Sorry, Grojlach, I respectfully disagree. Believe me, I love classical types of music, especially Mozart and Bach to name a few.
But, I think the extreme talent and ability to mush so much wonderful sound into such small spaces of time that was Mozart's forte can still be found in musicians. Yes, the music is "different," but I have really found no theoretical differences between the music of hundreds of years ago and that of today. From the time music first became commercialized, I think it is all fair game to use in comparrison. And, yes, Mozart was a contract musician.
It is fair to compare Rembrandt to Caravaggio to Van Gogh to Dali - a collage of artists spanning many centuries, so why not compare Mozart to Phish or someone else in modern music (perhaps Blakey's jazz [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] )
I'll give you one fair comparrison. To the extent the movie "Amadeus" is fairly historically accurate, it was said of Mozart's music that "there are simply too many notes for the ear to hear." In the modern day, that's Phish.
Why do I pick on this now-separated group of Vermonters as an example? Simple, I think they all had master's degrees in music and are technically and classically educated in music. But, I guess I could have picked a "rock opera" too. The point is historical comparrison is fair in music as it is in any other art form and as it is in politics and war.