Classical Music as "Longhair Music"

[Roquentin]

Hello, I was thinking this might be a more appropriate post for the music section but I'm not sure- it's not exactly about music per se, more the culture around it in about the 40s or 50s. Evidently, prior to the rise of the Beatles and other '60s British Invasion bands, the term "longhair music" was meant to describe classical music because the intellectuals and others who liked it had supposedly longer hair. This is kind of interesting to me because it's been awhile, I think, since classical music or the people who like it have been considered at all subversive. There isn't that much documentation on the usage of the phrase that I've found- can anyone else shed some light on this? More interestingly, what would these "longhairs" have looked like? Would they have been unkempt, bookish types like the incomparable Glenn Gould in the picture below? Or was it just an expression and not really a literal description of these guys?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Leopold Stokowski, the King of the Longhairs

 

[Alexi]

much 20th century "classical" music was considered subversive. Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Schoenberg & John Cage are all prime examples.

my father who had long hair, beard and considered hippies phonies loved classical and modernist music and the only rock n'roll I remember him caring for was Patty Smith and Sly and The Family Stone.

 

[dhermann1]

Actually the term comes more from the 19th century. Most classical musicians would hardly have been considered subversive in bygone days. Classical music was to a great degree the province of the upper classes. During the late 19th century having long hair (a la Franz Liszt, etc.) was a mark of intellectuality. The long hair of the Beatles era was a completely unrelated development.
If you see movies, or even cartoons (What's Opera, Doc?) you'll see orchestra conductors waving their arms wildly, causing their long grey or white tresses to flail wildly in all directions. This enhanced their "artistic persona".
When I was young, in the 50's, the term was very commonly used.

 

[Alexi]

"province of the upper classes"
where most subversive thought originated. Also many 19th century composers were considered subversive or iconoclasts, well pretty much any artist who didn't follow what ever the current orthodoxy was. It happened in literature, music and visual arts. Heterodoxy was pretty much the norm for most of what we consider the great 19th and 20th century composers.