Music as an Art

by Roger Scruton

Overview

In the latest of his books exploring a lifetime's passion for music, bestselling author and philosopher Roger Scruton brings his immense critical faculties to bear on a panoply of different musical genres, both contemporary and classical.

Music as an Art begins by examining music through a philosophical lens, engaging in discussions about tonality, music and the moral life, music and cognitive science and German idealism, as well as recalling the author's struggle to encourage his students to distinguish the qualities of good music. Scruton then explains – via erudite chapters on Schubert, Britten, Rameau, opera and film – how we can develop greater judgement in music, recognising both good taste and bad, establishing musical values, as well as musical pleasures.

As Scruton argues in this book, in earlier times, our musical culture had secure foundations in the church, the concert hall and the home; in the ceremonies and celebrations of ordinary life, religion and manners. Yet we no longer live in that world. Fewer people now play instruments and music is, for many, a form of largely solitary enjoyment. As he shows in Music as an Art, we live at a critical time for classical music, and this book is an important contribution to the debate, of which we stand in need, concerning the place of music in Western civilization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472955722
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/23/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books including Understanding Music and The Aesthetics of Music, as well as numerous bestselling books of philosophy, history, fiction and criticism.
Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books.

A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; University Professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic for the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.

Table of Contents

Introduction

PART I: PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
1 When is a Tune?
2 Music and Cognitive Science
3 Music and the Moral Life
4 Music and the Transcendental
5 Tonality
6 German Idealism

PART II: CRITICAL EXPLORATIONS
7 Franz Schubert and the Quartettsatz
8 Rameua the Musician
9 Britten's Dirge
10 David Matthews
11 Reflections on Deaths in Venice
12 Pierre Boulez
13 Film Music
14 The Assault on Opera
15 Nietzsche on Wagner
16 The Music of the Future
17 The Culture of Pop

Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
A Note on the Author

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2018
In this collection of essays, Scruton (Univ. of Oxford), who writes on a wide range of subjects, makes an important distinction that people approach music, at least in Western societies, in two ways: by listening and by hearing. Listeners include those who attend concerts, especially of classical music; the latter are a much wider audience, encompassing those who hear, or overhear, music in elevators. He explains how the development of serialism by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg has led classical music into a kind of dead end from which it has yet to recover. In discussing the decline of interest in the subject, the author notes that the "listener's attention," not the composer's intention, turns "sound to music." Scruton also makes forays into popular and film music, noting that in pop, rhythm is often "generated by percussive sounds that have little or no relation to anything else that is happening." Despite the broad discussion of various kinds of music, this highly erudite work will be of interest only to those with serious interest in the subject. Some chapters, e.g., "Nietzsche on Wagner," have only tangential relation to music. VERDICT Recommended only to the most informed readers.—Edward B. Cone, New York

Library Journal

06/04/2018
Scruton (Understanding Music) fastidiously argues for tonality and expression as significant components of musical compositions in this enlightening academic work. Scruton breaks down the various features of individual pieces, such as Rachmaninoff’s grand symphonies and Schubert’s complex melodies. He writes that Schubert, one of his favorite composers, is revered for his ability to retain a single melody while changing the tonal center in each bar of music, but “none of this is trickery; always there is purpose to Schubert’s innovations, and always they enhance the dramatic power and emotional intensity of the whole.” In “Film Music,” Scruton maintains that “John Williams’s Harry Potter scores and Howard Shore’s evocative music for Lord of the Rings exhibit a mastery of harmonic sequences, polyphonic organization, and orchestral effect that would be the envy of many a composer for the concert hall.” Moving on to pop music, Scruton observes how the “melodies of the Beatles... were often highly adventurous, with internal rhyming and modulations into neighboring keys” Scruton is theoretical as he deconstructs certain pieces note for note, but he is aware that not everyone studied music theory: “You don’t need the technicalities in order to hear what is going on.” Music scholars will most appreciate this discussion of tonality. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Scruton fastidiously argues for tonality and expression as significant components of musical compositions in this enlightening academic work.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2018-08-13

The joys and challenges of classical music.

In his latest, Scruton (Aesthetics/Birkbeck Coll. London; Where We Are: The State of Britain Now, 2018, etc.) continues many of the arguments he laid out in Understanding Music (2009). Many of the chapters were previously published in journals and books or delivered as lectures. He begins with the premise that we "live at a critical time for classical music." In the past, "our musical culture had secure foundations in the church, in the concert halls and in the home….We no longer live in that world." The author argues that young people today must be taught to discriminate, to recognize "good taste and bad taste in music." The first part of the book does little to welcome novice listeners with open arms. Those familiar with musical composition or performance will be better equipped to appreciate the topics covered. If, however, listeners are unfamiliar with "diatonically tonal" or "semi-closure on the tonic," they will be greatly challenged to appreciate Scruton's discussions of music and cognitive science, music and the moral life, or the philosophy of music. The second section of the book, though still flavored with academese, does a better job of reaching out to serious readers looking to be educated and informed. For Scruton, no "composer is more relevant to us" than Franz Schubert, who could innovate and "enhance the dramatic power and emotional intensity of the whole." The author is especially good in his discussion of 18th-century composer and harpsichordist Jean-Philippe Rameau, "who advanced the cause of music drama," and the modern English composer Benjamin Britten, "whose reputation continues to grow both in his home country and around the world." Scruton's discussion of film music is illuminating since many listeners become "acquainted with the symphony orchestra through film music." At the end, he offers a misguided criticism of "the Rock scene" as "a wilderness of repetition, in which nothing new is harvested because nothing new is sown."

If Scruton wants to expand classical music's audience, he must step away from his professorial lectern.

Kirkus Reviews