Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020) was an English philosopher and polymath. His knowledge of music was deep and wide. He wrote two operas and one libretto. He could analyze a musical composition down to its most granular detail. The book discussed here was one of his last (published in 2018) and has an odd title. Writing Music as an Art is no different from Art as an Art. I am puzzled why he chose it.
Scruton was a deep thinker in the best sense of the term. His book is divided into two parts and 17 chapters. I suspect they were cobbled together from individual lectures or articles that he had in a drawer waiting for a home. Each chapter can easily be read by itself. There is, not surprisingly, some repetition among its components.
The first half is titled Philosophical Investigations. Here things are encrusted with much of the philosophical detritus with which laymen have much trouble. You can guess what you’re in for when Scruton says in his introduction that Tchaikovsky’s Fith Symphony is “perhaps the most painful of all musical experiences.” How could I have mistaken its worth for over seven decades? We are closer when he writes about serialism – more about it in a bit. But when he mentioned that the writing of Second Viennese School was charged with negative electricity I was puzzled by his drift to gobblygook.
When he wanders into Kant and the transcendental I am left on the outside without a window. But that’s probably my fault rather than Kant’s. I’ve never quite understood what he was getting at. Scuton’s attack on the abandonment of tonality is killing though this beast has I think been killed before the publication of this book.
For years when asked what the problem with serious art music was I’ve said it could be defined in two words – Pierre Boulez. Scruton thinks him a fool and a fraud both of which are apt descriptors. When he gets to Arnold Schoenberg I think Scruton is fair and accurate. Though he (Scruton) underplays the emotive force of tonal music. His analysis of Schoenberg’s work seems like explaining Shakespeare by examining his brain. The only serial composer Scruton seems to admire, and here I share his view, is Alban Berg who through some magic of manipulation managed to get emotional content out of a system designed to obliterate it. Scruton points out what should have been, but wasn’t, to musicians bewitched by the 12-tone row “that it is in the ear of the listener, rather than the theories of the critic, that music exists…it is not the composer’s intention but the listener’s attention that turns sound to music.”
In the second part, the author turns to specific composers or types of music. He starts with Franz Schubert whom he places on the same artistic level as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven – which is where he belongs. He mentions, as have so many before him, that the composer’s C-major String Quintet is likely the greatest piece written in the genre. The piece is beyond praise. Schubert he says “is the equal of Mozart in melody, of Beethoven in musical form, and of Bach in sheer musicianship.” True, true, and true.
He then offers an analysis of Schubert’s Quartettsatz. Written in 1820 as the first movement of a string quartet it was abandoned after 41 bars of the second movement were sketched – an adagio. It is a wonderful piece heralded as the forerunner of Schubert’s great final quartets written four years later. His dissection of Schubert’s solitary movement is on the mark and interesting, but listening to it with, or without Scruton’s exegesis is the same – it speaks for itself.
Scruton is very fond of the music of fellow countryman David Matthews (b 1943). He very favorably described the composer’s Symphony #2. Accordingly, I listened to it. I could find no recording of any of Matthew’s work on Spotify – a surprise as he’s a very prolific writer. Of course, YouTube had it. Like many moderns who have returned to tonality and grand structure and orchestration, Matthew’s symphony lacks rhythmic vitality. It plods along without much change in tempo or beat. Scruton seems to begrudgingly concede that Shostakovich was the greatest composer of the last century. Matthew would benefit from the Russian’s combination of marches, orchestral avalanches, and whispered final passages. Alternatively, he could benefit from listening to John Philip Sousa. I was not as impressed by Matthew’s composition as was Scruton, but perhaps I haven’t heard enough of it. I’ll try some more of it.
Scruton beats up on Boulez in Part 2 – in several places, in fact. All of his negativity about the late Frenchman is deserved, though some of it is repetitious suggesting that as mentioned above the chapters were written at different times for different presentations.
One awful error is the listing of Tosca in the index as an opera by Verdi. Someone at Bloomsbury Publishing should have caught the mistake.
Finally, who is this book for? I’m not sure. If you’re a devotee of Scruton’s worldview, perhaps you’ll find insight among his seemingly random thoughts on music. If you want a coherent analysis of the subject culminating in its current state, I don’t think you’ll find it here. Though anything by the author is worth consideration.
Neil, This is a question for you rather than a comment: have you read and reviewed Conrad L. Osborne’s book OPERA AS OPERA? Though it’s always possible that you did so and I happened to miss your review, if you haven’t read and reviewed it I’ll be most interested in your “take” on this massive (800+ pages) book. His knowledge of repertoire, “schools” of vocal technique, conducting, and staging is on a par with yours. Again, just a suggestion, accompanied by an apology in advance if you’ve already done so and I happened to miss it.