The Aesthetics of Music
Roger Scruton
Abstract
Attempts to give a complete account of music: its nature, meaning, and value. The book begins from an examination of sound, distinguishes sound from tone, and identifies tones as intentional (but not material) objects. Musical understanding is based in a form of imaginative perception, in which metaphors of space, weight, effort, and movement play an organising role. Musical meaning does not arise through representation, but through expression and form, both of which must be explained through a theory of musical understanding. Tonality is examined as a paradigm of musical organiza ... More
Attempts to give a complete account of music: its nature, meaning, and value. The book begins from an examination of sound, distinguishes sound from tone, and identifies tones as intentional (but not material) objects. Musical understanding is based in a form of imaginative perception, in which metaphors of space, weight, effort, and movement play an organising role. Musical meaning does not arise through representation, but through expression and form, both of which must be explained through a theory of musical understanding. Tonality is examined as a paradigm of musical organization, and a theory of expression advanced that gives prominence to first‐person awareness and ‘knowing what it's like’, while acknowledging that expression and musical organization are interconnected. Theories of analysis and structure, such as those of Schenker, Meyer, Lerdahl, and Jackendoff, are examined from the perspective of philosophical aesthetics, and an account given of the identity of the work of music and the distinction between work and performance. The book advances a theory of musical value and of the cultural conditions that enable a musical tradition to emerge and to convey the weight of significance that we hear when we listen to music. Listening is a kind of ‘moving with’, to be illuminated through the comparison with dancing.
Keywords:
aesthetics,
expression,
imagination,
metaphor,
music,
musical value,
performance,
philosophical aesthetics,
philosophy of music,
representation,
Roger Scruton,
sound,
tonality,
tone
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 1999 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198167273 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 |
DOI:10.1093/019816727X.001.0001 |
