Music as an Art

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.