The world of music is full of binaries. Perhaps the most significant is the distinction between “classical” and “folk” (under which heading we include “pop,” “rock,” even “hip-hop” and “heavy metal,” and also, naturally, the various genres we literally call “folk”). Like all binaries, these overlap: there’s a folkish element in almost all classical music – at least, all the classical music that’s worth listening to – and every musical element we crown with the term “classical” (counterpoint, formal structure, broadly speaking the “intellectual” layer) is present to some degree in the various folk traditions. These two instincts, which we might as well call Apollonian and Dionysian, create in their eternal dance all art and perhaps all life.
There’s another musical binary we need to discuss before we move forward and get into concert rock violinist Aaron Meyer and his upcoming Rock the Holidays tour, which starts in Corvallis this weekend. The binary of “sacred” and “secular” is no less important, no less pervasive, than the “classical” and “folk” binary. It likewise runs through all musical traditions, cutting across the classical world and the folk world, and shares also that binary’s overlapping quality. There is always something secular and worldly and human about even the most sacred music; there is always something sacred and transcendent and holy about even the most secular of music.
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