Music as an art

Author / Creator

Scruton, Roger author

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Summary

Roger Scruton is a polymath. He has written authoritatively on a huge range of subjects from the environment to wine, from cosmology to the Middle East. He is also an accomplished musician (organ a...

Roger Scruton is a polymath. He has written authoritatively on a huge range of subjects from the environment to wine, from cosmology to the Middle East. He is also an accomplished musician (organ and piano) and a composer of works including an opera and a song cycle. This is Scruton's second major work on music for Bloomsbury--the first being Understanding Music (Continuum, 2009). In this new book he turns again to the meaning of tonality and sound. His abstract, somewhat mystical, argument on these topics includes slashing attacks on Marxist reductionism, the authenticity of Early Music, on rival aestheticians such as Adorno and on sentimentality and cliché in any form.

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 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. -- From dust jacket.

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