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Roger Scruton
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Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation Hardcover – August 30, 2009

by Roger Scruton (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 44 ratings
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Roger Scruton first addressed this topic in his celebrated book The Aesthetics of Music (OUP) and in this new book he applies the theory to the practice and examines a number of composers and musical forms. His continued fascination with Wagner provides much interesting content but he also deals near-death blows to his favorite targets like Pierre Boulez and Hoagy Carmichael. His legal encounter with The Pet Shop Boys is well documented (they sued him for libel in 1999) and the book closes with a devastating chapter on pop music, containing more controversial views that readers will relish. Many will be delighted; others enraged. However, underlying this book there is a consistent argument and passion for tonality and rhythm.
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  1. Part of series
    Bloomsbury Revelations
  2. Print length
    256 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Continuum
  5. Publication date
    August 30, 2009
  6. Dimensions
    6 x 0.63 x 9 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1847065066
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1847065063
  9. See all details
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About the Author

Sir ROGER SCRUTON is a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy and politics, including Kant and An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy. He is widely translated. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches in both England and America and is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C. He is currently teaching an MA in Philosophy for the University of Buckingham.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Continuum; 1st edition (August 30, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1847065066
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1847065063
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 0.01 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.63 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 44 ratings

About the author

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Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Roger Vernon Scruton, FBA, FRSL (/ˈskruːtən/; born 27 February 1944) is an English philosopher who specialises in aesthetics. He has written over thirty books, including Art and Imagination (1974), The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), Sexual Desire (1986), The Philosopher on Dover Beach (1990), The Aesthetics of Music (1997), Beauty (2009), How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism (2012), Our Church (2012), and How to be a Conservative (2014). Scruton has also written several novels and a number of general textbooks on philosophy and culture, and he has composed two operas.

Scruton was a lecturer and professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, from 1971 to 1992. Since 1992, he has held part-time positions at Boston University, the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and the University of St Andrews. In 1982 he helped found The Salisbury Review, a conservative political journal, which he edited for 18 years, and he founded the Claridge Press in 1987. Scruton sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Aesthetics, and is a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Scruton has been called "the man who, more than any other, has defined what conservatism is" by British MEP Daniel Hannan and "England’s most accomplished conservative since Edmund Burke" by The Weekly Standard.

Outside his career as a philosopher and writer, Scruton was involved in the establishment of underground universities and academic networks in Soviet-controlled Central Europe during the Cold War, and he has received a number of awards for his work in this area.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Pete Helme (http://www.rogerscruton.com) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
44 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jim T
5.0 out of 5 stars The mystery of music revealed
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2013
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I have often been frustrated by not being able to articulate just what music is. Words fail me with such an emotional topic. It was nice to know that it is not simple to define or explain and deals with both philosophical concepts and personal taste and interpretations. This book is an excellent, deeply thought out analysis of our universal love and need of music.
8 people found this helpful
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David Eaton
4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Take on Adorno...but...
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2016
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I've read several of Scruton's books and find him to be very enlightened in the realm of philosophy. In this book his critique of Adorno is very insightful and it alone is worth the price of the book. His view regarding aesthetics is another matter.

Scruton has composed some, so he's not a complete novice when it comes to musical matters. However, his views of music on several key issues are questionable. He says, for instance, that "music does not move." Most musicians (of which I am one) will tell you quite the opposite. Because any performance of music goes from point A to point B, it certainly does move over time. We refer to "chord progressions" as such because there is a progression of harmonic events that occur over time. Rhythm is the subdivision of time over a linear time line. Harmonic rhythm is a primary aspect of most Western music.

Also, he states that sound are events "which don't happen to do anything." Not true. Musical sounds (pitches) move airwaves in a vibratory fashion and thus activate, or "move" parts of our hearing apparatus (our ears). Whether air is being blown through a pipe, or a string is plucked or frictionized by a bow, or vocal chords are activated, something IS happening when we produce or encounter sound/music. Later he contradicts his "movement" premise saying (page 5) that we hear "a movement between tones, governed by a virtual causality that resides in a musical line." We perceive the sequential moment from on pitch to another because that's precisely what is taking place.

Though, as Scruton avers, sound "can be identified without referring to any object which participates in them," we do identify with musical sounds and our ears make distinctions with regard to intonation, timbre, dynamics, etc. A clarinet sounds different that a violin, and different violins (or voices) have distinctly different tonal properties. No two voices possess exactly the same tonal properties and even an untrained ear can identify difference of the tonal characteristic of Frank Sinatra or Mick Jagger.

With regard to expression in music, Scruton cites Hanslick and Stravinsky who opined that music is essentially powerless to "express" anything. Stravinsky later rescinded his opinion and spoke of how, in the opening of his "Rite of Spring" we wished to "express" (his term) the awakening of nature and the primal energy of the creative impulse. The same piece of music can "mean" or evoke difference responses from different people. Though an isolated pitch event may not convey or evoke an emotional response, a series of pitch events, whether melodic or harmonic, surely can. Felix Mendelssohn stated that, "The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite." This would indicate musical expression (or rather, the ability of music evoke an emotional response) is a very real phenomenon---perhaps not fully explainable, but definitely real.

I generally liked this book but had issues with some of Scruton's contentions.
15 people found this helpful
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Rick
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2016
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Excellent book, as long as you're thoroughly familiar with music.
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California Bill
3.0 out of 5 stars Good and Bad
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2012
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Philosophers of music go to great lengths in attempting to explain music philosophically. This says something about the great depths of music. I suspect that the complexity of these books comes about because the philosophy of music is really a philosophy of the mind, and not a philosophy of notes. Music taps into all areas of the mind, down to the most basic areas, dealing with the physical world.

In this book, Roger Scruton is not shy about using the full force of technical terminology about both music and philosophy. He moves quickly from idea to idea and nimbly covers his subjects.

Scruton emphasizes the wholistic nature of music. Music is at once technical and emotional. Form and content are inseparable. The composition itself and the performance itself work together.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I is called "Aesthetics." Part II is called "Criticism." I found part I to be quite interesting and often convincing. Part II did not hold my attention. Part II is full of superlatives and gushing praise and harsh condemnations.

I have to admit I liked the final chapter, an extended criticism of Adorno. I have always found Adorno's writing on music to be bizarre at best.
15 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars good book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2022
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good book and very interesting, not for the fainthearted, but well worth the effort
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Greywizard
4.0 out of 5 stars but anyone who is interested had better have some basic music theory
Reviewed in Canada on February 29, 2016
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I have only just started reading this, but anyone who is interested had better have some basic music theory, because a lot of the text requires some familiarity with it. Having said that, anything written by Scruton is bound to be worth buying, and he is one of the few experts in aesthetics writing in English.
2 people found this helpful
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Miss Dior
5.0 out of 5 stars Fast delivery excellent book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 10, 2022
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A great book by a great man
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melton
5.0 out of 5 stars A thinkers guide to Music
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2019
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Excellent work and essential for music studies.
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bluemoon
3.0 out of 5 stars Understanding Music - Roger Scruton
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2013
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A bit esoteric but I should have expected that! Makes brief reference to certain performers from 'pop' genres that appear flimsy and lacking in context
2 people found this helpful
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