Music as an Art cover art

Music as an Art

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Music as an Art

By: Roger Scruton
Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Roger Scruton is a polymath. He has written authoritatively on a huge range of subjects from the environment to wine, from cosmology to the Middle East. He is also an accomplished musician (organ and piano) and a composer of works including an opera and a song cycle. This is Scruton’s second major work on music for Bloomsbury - the first being Understanding Music (Continuum, 2009).

In this new book he turns again to the meaning of tonality and sound. His abstract, somewhat mystical argument on these topics includes slashing attacks on Marxist reductionism, on the authenticity of Early Music, on rival aestheticians such as Adorno and on sentimentality and cliché in any form. As with Understanding Music, he also expounds his views on pop music in a most satisfying and provocative new work.

Cover copyright: © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2018

©2018 Roger Scruton (P)2018 Audible, Ltd History & Criticism Music Opera

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Against the Tide cover art
The Soul of the World cover art
I Drink Therefore I Am cover art
Beauty cover art
On Human Nature cover art
A Political Philosophy cover art
How to Be a Conservative cover art
Where We Are cover art
Kant cover art
Why Poetry Matters cover art
Beethoven's Shadow cover art
When Race Trumps Merit cover art
Dante's Inferno cover art
Asian Journals cover art
Black and Blur cover art
The Antichrist, Ecce Homo cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
I am sorry to say I knew next to nothing about music but Music as an Art was a fascinating and enjoyable read. Saul Reichlin is an excellent voice for Sir Roger. Much of the technical discussion was beyond me but film music, the woeful state of modern state subsidised opera, the American song book and jazz all get interesting and insightful treatments. The last chapter on pop is hilarious including a psycho-social analysis of Nirvana and its followers. Good to see even AC/DC and Metallica getting the occasional mention, not sniffily as you might expect from “an old geeza” (his self deprecating phrase) but as technical wizards, albeit churning out music stuck in an adolescent world. The tiniest of nits - Guns and Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine suffers a Freudian slip. All in all highly recommended. You will learn a lot and enjoy superb writing and narration while doing so.

Scruton is delightful as ever

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.