THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Roger Scruton, R.I.P.
I just learned that Roger Scruton passed away on Sunday. Have a look at his Wikipedia article. I had a great deal of respect for him as a writer on philosophical aesthetics. When I have a chance, I will do a post on him as, glancing at the article, there is a great deal I did not know of his life and work.
I have got to organize my library. I think this is the only book I have of his, but I can't locate it at the moment:
UPDATE: Here is an interesting conversation between Roger Scruton and Jordan Peterson under the auspices of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism.
10 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Scruton’s claims about music suffered from the all too frequent inclination of critics to label anything they personally do not enjoy as "not-music". I recall an interview where he claimed that any pleasure derived from listening to Boulez’s "Pli selon pli" was not musical pleasure. For those niche audiences who do like Boulez and find that listening to that work is pretty much the same aesthetic experience as putting some Sibelius or Mahler on, that claim is patently false, and frankly rather rude.
Also, he knocked late 20th-century pop music, and even if many conservative listeners today would still want to rate classical music more highly than pop, they would not sympathize with such strong disparagement of the pop world.
Anonymous mentioned something that dovetails with disagreements I've had with Scruton.
Scruton could treat trends that were critical of craft as though they were ultimately attacks on the idea of beauty. He comes across as someone defending classical art as a Romantic and as a defender of the German idealist legacy in music and the arts. That too many Americans and progressive UK folks attack the idea of the canon as if they aren't constructing one of their own doesn't mean I have to give Scruton's Wagnerian approach to the arts a pass when I don't agree with his ultimately Wagnerian conception of art as a kind of sacramental transcendentalism. Not all conservatives take that approach to the arts, to put it ever too briefly.
A lot of Scruton's points about aesthetic shortfalls in pop music were not ultimately too different from Adorno's Scruton's work paradoxically shows that even once we've subtracted the Marxism from Adorno's criticism of pop culture the criticism of the more mind-numbing tendencies in mass culture criticized by Adorno or Dwight MacDonald still have to be addressed.
That gets me indirectly to my own disagreement with Scruton. He spent half a decade pointing out that there's a lack of musical "argument" in pop songs compared to sonata forms or fugues when he had half a century within which to figure out how to bridge the gap in terms of craft between the aesthetic shortfall of popular song and concert music forms. Since he was more philosopher than composer, though, I don't think i's exactly fair to expect he solve the problem he pointed out, but I think he could have.
But bridging the gap between pop and concert music is what composers and practical musicians can work toward.
There is a lot to chew on in your comment, Wenatchee! I think that after I re-read some Scruton I will put up a post that might encourage a good comment thread. I suppose my gut feeling on some of these issues is that the truth lies more in the details than in the grand abstractions. For one thing, possibly my favorite passage in Scruton is the one where he delivers a comprehensive list of good and bad qualities in pop music and ends it with a scathing comparison of the Beatles (positive) and U2 (negative). From that alone I think that we can't assume he dismissed all pop music.
Sure, on page 17 of Understanding Music he had a good word for "Master of Puppets" by Metallica, pointing out how phrygian modality is, however violent in terms of emotional expression, affirming a core of tonality at a conceptual level and using it with expressive aims.
But ... the Beatles positive/U2 and NIrvana negative takes from Scruton actually reinforces my point that Scruton could side with the canonized as a sometimes unexamined default. I think of the Beatles as a corporate product both in terms of the collective being greater than the sum of the Fab Four parts and in terms of being a corporate product that could not have existed without George Martin and an army of Fifth Beatles. Harrison said years and years ago there was an army of Fifth Beatles they needed to be the band they were and those not-always acknowledged arrangers and advisors and session musicians can be skimmed past in Scruton's comparison of the Beatles to U2. There was literally a corporate oversight aspect that made a difference--the solo careers of the Fab Four post-Beatles showed none of them were nearly as fab by themselves.
I agree completely that one of the fundamental differences between the Beatles and other groups of the time was that they, likely with George Martin as mediator and enabler, drew talent from a wide range of other musicians and technicians. George Martin's skills as an arranger and composer (he gave good advice regarding song structure and orchestration) as well as his keyboard contributions were crucial in the early days. Then there were the very creative engineers that developed new recording techniques that make the Beatles recordings sound quite different from everyone else's. There were important contributions by session musicians (flute and French horn come to mind) of whom the most famous is likely Eric Clapton in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." I'm not sure that the whole story of this has been told as most books on the Beatles tend to glorify them and not the people around them!
it took a week but finally got around to writing down some thoughts about spending the last few years toggling back and forth between Adorno and Scruton on music.
I, alas, have not had time to re-read some Scruton so I will have a look at your post. My excuse is that I have been working on my quartet and today I am meeting with a violinist to go over some passages and we are also going to read through some of my music for violin and guitar and maybe a couple of transcriptions.
I've been on a spree lately comparing Adorno and Scruton and have another long post (6k words) quoting Adorno and Scruton back to back to show how they made the same core criticism of American popular song as falling short of the craft of European concert music art.
What I've seen in the wake of Scruton's death is that ... the delicate way to put it is that partisans on the right and left have a bit too big a vested interest in acting as if their respective teams are right on strictly ideological grounds. Scruton took Adorno's arguments seriously (if he misrepresented aspects of them and Adorno's changing stance toward the avant garde) and Adorno, for his part, warned that moderate progressive liberalism could fail to correctly assess problems in contemporary musical art in ways that a reactionary (i.e. non-Marxist) would easily spot.
I'm really grateful to have read both Adorno and Scruton because despite being on opposite sides of the Marx team they managed to articulate the reasons they believed pop songs in the American idiom didn't lend themselves to the "argument" of sonata movements. I think both of them were ultimately wrong but proving them wrong is a musical challenge as much or more as it is a philosophical or literary one.
I'm just starting to read your mega-post and, frankly, thanks for putting all the time and effort into this! I just don't have the time, myself. But I think it is very worthwhile. I guess the one thing that occurs to me, before reading your discussion, mind you, is that the political orientation of Adorno or Scruton may or may not be directly relevant to the methods they use to evaluate the aesthetic worth of popular music and jazz.
10 comments:
Scruton’s claims about music suffered from the all too frequent inclination of critics to label anything they personally do not enjoy as "not-music". I recall an interview where he claimed that any pleasure derived from listening to Boulez’s "Pli selon pli" was not musical pleasure. For those niche audiences who do like Boulez and find that listening to that work is pretty much the same aesthetic experience as putting some Sibelius or Mahler on, that claim is patently false, and frankly rather rude.
Also, he knocked late 20th-century pop music, and even if many conservative listeners today would still want to rate classical music more highly than pop, they would not sympathize with such strong disparagement of the pop world.
I found my copy of Understanding Music so I will re-read it with an eye to your criticism. The failing you mention is one that few can entirely avoid!
Anonymous mentioned something that dovetails with disagreements I've had with Scruton.
Scruton could treat trends that were critical of craft as though they were ultimately attacks on the idea of beauty. He comes across as someone defending classical art as a Romantic and as a defender of the German idealist legacy in music and the arts. That too many Americans and progressive UK folks attack the idea of the canon as if they aren't constructing one of their own doesn't mean I have to give Scruton's Wagnerian approach to the arts a pass when I don't agree with his ultimately Wagnerian conception of art as a kind of sacramental transcendentalism. Not all conservatives take that approach to the arts, to put it ever too briefly.
A lot of Scruton's points about aesthetic shortfalls in pop music were not ultimately too different from Adorno's Scruton's work paradoxically shows that even once we've subtracted the Marxism from Adorno's criticism of pop culture the criticism of the more mind-numbing tendencies in mass culture criticized by Adorno or Dwight MacDonald still have to be addressed.
That gets me indirectly to my own disagreement with Scruton. He spent half a decade pointing out that there's a lack of musical "argument" in pop songs compared to sonata forms or fugues when he had half a century within which to figure out how to bridge the gap in terms of craft between the aesthetic shortfall of popular song and concert music forms. Since he was more philosopher than composer, though, I don't think i's exactly fair to expect he solve the problem he pointed out, but I think he could have.
But bridging the gap between pop and concert music is what composers and practical musicians can work toward.
There is a lot to chew on in your comment, Wenatchee! I think that after I re-read some Scruton I will put up a post that might encourage a good comment thread. I suppose my gut feeling on some of these issues is that the truth lies more in the details than in the grand abstractions. For one thing, possibly my favorite passage in Scruton is the one where he delivers a comprehensive list of good and bad qualities in pop music and ends it with a scathing comparison of the Beatles (positive) and U2 (negative). From that alone I think that we can't assume he dismissed all pop music.
Sure, on page 17 of Understanding Music he had a good word for "Master of Puppets" by Metallica, pointing out how phrygian modality is, however violent in terms of emotional expression, affirming a core of tonality at a conceptual level and using it with expressive aims.
But ... the Beatles positive/U2 and NIrvana negative takes from Scruton actually reinforces my point that Scruton could side with the canonized as a sometimes unexamined default. I think of the Beatles as a corporate product both in terms of the collective being greater than the sum of the Fab Four parts and in terms of being a corporate product that could not have existed without George Martin and an army of Fifth Beatles. Harrison said years and years ago there was an army of Fifth Beatles they needed to be the band they were and those not-always acknowledged arrangers and advisors and session musicians can be skimmed past in Scruton's comparison of the Beatles to U2. There was literally a corporate oversight aspect that made a difference--the solo careers of the Fab Four post-Beatles showed none of them were nearly as fab by themselves.
I agree completely that one of the fundamental differences between the Beatles and other groups of the time was that they, likely with George Martin as mediator and enabler, drew talent from a wide range of other musicians and technicians. George Martin's skills as an arranger and composer (he gave good advice regarding song structure and orchestration) as well as his keyboard contributions were crucial in the early days. Then there were the very creative engineers that developed new recording techniques that make the Beatles recordings sound quite different from everyone else's. There were important contributions by session musicians (flute and French horn come to mind) of whom the most famous is likely Eric Clapton in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." I'm not sure that the whole story of this has been told as most books on the Beatles tend to glorify them and not the people around them!
it took a week but finally got around to writing down some thoughts about spending the last few years toggling back and forth between Adorno and Scruton on music.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/01/theodor-adorno-and-roger-scruton.html
I, alas, have not had time to re-read some Scruton so I will have a look at your post. My excuse is that I have been working on my quartet and today I am meeting with a violinist to go over some passages and we are also going to read through some of my music for violin and guitar and maybe a couple of transcriptions.
I've been on a spree lately comparing Adorno and Scruton and have another long post (6k words) quoting Adorno and Scruton back to back to show how they made the same core criticism of American popular song as falling short of the craft of European concert music art.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/01/theodor-adorno-and-roger-scruton-how.html
What I've seen in the wake of Scruton's death is that ... the delicate way to put it is that partisans on the right and left have a bit too big a vested interest in acting as if their respective teams are right on strictly ideological grounds. Scruton took Adorno's arguments seriously (if he misrepresented aspects of them and Adorno's changing stance toward the avant garde) and Adorno, for his part, warned that moderate progressive liberalism could fail to correctly assess problems in contemporary musical art in ways that a reactionary (i.e. non-Marxist) would easily spot.
I'm really grateful to have read both Adorno and Scruton because despite being on opposite sides of the Marx team they managed to articulate the reasons they believed pop songs in the American idiom didn't lend themselves to the "argument" of sonata movements. I think both of them were ultimately wrong but proving them wrong is a musical challenge as much or more as it is a philosophical or literary one.
I'm just starting to read your mega-post and, frankly, thanks for putting all the time and effort into this! I just don't have the time, myself. But I think it is very worthwhile. I guess the one thing that occurs to me, before reading your discussion, mind you, is that the political orientation of Adorno or Scruton may or may not be directly relevant to the methods they use to evaluate the aesthetic worth of popular music and jazz.
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