There have been “real ehrlicher Yidden” who listened to classical, folk, and other secular music forms. Or read secular poetry.

With all due respect, our medieval paytanim were awesome tzaddikim, but they were not as great writers as William Blake or Dylan Thomas or Robert Frost, and not too many frum instrumentalists compare to Leo Kottke or John Coltrane or Andres Segovia or Pablo Casals…

Says Rav Kook [Mishnato shel HaRav Kook]:

“It is a mean eye that causes one to see only ugliness and impurity in everything beyond the bounds of Israel, the unique nation. This is one of the most awful, debased forms of darkness. It damages the entire edifice of spiritual virtue, the light of which every spiritual soul seeks.”

Rav Hirsch was a big fan of the poetry of Schiller. His famous speech about the romantic poet Schiller, until now has not been translated into any language from its original German. The reason is that Hirsch’s attachment to Schiller has not been shared by more recent generations.

Here you can read pdf it and finally understand why R.Hirsch was so attached to German culture and how he could find such spiritual value in writings outside the canon of Torah literature.