In a sane society Sir Roger Scruton's books would be in every college in America. This remarkable polymath and Renaissance Man was a living, breathing example of the value of being educated in the Liberal Arts and Humanities. For many of us, he is sorely missed.
@Michael Rosenzweig Which is a very silly thing indeed. Scruton is easily criticized but when you ciritcize pop culture, you are seen as insulting society
Some may quip that out of chaos comes order. I think it's the reverse. Order and perfection have always existed and to some extent man deliberately pulled down perfection to a much lower level wishing to be acknowledged as clever or avant-gardist. Scruton's piece pulls this confusion back up.
Michael Rosenzweig No offence but your music is, for most of us, absolutely dire. Quite offensive aren’t you? No manners at all even in the English art of insult. You write like a grubby little street urchin with no education at all. I am not engaging with you again, all I have achieved is to provide a whole trough of troll food for you to dribble in. Bye bye.
@Michael Rosenzweig Censoriousness is wrong, although people of your persuasion both love and resort to the suppression of free speech at all times: in that sense you ought to be thankful that your frankly raving comments are removed...
Roger Scruton is simply amazing. Not only is he one of the world's most significant contemporary philosophers, but here we get to hear some of his brilliant musical compositions. He humbly describes them as amateur works, but I think they stand with most 20th century professional composers. I certainly enjoyed hearing them. I loved his comments in the first 2 minutes about how we musicians cannot "tune out" the mostly inane background music in restaurants and clubs, whilst non musicians do not even seem to hear it. I have myself observed that phenomena many times, and have envied to some extent the people who are not doomed to have to suffer through such background "elevator music" or the worst kinds of pop music. But I cannot fully agree with him, being not only a classical guitarist, but also a player and lover of old time guitar, jazz, and blues. Maybe one has to be born in the US to appreciate these forms.
Agreed. I'm grateful for much of what Scruton is striving to bring before the public. But yes, jazz and the blues has a depth of art akin to classical music and really not found in any other forms. These two broad genres seem to have no cultural equals in the world, at least thus far.
Blues_guitar _String : A rich handsome gentleman married a very ugly young girl, for the purpose to be his very own. And they had a happy life in the dark starry nights, till his friends and associates persistently bugg him to see her, nevermind the explanation about her unpleasant appearance. Finally he gave in, and at the appointed visit, he called his wife to come out of the room without to cover her face for the reason of predominant show off. She was not born abroad, in the late 18th century.. the existence of music is pointless without the presence of her lovers.
jazz music doesn't have the form of classical music. but i would say it can have just as an impressive grammar. but it is still stuck in the "song", and the constant rhythm running in the background.
How true! What an excellent composition: contemporary yet so listenable! I do apologise, just a person who enjoys classical music. Quite apart from my passion for music it gives me enormous pleasure to fund the arts via regular concert attendance.
Scruton is my favourite author and I enjoyed this talk. I think he’s a touch too dismissive of jazz however. I can’t deny that jazz seems to have coincided with 20th century cultural and moral decline and it seems to have been a stepping stone of descent along a path towards today’s pop music, but regardless jazz stands strong as a high art form itself. The art of constructing an improvised solo on top of albeit it a looped harmonic framework, to develop that solo and take the listeners on a logical and captivating aural journey that peaks much in the way as Scruton describes a classical piece arriving at its peak demands as much artistry as classical music. All the more it is the group that collectively create that captivating performance, on the fly! It’s a kin to a great improvised conversation between articulate and intelligent people convening on an interesting subject matter. Jazz did itself a disservice much in the same way as the “classical tradition” by not calling out tripe when it was produced by people falsely claiming as frauds to be a part of the tradition. For example, Roland Kirk of jazz.. etc Steve Reich of “classical”
It seems that music must always provide some improvement on silence. That's a very difficult threshold to cross, and failing to do so results in "noise", whether pop, or classical.
I like the sort of music (call it whatever you like, it's in the pragmatic category 'music') that he sees as noise. I and many many others. Given that fact alone, what then is the real thrust of the argument against it (that is, against "noise" of the Boulez/Cage/Stockhausen/Ferarri/Oliveros sort)? I get the argument about mass produced generic fungible pop music 'noise', which is Adorno's argument he's ripped off and vacated it of the Marxist argument underpinning it. But what difference does it make normatively if late modernist music is 'noise'? It's expressive sound. It's emotive and resonant, it's not to everyone's taste, and it's not to Scruton's taste which is the sum of his argument: I, Roger Scruton, don't like this music, so, because I am a philosopher, [fallacious and facile non-arguments to the effect that it deviates from Nature].
Where was this in my music history, theory, and harmony classes? I knew this was supposed to be there somewhere, but instead we got Adorno, ethnomusicology, and postmodern bullshit. I feel cheated. I wish I could have studied music in Budapest a hundred years ago instead. (maybe 150, just to be safe)
The problem with classical music is that composers got convinced that their undeniable goal was to invent their own language. They turned music into a scientific field, always trying to push the boundaries of what is known. They forgot about beauty and the expression of personal inner life. All of them want to reinvent the wheel.
Yes they invented a new language. As THEY invented the league and it was new, nobody but the inventor himself understood the language. And the composer gets angry and frustrated due to the fact that nobody understands him.
@Michael Rosenzweig go find a space alien, play him the first movement of the Jupiter symphony, and ask if he thinks it sounds ugly. He’ll back me up on this.
@Michael Rosenzweig Man, I'd have loved to be there to see the Papuan tribe react! Did they at least appreciate the sound of the Bach? I have friends who don't know what to make of, for instance, early renaissance polyphony, in terms of tonality or content, but can at least appreciate that there's something there. Regarding the alien, fair point, haha, I'll accept the burden of proof. I'll have to think about what I'll play for him-"poodle music" was sorta what I was going for, but I'll take suggestions. 😛 I am but an pompus ignoramous and amateur violinist, after all, not a Great Conductor like yourself. I'm not sure why you felt the need to be such a jerk in attacking it, but in defense of my original point, an anecdote from college: I was taking a seminar on string quartets with a modestly famous contemporary composer of microtonal music, an old, old man who'd been a student of Hindemith and Messiaen. He invited me out for dinner at one point, drank three martinis (he seemed fairly practiced in this department), and got to telling stories. I asked the question I'd been most curious about-what do you hear when you listen to Schoenberg? Can you actually parse it as music, with melody and structure, or is it just chaotic noise? He told me in no uncertain terms that it was the latter, that in his opinion more or less all contemporary classical music was bullshit, and that anyone who told me otherwise was lying to himself. I stopped pretending to like it after that.
@@sosaysthecaptain5580 I enjoyed your comment about dinner with that composer. Reminds me a few I’ve had with similar types. A stopped pretending as well. 👍🏼 There are modernist works that might fall into Scruton’s category of “chaotic noise” (although I agree wholeheartedly with him and love his lectures), that have affected me in ways that a great classical work does. Xenakis’ Jonchaies. A remarkable piece especially if heard live.
I agree with the problem with pop-envirement :) I usualy go to a cafeteria for some rest to sit for few minutes and drink tea or cofee and eat a cake. Not to be stressed more by pop-noise :) So I usualy avoid caffeterias with noisy music :) So I chose usualy the one with no music or the one with slow and low-key music.
@Michael Rosenzweig Are you doing this deliberately? I was not referring to Scruton because my comment said "he is not wrong". We are on the same page, stop trying to pick a fight where there isn't one.
As a contemporary music fan who partially keeps up with the 'art music' scene, I also greatly enjoy the obvious chord progressions and loud, throbbing beats of pop / electronic music (the louder the better), e.g. in gyms / clubs. Obviously this is not the same as experiencing music with one's full attention, but I think it has its place in life. Am I corrupted? I'd rather say that certain cadences and progressions are innately pleasing, no matter which diva is warbling usually superfluously over the top, which is why the same ones get recycled over and over.
Maybe not you personally but our society is being corrupted more and more as generations go by. See "Closing of the American Mind" and some of Jacques Barzun's writings.
I think that one reason why your preferred "music" has its place in life (or at least in contemporary life), Mr. Bradley, is because people who are too obtuse to know any better keep saying that it has its place in life. Unfortunately, at present virtually every wrong-headed thing or idea that one can imagine also has its place in life, and THAT, in short, is The Problem
@@excelsior999 Perhaps I should have been clearer that the 'contemporary music' of my comment referred to contemporary classical music, and that the pop / electronic music I mentioned is not my 'preferred' music. But in any case, your tone is insulting and arrogant. I'm not sure who else keeps saying that such music has its place in life---certainly not any vocal admirers of Scruton I have encountered. If I wanted to extend my view into a full argument (which I don't for now), I would base it around the truism that traditional lifestyles have revolved around simple, memorable tunes for hundreds and no doubt thousands of years.
In Mexico, you will hear music for the dining room. Then further off the music from the cantina. From the kitchen, music for the cooks. From the waiter, a sneer and a 5 dollar glass of orange juice, the price justified by the expertise of the bartender.. Just keep on moving.
in most cases classical is head and shoulders above the modern; Compare Chopin to lady gagaga, or Michelangelo to any modern "artist" and you get the feeling; If you look at a Michelangelo's sculpture or listen to Chopin's nocturns you don't need 100 pages of explanation why it is great. You just know it!
All of your criticisms are well founded. At the same time you are unlikely to influence the likes of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, or Boulez, or Reich. Composers will compose what their inner drive dictates. The listening public will ultimately decide what is worth repeated listening and what is not. Schoenberg's "Forgefuhle" fits your description of music without tonality. Yet for me, at least, this is a composition worth repeated listening. The same is true of Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements", Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Weber", or Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata.
Jacob Opper Hindemith's "Metamorphoses" is certainly not a piece without tonality. In fact, Hindemith himself rejected the very possibility of atonality and bitonality in his writings.
This is not a problem anymore. Firstly atonality is rapidly going out. Mainly I see the most successful composers have typical written in a neo-romantic or "film-score" style. So I see the avant garde as a disappearing disease. I think what is making our industry suffer is that we have this irrational worry that our music is being taken over by pop. Just the worrying actually causes that to happen because when orchestras are so worried about filling the hall, they will program romantic music and thus depletes the opportunities for modern music to be made.
IMHO, I appreciate what Sir Roger did here, but he was too narrow minded esp. when I think about music from my remote POV in Southeast Asia which sometimes negated what he describes as "music".
'Pop' musician (not by any real modern standards but pop, pejoratively, surely by Scruton's standards; ironically by Adorno's also) here, and classical/art music appreciator. Scruton truly in the lowest form possible here. Elsewhere, though I disagree with his politics, he has some things to say in aesthetics. This is a half-cooked self-indulgent list of personal gripes. He seems not to even be convinced of himself, to know somewhere that these are not arguments of the standard of an academic philosopher (which he is, he is not a musicologist, he is surely not a composer, he is not a music theorist, he is a philosopher attempting doing a little stripped-down performance of his usual philosophical spiel where it regards music). He is being intellectually dishonest, knowing that these are vacuous, with a couple of momentary exceptions--merely expressions of personal distaste for this, preference for that, with a barely-comprehensible and diffuse veneer of appeals to various sophistical semi-arguments. 'The result, of course, is the emptying out of the concert hall.' This is really his only claim, his only empirical thesis, if you cut out the incoherent morass of gripes and grievances framed as though they had normative merit. Not wedded to this being his only claim, but let's examine it as a touchstone example. Could he *possibly* be dense enough to *actually* think that serialism, Boulez and the like are somehow even slightly to blame for the decline in classical music appreciation? He's making this up whole cloth. The people who appreciate classical music either appreciate Schoenberg and his acolytes or they don't: what kind of imaginary person, in the contemporary world of Spotify and mass availability of music, was inclined towards Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, etc., then listened to Boulez and decided "no, I no longer enjoy classical music at all? I will boycott concerts of classical music henceforth, on the basis of my discovery of this type of music." That's interpretation 1, of 3 possibilities, all ridiculous. Second possible interpretation is the idea of the imaginary person who is introduced to classical music through listening to Boulez et al. in other words, that there is a significant decline in classical music because the way in which people are introduced to music in the classical idiom is through the late modernist atonalists. Again, ridiculous. Do I need to explain why? It kind of speaks for itself. Third possibility is that he means that performances of Boulez or Ferrari or Stockhausen pieces are indeed put on, but not attended. The ridiculousness here is obvious. But even if that were so...so what? He's opposed on aesthetic principle to that sort of music. So what difference would it make *for classical music, the tradition the conservation of which he is appealing in the first place* if, implausibly, concerts were put on that performed avant-garde atonal music (or, hell, so-called 'noise music' for that matter -- a subcultural mainstay, if you've been to the vaunted performance venue Rhizome in DC, these performances are packed to the gills) but attended by nobody? In short, what he's left with are some platitudes and personal gripes with the patina of philosophy--but without any of the, you know, arguments. Clever little bit of satirical pastiche in the piece he composed for his, uh, student, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
"Tonality is the natural form in which musical relations are heard" No it's not. It's just the most widely culturally accepted one. This is a common misconception, that because intervals classed as things like fifths and thirds can be heard in the harmonic series, tertian harmony is somehow the "natural order" and is objectively better than other systems. In reality, our twelve tone equally tempered system does not accommodate the harmonic series; we've altered the tuning of quite a lot of the notes to fit them all into a system in which it is more practical to modulate between keys when performing on instruments like the piano. What we today call "tonality" is actually a system we've come to adopt in spite of nature. Scruton even plays a perfect fifth to demonstrate how "natural" it sounds. Out of the diatonic triad, the fifth is the note that is the most out of tune with the harmonic series, being 14 cents higher than it sounds in nature. So this example, ironically, demonstrates that intelligibility of tonal harmony is not predicated on how "natural" it is. Even if we were to use a just intonation system (in which many of the notes would sound "out of tune" or "wrong" in the tonal system Scruton references with his music) the arrangement of these pitches into chords and scales is arbitrary. Why don't we build chords completely on perfect fifths? Hell, if we really want to adhere to "nature's rules", why don't we only build chords with octaves? It boils down to an arbitrary structure which has evolved over centuries, and this was Schoenberg's whole idea behind building a new system from scratch. In a wider historical context, Scruton's rather juvenile point you can't "follow" a serial piece (meaning *he* can't follow it; he just extrapolates this to everyone else) only serves to illustrate how the style didn't enjoy the widespread cultural ingraining that western tonality did, and how Scruton is simply unwilling or too ignorant to try to and understand art on it's own terms. Apologies for the rant, but it's annoying to see someone go to a prestigious music academy to lecture a group of (presumably) highly trained and educated musicians, and propagate this silly notion.
It's an interesting point, and yes to some extent our musical appreciation is grounded in a formation and tradition, that might (to what extent?) be different. This is also why Schoenberg's work seemed so initially interesting. However, as a matter of empirical observation, Schoenberg's project failed miserably. No one, or hardly anyone, can in fact hear what he wants them to hear. He tried to teach us to listen to music in a different way, but couldn't. That is strange if things are as you claim.
Why would that be strange? I'm not claiming Serialism was a wild cultural success that proves my point, and the fact that it didn't really catch on isn't all that relevant anyway; that kind of reasoning would be an argument from popularity fallacy. When Bebop music was in it's infancy people generally regarded it as elitist intellectual music, made for the mind and not the ears, so to speak. Hardly anyone was able "follow it", and like most new and unfamiliar music over the centuries, was criticised for being "just noise". As it's stylistic tropes and internal logic has had time to evolve and gradually seep into public consciousness, that has changed. It's a tale as old as time, any new endeavour or experiment in music is usually viewed this way until it's had time to be explored and has become familiar to people. Even Bach was criticised in his time for doing away with the "natural element" of his music, and of course Mozart's music was infamous for being impenetrable to many listeners of the era. How many people would say the same thing today? The difference between us and those listeners, is we have had the chance to explore it and become intimately familiar with it. There have been Scrutons in every era, complaining that music isn't like it was back in the day, and that all this new stuff is unnatural noise.
"However, as a matter of empirical observation, Schoenberg's project failed miserably" - this is merely your assertion, based on what you think you understand Shoenberg's project to have been. You may be right or wrong, but either way, that's irrelevant; Serialism's lack of mainstream popularity does not invalidate its position in wider cultural discourse. Aesthetic emerges from arbitrarily defined conditions, some of which become popular, some of which don't. The rules gradually mutate, and with them, so does aesthetic - Shoenberg specifically may not have caught on with groups outside of those with a special interest in classical music, but you don't have to look far to find very popular music which deviates significantly from the functional common practice harmony which Scruton asserts to be inherently valuable. Electronic dance music is structured through a process of layering, sectional changes being indicated by changes in texture and density - it might retain some traits of Western tonality, but harmony is certainly not the backbone of the music's form. Nonetheless, people have still successfully internalised the rules that govern the form of that style, and have thoroughly accepted it as an aesthetic. This seems to suggest that people are not just capable of comprehending only common practice harmony, which Scruton seems to claim. Curiously, elsewhere, Scruton criticises the ubiquity of popular music, complaining that it is not like classical music. This is implicitly an admission that harmony which is linearly derived from the Ancient Greeks' tuning methods is NOT inherently meaningful, otherwise music which does not use harmony as a central feature could not be popular, because it should be incomprehensible.
Drivel, I'm afraid. Even if we grant that the major pentatonic scale is quite ubiquitous, it's a leap to assume that the scale possesses some sort of grand inherent quality, and that cognitively, we depend on this scale to make sense of pitch content. In fact, that we do is is demonstrably false; just look at the Baglama, a Turkish folk instrument which divides the octave into microtones. Also, the common double harmonic scale does not outline a major pentatonic. Also, what tuning system do you think the major pentatonic scale adopts? Tuned differently, it is technically a different scale. Tuning systems vary across cultures (even within cultures - do you tune your guitar just or equal temperament?). To argue that a scale's *apparent* ubiquity says anything concrete about music cognition is ludicrous, just as any arguments that scales/tuning systems based on the harmonic series are superior commit a bizarre appeal to nature fallacy. "Once you remove cadences, tonality, and metric/rhythmic coherence there is nothing to distinguish music from chaotic and disordered noise, much like the revving of a car or the howling of many asylum patients" No, there are myriad ways to organise pitch and rhythmic content, to organise timbre, and to generate a coherent form. I recommend Samuel Andreyev's channel; he successfully analyses challenging works, using his own (human) brain and everything! Also look up Vincent Persichetti's book 20th Century Harmony - lots of very recognisable and understandable pandiatonic (and beyond) techniques are described in detail in that book. Going beyond that, I would argue that you could organise any of the sounds you mentioned in a coherent way, or regard them as music, given the right contextual framework. I think what music *is* isn't quite the closed case you seem to assume it is...
That isn't a problem with my argument at all - first of all, equally-tempered piano are regularly used in orchestras, and you generally don't find them playing out of tune with the rest of the ensemble. But even that notwithstanding, whilst you're right that other kinds of ensembles exploit sympathetic resonance (i.e. barbershop quartets), the actual sonic quality of chords that reinforce each other's harmonic partials has no bearing whatsoever on whether a tonal system is comprehensible to a listener. Regarding your comment about the "preeminent scholar of aesthetics" - I find this to be a hilarious description of a man who obliviously commits argumentum ad naturam. Scruton simply isn't worth listening to; he knows nothing substantial about music, if this lecture is anything to go by. Lydia Goehr is much more interesting.
![[Vowel]물고기는 물에서 살아야 해🐟🤣Fish have to live in the water #funny](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3G9MH063Cx4/mqdefault.jpg)
In a sane society Sir Roger Scruton's books would be in every college in America. This remarkable polymath and Renaissance Man was a living, breathing example of the value of being educated in the Liberal Arts and Humanities. For many of us, he is sorely missed.
We miss, already, all that discursive clarity of thought. When he left us last January, we lost some light in our lives. The world became somber.
A voice of clarity in an incoherent world, thank you for posting.
@Michael Rosenzweig Oh... .
@Michael Rosenzweig Compared to the sound of a tomcat being neutered without anaesthetic (your stuff) it sounds rather good...
Sir Roger,
You are a standard of civility, decency and goodness. A gentle tiger.
“To learn who rules over you, figure out who you’re not allowed to criticize.”
- Voltaire
@Michael Rosenzweig Which is a very silly thing indeed. Scruton is easily criticized but when you ciritcize pop culture, you are seen as insulting society
Not only do I like his analysis of stuff, but I also marvel at his beautiful British accent and humour
Some may quip that out of chaos comes order. I think it's the reverse. Order and perfection have always existed and to some extent man deliberately pulled down perfection to a much lower level wishing to be acknowledged as clever or avant-gardist. Scruton's piece pulls this confusion back up.
man, I didn't know Sir Roger was such a good composer!
Michael Rosenzweig No one believes any of your bile, cant and drivel Mick, please go away.
Michael Rosenzweig No offence but your music is, for most of us, absolutely dire. Quite offensive aren’t you? No manners at all even in the English art of insult. You write like a grubby little street urchin with no education at all. I am not engaging with you again, all I have achieved is to provide a whole trough of troll food for you to dribble in. Bye bye.
Michael Rosenzweig Utter nonsense you ankle biting worm.
@Michael Rosenzweig Censoriousness is wrong, although people of your persuasion both love and resort to the suppression of free speech at all times: in that sense you ought to be thankful that your frankly raving comments are removed...
I didn't know either!
Very insightful and interesting speech! Bravo! 👏👏
thank you
Roger Scruton is simply amazing. Not only is he one of the world's most significant contemporary philosophers, but here we get to hear some of his brilliant musical compositions. He humbly describes them as amateur works, but I think they stand with most 20th century professional composers. I certainly enjoyed hearing them.
I loved his comments in the first 2 minutes about how we musicians cannot "tune out" the mostly inane background music in restaurants and clubs, whilst non musicians do not even seem to hear it. I have myself observed that phenomena many times, and have envied to some extent the people who are not doomed to have to suffer through such background "elevator music" or the worst kinds of pop music.
But I cannot fully agree with him, being not only a classical guitarist, but also a player and lover of old time guitar, jazz, and blues. Maybe one has to be born in the US to appreciate these forms.
Agreed. I'm grateful for much of what Scruton is striving to bring before the public. But yes, jazz and the blues has a depth of art akin to classical music and really not found in any other forms. These two broad genres seem to have no cultural equals in the world, at least thus far.
Blues_guitar _String :
A rich handsome gentleman married a very ugly young girl, for the purpose to be his very own. And they had a happy life in the dark starry nights, till his friends and associates persistently bugg him to see her, nevermind the explanation about her unpleasant appearance. Finally he gave in, and at the appointed visit, he called his wife to come out of the room without to cover her face for the reason of predominant show off. She was not born abroad, in the late 18th century.. the existence of music is pointless without the presence of her lovers.
jazz music doesn't have the form of classical music. but i would say it can have just as an impressive grammar. but it is still stuck in the "song", and the constant rhythm running in the background.
@Michael Rosenzweig 'Need to get on with your life?' You need to get a life.
How true! What an excellent composition: contemporary yet so listenable! I do apologise, just a person who enjoys classical music. Quite apart from my passion for music it gives me enormous pleasure to fund the arts via regular concert attendance.
Scruton is my favourite author and I enjoyed this talk. I think he’s a touch too dismissive of jazz however. I can’t deny that jazz seems to have coincided with 20th century cultural and moral decline and it seems to have been a stepping stone of descent along a path towards today’s pop music, but regardless jazz stands strong as a high art form itself. The art of constructing an improvised solo on top of albeit it a looped harmonic framework, to develop that solo and take the listeners on a logical and captivating aural journey that peaks much in the way as Scruton describes a classical piece arriving at its peak demands as much artistry as classical music. All the more it is the group that collectively create that captivating performance, on the fly! It’s a kin to a great improvised conversation between articulate and intelligent people convening on an interesting subject matter. Jazz did itself a disservice much in the same way as the “classical tradition” by not calling out tripe when it was produced by people falsely claiming as frauds to be a part of the tradition. For example, Roland Kirk of jazz.. etc Steve Reich of “classical”
What’s wrong with Roland Kirk?
Or for that matter Reich?
I thought he wasn't dismissive enough of Jazz.
3:15 and 14:47 These guys agree with everything to exactly the same degree
lol they replayed that same clip at those times.
It seems that music must always provide some improvement on silence. That's a very difficult threshold to cross, and failing to do so results in "noise", whether pop, or classical.
I like the sort of music (call it whatever you like, it's in the pragmatic category 'music') that he sees as noise. I and many many others. Given that fact alone, what then is the real thrust of the argument against it (that is, against "noise" of the Boulez/Cage/Stockhausen/Ferarri/Oliveros sort)? I get the argument about mass produced generic fungible pop music 'noise', which is Adorno's argument he's ripped off and vacated it of the Marxist argument underpinning it. But what difference does it make normatively if late modernist music is 'noise'? It's expressive sound. It's emotive and resonant, it's not to everyone's taste, and it's not to Scruton's taste which is the sum of his argument: I, Roger Scruton, don't like this music, so, because I am a philosopher, [fallacious and facile non-arguments to the effect that it deviates from Nature].
❤
Where was this in my music history, theory, and harmony classes? I knew this was supposed to be there somewhere, but instead we got Adorno, ethnomusicology, and postmodern bullshit.
I feel cheated. I wish I could have studied music in Budapest a hundred years ago instead. (maybe 150, just to be safe)
The problem with classical music is that composers got convinced that their undeniable goal was to invent their own language. They turned music into a scientific field, always trying to push the boundaries of what is known. They forgot about beauty and the expression of personal inner life. All of them want to reinvent the wheel.
Yes they invented a new language. As THEY invented the league and it was new, nobody but the inventor himself understood the language. And the composer gets angry and frustrated due to the fact that nobody understands him.
Yeah, so much for the postman whistling tone rows. What good’s a language-specifically, an ugly language-that nobody but you understands?
@Michael Rosenzweig go find a space alien, play him the first movement of the Jupiter symphony, and ask if he thinks it sounds ugly. He’ll back me up on this.
@Michael Rosenzweig Man, I'd have loved to be there to see the Papuan tribe react! Did they at least appreciate the sound of the Bach? I have friends who don't know what to make of, for instance, early renaissance polyphony, in terms of tonality or content, but can at least appreciate that there's something there.
Regarding the alien, fair point, haha, I'll accept the burden of proof. I'll have to think about what I'll play for him-"poodle music" was sorta what I was going for, but I'll take suggestions. 😛 I am but an pompus ignoramous and amateur violinist, after all, not a Great Conductor like yourself.
I'm not sure why you felt the need to be such a jerk in attacking it, but in defense of my original point, an anecdote from college: I was taking a seminar on string quartets with a modestly famous contemporary composer of microtonal music, an old, old man who'd been a student of Hindemith and Messiaen. He invited me out for dinner at one point, drank three martinis (he seemed fairly practiced in this department), and got to telling stories. I asked the question I'd been most curious about-what do you hear when you listen to Schoenberg? Can you actually parse it as music, with melody and structure, or is it just chaotic noise? He told me in no uncertain terms that it was the latter, that in his opinion more or less all contemporary classical music was bullshit, and that anyone who told me otherwise was lying to himself. I stopped pretending to like it after that.
@@sosaysthecaptain5580 I enjoyed your comment about dinner with that composer. Reminds me a few I’ve had with similar types. A stopped pretending as well. 👍🏼
There are modernist works that might fall into Scruton’s category of “chaotic noise” (although I agree wholeheartedly with him and love his lectures), that have affected me in ways that a great classical work does. Xenakis’ Jonchaies. A remarkable piece especially if heard live.
41:55 - a person scrolling on a smartphone during the performance.
I agree with the problem with pop-envirement :) I usualy go to a cafeteria for some rest to sit for few minutes and drink tea or cofee and eat a cake. Not to be stressed more by pop-noise :) So I usualy avoid caffeterias with noisy music :) So I chose usualy the one with no music or the one with slow and low-key music.
23:41 chopin creeps in for a moment
Yes I noticed that too.
great man,i hope he gets well soon.
@@Dave5400 how sad,esp as his last few years,he was hounded by idiots.
@@Dave5400 Well, he isn't wrong concerning this specific conference...
@Michael Rosenzweig Dude deleted his comment, I wasn't referring to Mr Scruton. Scruton's views on Boulez for example are comedy gold
@Michael Rosenzweig Are you doing this deliberately? I was not referring to Scruton because my comment said "he is not wrong". We are on the same page, stop trying to pick a fight where there isn't one.
Here the man sings an elegy for himself, as there was none so qualified to do it.
As a contemporary music fan who partially keeps up with the 'art music' scene, I also greatly enjoy the obvious chord progressions and loud, throbbing beats of pop / electronic music (the louder the better), e.g. in gyms / clubs. Obviously this is not the same as experiencing music with one's full attention, but I think it has its place in life. Am I corrupted? I'd rather say that certain cadences and progressions are innately pleasing, no matter which diva is warbling usually superfluously over the top, which is why the same ones get recycled over and over.
Maybe not you personally but our society is being corrupted more and more as generations go by. See "Closing of the American Mind" and some of Jacques Barzun's writings.
Thanks for the tip on Barzun.
I think that one reason why your preferred "music" has its place in life (or at least in contemporary life), Mr. Bradley, is because people who are too obtuse to know any better keep saying that it has its place in life. Unfortunately, at present virtually every wrong-headed thing or idea that one can imagine also has its place in life, and THAT, in short, is The Problem
@@excelsior999 Perhaps I should have been clearer that the 'contemporary music' of my comment referred to contemporary classical music, and that the pop / electronic music I mentioned is not my 'preferred' music. But in any case, your tone is insulting and arrogant. I'm not sure who else keeps saying that such music has its place in life---certainly not any vocal admirers of Scruton I have encountered. If I wanted to extend my view into a full argument (which I don't for now), I would base it around the truism that traditional lifestyles have revolved around simple, memorable tunes for hundreds and no doubt thousands of years.
"Am I corrupted?"
Subverted for sure. Almost everyone alive today is.
YES ... PAINFUL ... MY SO DEAR FRIEND KARL RICHTER WAS SO CRITICAL WHEN it BEGUN ... and I AGREE . with HIM and YOU . these HORRIBLE BACKGROUNDS .
Curious what Scruton thinks about the debate on the Elgin Marbles? Any links?
Do you mean if they should remain in London or be returned to Athens?
In Mexico, you will hear music for the dining room. Then further off the music from the cantina. From the kitchen, music for the cooks. From the waiter, a sneer and a 5 dollar glass of orange juice, the price justified by the expertise of the bartender.. Just keep on moving.
wonder what he thought of boulez the conductor
21:15
in most cases classical is head and shoulders above the modern; Compare Chopin to lady gagaga, or Michelangelo to any modern "artist" and you get the feeling; If you look at a Michelangelo's sculpture or listen to Chopin's nocturns you don't need 100 pages of explanation why it is great. You just know it!
All correct: Let's give subsidies to music, film, and other art forms so long as nothing is produced! :-)
God, he has a way with words haha
Great profile picture! I assume that's Philemon from the Red Book? :))
@@RNCM_Philosophy yup, that's exactly what it is:)
@@tenaciousdfan9 you have good taste!
@@RNCM_Philosophy Thank you!:D
that's what him so likeable;
All of your criticisms are well founded. At the same time you are unlikely to influence the likes of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, or Boulez, or Reich. Composers will compose what their inner drive dictates. The listening public will ultimately decide what is worth repeated listening and what is not. Schoenberg's "Forgefuhle" fits your description of music without tonality. Yet for me, at least, this is a composition worth repeated listening. The same is true of Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements", Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Weber", or Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata.
Jacob Opper Hindemith's "Metamorphoses" is certainly not a piece without tonality. In fact, Hindemith himself rejected the very possibility of atonality and bitonality in his writings.
This is not a problem anymore. Firstly atonality is rapidly going out. Mainly I see the most successful composers have typical written in a neo-romantic or "film-score" style. So I see the avant garde as a disappearing disease. I think what is making our industry suffer is that we have this irrational worry that our music is being taken over by pop. Just the worrying actually causes that to happen because when orchestras are so worried about filling the hall, they will program romantic music and thus depletes the opportunities for modern music to be made.
Alma Deutscher has answer to to this insanity
IMHO, I appreciate what Sir Roger did here, but he was too narrow minded esp. when I think about music from my remote POV in Southeast Asia which sometimes negated what he describes as "music".
Dr. Scruton was absolutely wrong about jazz and short breaths. He needed to listen to John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Quite the opposite applies.
It might be argued that at least 75 per cent of the 'classical' canon suffers from severe kitschification
'Pop' musician (not by any real modern standards but pop, pejoratively, surely by Scruton's standards; ironically by Adorno's also) here, and classical/art music appreciator. Scruton truly in the lowest form possible here. Elsewhere, though I disagree with his politics, he has some things to say in aesthetics. This is a half-cooked self-indulgent list of personal gripes. He seems not to even be convinced of himself, to know somewhere that these are not arguments of the standard of an academic philosopher (which he is, he is not a musicologist, he is surely not a composer, he is not a music theorist, he is a philosopher attempting doing a little stripped-down performance of his usual philosophical spiel where it regards music). He is being intellectually dishonest, knowing that these are vacuous, with a couple of momentary exceptions--merely expressions of personal distaste for this, preference for that, with a barely-comprehensible and diffuse veneer of appeals to various sophistical semi-arguments. 'The result, of course, is the emptying out of the concert hall.' This is really his only claim, his only empirical thesis, if you cut out the incoherent morass of gripes and grievances framed as though they had normative merit. Not wedded to this being his only claim, but let's examine it as a touchstone example.
Could he *possibly* be dense enough to *actually* think that serialism, Boulez and the like are somehow even slightly to blame for the decline in classical music appreciation? He's making this up whole cloth. The people who appreciate classical music either appreciate Schoenberg and his acolytes or they don't: what kind of imaginary person, in the contemporary world of Spotify and mass availability of music, was inclined towards Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, etc., then listened to Boulez and decided "no, I no longer enjoy classical music at all? I will boycott concerts of classical music henceforth, on the basis of my discovery of this type of music."
That's interpretation 1, of 3 possibilities, all ridiculous. Second possible interpretation is the idea of the imaginary person who is introduced to classical music through listening to Boulez et al. in other words, that there is a significant decline in classical music because the way in which people are introduced to music in the classical idiom is through the late modernist atonalists. Again, ridiculous. Do I need to explain why? It kind of speaks for itself. Third possibility is that he means that performances of Boulez or Ferrari or Stockhausen pieces are indeed put on, but not attended. The ridiculousness here is obvious. But even if that were so...so what? He's opposed on aesthetic principle to that sort of music. So what difference would it make *for classical music, the tradition the conservation of which he is appealing in the first place* if, implausibly, concerts were put on that performed avant-garde atonal music (or, hell, so-called 'noise music' for that matter -- a subcultural mainstay, if you've been to the vaunted performance venue Rhizome in DC, these performances are packed to the gills) but attended by nobody?
In short, what he's left with are some platitudes and personal gripes with the patina of philosophy--but without any of the, you know, arguments. Clever little bit of satirical pastiche in the piece he composed for his, uh, student, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
"Tonality is the natural form in which musical relations are heard"
No it's not. It's just the most widely culturally accepted one. This is a common misconception, that because intervals classed as things like fifths and thirds can be heard in the harmonic series, tertian harmony is somehow the "natural order" and is objectively better than other systems. In reality, our twelve tone equally tempered system does not accommodate the harmonic series; we've altered the tuning of quite a lot of the notes to fit them all into a system in which it is more practical to modulate between keys when performing on instruments like the piano. What we today call "tonality" is actually a system we've come to adopt in spite of nature. Scruton even plays a perfect fifth to demonstrate how "natural" it sounds. Out of the diatonic triad, the fifth is the note that is the most out of tune with the harmonic series, being 14 cents higher than it sounds in nature. So this example, ironically, demonstrates that intelligibility of tonal harmony is not predicated on how "natural" it is.
Even if we were to use a just intonation system (in which many of the notes would sound "out of tune" or "wrong" in the tonal system Scruton references with his music) the arrangement of these pitches into chords and scales is arbitrary. Why don't we build chords completely on perfect fifths? Hell, if we really want to adhere to "nature's rules", why don't we only build chords with octaves? It boils down to an arbitrary structure which has evolved over centuries, and this was Schoenberg's whole idea behind building a new system from scratch. In a wider historical context, Scruton's rather juvenile point you can't "follow" a serial piece (meaning *he* can't follow it; he just extrapolates this to everyone else) only serves to illustrate how the style didn't enjoy the widespread cultural ingraining that western tonality did, and how Scruton is simply unwilling or too ignorant to try to and understand art on it's own terms.
Apologies for the rant, but it's annoying to see someone go to a prestigious music academy to lecture a group of (presumably) highly trained and educated musicians, and propagate this silly notion.
It's an interesting point, and yes to some extent our musical appreciation is grounded in a formation and tradition, that might (to what extent?) be different. This is also why Schoenberg's work seemed so initially interesting. However, as a matter of empirical observation, Schoenberg's project failed miserably. No one, or hardly anyone, can in fact hear what he wants them to hear. He tried to teach us to listen to music in a different way, but couldn't. That is strange if things are as you claim.
Why would that be strange? I'm not claiming Serialism was a wild cultural success that proves my point, and the fact that it didn't really catch on isn't all that relevant anyway; that kind of reasoning would be an argument from popularity fallacy.
When Bebop music was in it's infancy people generally regarded it as elitist intellectual music, made for the mind and not the ears, so to speak. Hardly anyone was able "follow it", and like most new and unfamiliar music over the centuries, was criticised for being "just noise". As it's stylistic tropes and internal logic has had time to evolve and gradually seep into public consciousness, that has changed. It's a tale as old as time, any new endeavour or experiment in music is usually viewed this way until it's had time to be explored and has become familiar to people. Even Bach was criticised in his time for doing away with the "natural element" of his music, and of course Mozart's music was infamous for being impenetrable to many listeners of the era. How many people would say the same thing today? The difference between us and those listeners, is we have had the chance to explore it and become intimately familiar with it. There have been Scrutons in every era, complaining that music isn't like it was back in the day, and that all this new stuff is unnatural noise.
"However, as a matter of empirical observation, Schoenberg's project failed miserably" - this is merely your assertion, based on what you think you understand Shoenberg's project to have been. You may be right or wrong, but either way, that's irrelevant; Serialism's lack of mainstream popularity does not invalidate its position in wider cultural discourse.
Aesthetic emerges from arbitrarily defined conditions, some of which become popular, some of which don't. The rules gradually mutate, and with them, so does aesthetic - Shoenberg specifically may not have caught on with groups outside of those with a special interest in classical music, but you don't have to look far to find very popular music which deviates significantly from the functional common practice harmony which Scruton asserts to be inherently valuable. Electronic dance music is structured through a process of layering, sectional changes being indicated by changes in texture and density - it might retain some traits of Western tonality, but harmony is certainly not the backbone of the music's form. Nonetheless, people have still successfully internalised the rules that govern the form of that style, and have thoroughly accepted it as an aesthetic. This seems to suggest that people are not just capable of comprehending only common practice harmony, which Scruton seems to claim.
Curiously, elsewhere, Scruton criticises the ubiquity of popular music, complaining that it is not like classical music. This is implicitly an admission that harmony which is linearly derived from the Ancient Greeks' tuning methods is NOT inherently meaningful, otherwise music which does not use harmony as a central feature could not be popular, because it should be incomprehensible.
Drivel, I'm afraid. Even if we grant that the major pentatonic scale is quite ubiquitous, it's a leap to assume that the scale possesses some sort of grand inherent quality, and that cognitively, we depend on this scale to make sense of pitch content. In fact, that we do is is demonstrably false; just look at the Baglama, a Turkish folk instrument which divides the octave into microtones. Also, the common double harmonic scale does not outline a major pentatonic. Also, what tuning system do you think the major pentatonic scale adopts? Tuned differently, it is technically a different scale. Tuning systems vary across cultures (even within cultures - do you tune your guitar just or equal temperament?). To argue that a scale's *apparent* ubiquity says anything concrete about music cognition is ludicrous, just as any arguments that scales/tuning systems based on the harmonic series are superior commit a bizarre appeal to nature fallacy.
"Once you remove cadences, tonality, and metric/rhythmic coherence there is nothing to distinguish music from chaotic and disordered noise, much like the revving of a car or the howling of many asylum patients"
No, there are myriad ways to organise pitch and rhythmic content, to organise timbre, and to generate a coherent form. I recommend Samuel Andreyev's channel; he successfully analyses challenging works, using his own (human) brain and everything! Also look up Vincent Persichetti's book 20th Century Harmony - lots of very recognisable and understandable pandiatonic (and beyond) techniques are described in detail in that book. Going beyond that, I would argue that you could organise any of the sounds you mentioned in a coherent way, or regard them as music, given the right contextual framework. I think what music *is* isn't quite the closed case you seem to assume it is...
That isn't a problem with my argument at all - first of all, equally-tempered piano are regularly used in orchestras, and you generally don't find them playing out of tune with the rest of the ensemble. But even that notwithstanding, whilst you're right that other kinds of ensembles exploit sympathetic resonance (i.e. barbershop quartets), the actual sonic quality of chords that reinforce each other's harmonic partials has no bearing whatsoever on whether a tonal system is comprehensible to a listener.
Regarding your comment about the "preeminent scholar of aesthetics" - I find this to be a hilarious description of a man who obliviously commits argumentum ad naturam. Scruton simply isn't worth listening to; he knows nothing substantial about music, if this lecture is anything to go by. Lydia Goehr is much more interesting.
People who use the word "kitsch" tend to be kitsch. I never liked this about sir Roger. It was beneath him.