. It makes you ache. It carries the weight of loss and longing in every note — and that’s what art is supposed to do. Even Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For? stands out in today’s sea of shallow hooks. It’s quiet, searching, and hauntingly simple — asking questions of meaning and purpose that echo long after the song ends. Whether she knew it or not, she was reaching for something higher, something closer to the greats.

That’s the reality of modern music: greatness isn’t gone, but it’s rare. The market rewards shock and streams more than soul, so most of what we get numbs us instead of stirring us. But classical music — and those rare modern sparks — remind us what art is meant to do. It’s supposed to make us pause. To think. To ache. To feel the weight of life and love and loss in your chest.

If music doesn’t stir the soul, it isn’t art. It’s just noise.

Hamlet and the Abyss

I want to cover art in multiple facets, so I think it best to go deeper. Literature, in my opinion, has the rare ability to allow us to escape while also forcing introspection and critical thought, carrying with it the ability to change lives. Take for example one of the greatest works in history, Hamlet, its not just a Shakespearean tragedy, but instead it asks one of the greatest questions in existence. In it, he speaks the famous words "To be, or not to be — that is the question." If that line doesn’t make you pause, you may not be listening closely enough. its not just live, or die. It has so much depth the possibilities are endless.

Do I strike out into the unknown, or stay in the comfort of home?

Do I build towards something great and risk failure, or waste the dream?

Do I engage deeply, or distract myself into absence?

That is the question. It's haunted humanity for 400 years because its not just about contemplation of the end. Maybe for Hamlet, but it remains with humanity for the reason of depth. because it challenges thought. It is a mirror that can show us the deepest parts of ourselves. That is what great literature does. Hamlet may haunt us with existence itself, but other works force equally unsettling questions.

One book that changed my life forever, and the inspiration for this post, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It isn’t just a dystopian novel about the future. It is a mirror held up to humanity, and it forces questions that are as relevant today as when it was written.

What is the value of suffering? What is beauty? What would a world look like without God?

Huxley’s vision is haunting because it doesn’t imagine a world of tyranny and violence, but one of pleasure and distraction. A world where pain is erased, beauty is sterilized, and truth is forgotten — because no one has the courage to face suffering anymore. It asks us to consider whether a life without hardship is really life at all — tying it into Hamlet’s great imposition: whether existence stripped of struggle has any meaning.

Reading it was a spark for me. It reignited my passion for writing, for literature, for beauty. Because Brave New World isn’t just a warning — it’s a challenge. It dares you to choose between comfort and meaning, distraction and truth. And once you’ve seen that choice, you can’t unsee it.

Plato saw it clearly in The Republic through the Allegory of the Cave: most of us live staring at shadows, mistaking illusions for reality, until someone drags us — painfully — into the light of truth. That picture has haunted philosophy for centuries, and it still applies.

Because just like music can fall into formula, so can books.

Many modern novels are designed to distract, to offer escape but little else. But not all. Some authors, even today, are still daring to ask the same unsettling questions. Kazuo Ishiguro in Never Let Me Go forced us to face mortality and human dignity. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World stripped away comfort to ask what life means without God. And in my own work, I am circling a question first asked by Pilate — “What is truth?” It is the oldest question, and the one that still demands an answer.

Because in the end, the question is not just what we believe — but what we aim at.

Worship and Obsession

This leads me to a long and dreaded read, but one that forces some of the deepest and most reflective thought out there — Moby-Dick. Yes, It’s a challenging book, but one that belongs in every reader’s library.

In it, Captain Ahab chases his white whale with a devotion that looks a lot like worship. His entire life, identity, and purpose collapse into that pursuit. And in the end, his false god devours him. This is a tale as old as time itself.

That’s the same danger we face today. Our whales may not be creatures of the sea, but they’re just as consuming. Career, money, fame, clout, virality — they all demand worship, and they all promise meaning. But like Ahab’s whale, they eventually turn and consume us. We trade beauty for influence, truth for clicks, creativity for consumption. And what’s left? A hollow pursuit that leaves us emptier than when we began.

Moby-Dick reminds us that what we aim at matters. False worship doesn’t just disappoint — it destroys. The escapism of today’s media landscape is designed to make that aim unintentional — a subconscious addiction to dopamine that drifts us into passivity. Which is why living with intention has never been more urgent. In an age where so much art is created for attention instead of beauty, we would do well to ask ourselves: what whale are we really chasing?

Let’s Put Down the Phone Once in a While

I can’t leave this section on literature without pointing out something that gnaws at me. Whenever I recommend books — to clients, friends, even strangers — I almost always hear the same response: “I’ll get the audiobook.”

Now, there are exceptions. Some people genuinely learn better by listening. For them, audio can be a gift. And yes, an audiobook is better than scrolling your phone or bingeing another show. But let’s be honest: for most people, audiobooks are just another way to consume passively. They play them at work, in the car, while multitasking — but the words wash over them without sinking in. Then when their free time comes, it’s right back to games, social media, or endless distraction.

Reading a physical page is different. It slows you down. You can re-read, underline, stop and stare at a sentence until it stirs something in you. You can argue with the author, scribble in the margins, wrestle with the words. Reading is active. It demands intention. That’s why the classics last — they were written to be wrestled with, not skimmed or played in the background.

If the point of art and literature is to make us think, feel, and search, then how we take it in matters. Convenience may give us content, but depth only comes when we engage.

When Beauty Meets the Eye

We can’t forget the visual arts, because they prove the same point in another medium. Think of Michelangelo’s David, or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with The Creation of Adam. Think of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the majesty of the Notre Dame Cathedral, the sweeping drama of the Baroque Trevi Fountain. Even the Mona Lisa — so overexposed today — still holds mystery and subtlety that draw millions of people to stand before her.

And in our own time, Cloud Gate in Chicago (“The Bean”) manages to do something rare for modern art: it stirs reflection. At first glance it’s playful, but then you notice what it’s doing — bending reality, reflecting not just the skyline but every person who stands before it. It becomes a mirror, one that distorts just enough to make you look again. To me, that’s what great art does: it unsettles, it forces perspective, it makes you pause.

These works weren’t made for attention spans or algorithms. They were made with intention, patience, and reverence for beauty. They pull something from the viewer — awe, humility, curiosity, even transcendence.

Contrast that with so much of what fills galleries and feeds today: pour paintings, shock installations, digital “art” designed to go viral for a day and be forgotten tomorrow. Much of it is not meant to endure, only to provoke or trend. The purpose isn’t beauty or meaning, but attention.

The contrast couldn’t be sharper: one tradition seeks to elevate the human spirit, the other settles for a flicker of recognition on a scrolling feed.

Beauty on the Brink — Create Anyway

I don’t buy the line that “nothing is new; everything’s a copy.” Someone close to me said it to my face not long ago: “I’m sure it’ll be like everything else. Everything’s a copy anymore. Real creators need genius—maybe you’ll be the exception.” It landed like a punch. Not just a doubt in me, but a doubt in all of us. A misunderstanding of creation itself.

Here’s the truth: Bach didn’t invent new notes. Chopin didn’t create new instruments. Debussy didn’t discover a new element. They took the same raw materials everyone had and aimed higher. They poured soul, discipline, and intention into form until the ordinary burned with meaning. Originality isn’t novelty; originality is honesty—your whole spirit brought to bear on the work.

The algorithm craves copies. The market rewards noise. But the soul craves creation. Beauty isn’t dead; the flame is dimming because we starve it—endless scrolling, engineered hooks, virality over virtue. Beauty needs oxygen: attention, courage, reverence, craft. It asks you to slow down, to suffer a little, to labor until something true appears.

So stop asking if it’s “new.” Ask if it’s true. Ask if it’s worth your life. Make the thing with weight. Refuse the copycat posture of the age. Aim at the highest good you can see and use everything God has given you—mind, hands, voice—to bring back something worthy.

Think deeper. Feel harder. Create without limits.

The Creative Soul