While I love Classic Rock, Blues, and Jazz, as an honest musician I have to say it does not compare with Classical (from Handel and Bach all the way up to Prokofiev and Khachaturian, a period of about 300 years)in terms of emotional depth, range and variety, orchestral complexity, incredible skill required for its execution, and shear, glorious beauty.
And, yes, I am female, of mixed ethnicity, and a full-time working rock musician and teacher.
But I have ears and a brain.
In 1940, when organist and French Catholic mystic Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) was a prisoner in a German POW camp, he composed "Quartet for the End of Time." The quartet was written for violin, cello, piano and clarinet. Of the eight movements, only half feature all four instruments.
The fifth movement, "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus," features only cello and piano. He dispenses with a time signature and sets only a metronome marking for the 16th notes on the piano. Bar lines are somewhat random. The resolution at 5:36 is heartbreaking.
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time, 5th movement
The eighth movement is for violin and piano alone and is titled "Praise to the Immortality of Jesus." Here he uses a time signature while the piano imitates the beating of a heart. The violin soars above it, and at the end, triple pianissimo, the soul unites with Christ.
Listening to a top tier orchestra (like the best- The Chicago Symphony) is like listening to the sounds of heaven. Just incredible.
Much of the problem today is the forced feeding of new music to an audience which basically hates it. Hence, Beethoven is paired with John Cage or Schoenberg.
This isn’t classical music but there are a lot of female musicians playing in this zylophone band. Watch it all the way through; the bass player steals the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNKjWWMQpew