Music as an Art

June 4, 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.

September 1, 2018
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.

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October 1, 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

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