The Smiley Smile Message Board

Read and discuss, if you're so inclined. The ideas extend well beyond the serious music on which the writer focuses.

http://www.futuresymphony.org/why-musicians-need-philosophy/

I promise I shall read this tonight. :=)

Ye gods! I think I may need a drink----not so much because of Scruton's essay but because of the lengthy and impassioned comments that follow it.

Who in pop backs up their work with philosophy? Robert Fripp comes to mind, but for me his music always wins the day, even the most austere minimal stuff. And his writings are compelling----fun to read, in fact.

To be continued, no doubt...




   

 

Captain...thanks for the reminder.  Had seen it listed at A&L daily.  Now have read it.
The article seems underdeveloped to me.  There seems to be confusion in the use of the word
"philosophy".  To me, an important quality of high art is the surpassing of  ideology (not so much
with lower art forms).  Not sure that the author is saying such when he talks about "philosophy."
I wish he had gone further to consider the hard problem of consciousness and the virtue
or lack of virtue in making ideology a presence. The article made me go back and listen
to Steve Reich's"Eight Lines" and think of how it reminds me of some of the work
of Sean O'Hagan/High Llamas. But not the other way around. 

The title to the article seems like a bit of a c*ck-up.  The article itself reads to me like he desires a counter-philosophy to Adorno's to drive future creation of works of art, not that he's talking about composers needing philosophy per se.

If it comes about, then great.  I don't lose much sleep over this.

Preface this by saying I've never studied music and am just throwing out some thoughts, but was the sort of systematizing of Schoenberg and Adorno not an inevitable end-product of what was happening anyway?  The dissolving of tonality and harmony was happening long beforehand and without systems being drawn up.  Not to the same extreme level, but it was at least being disrupted and expanded, not least by Wagner, decades earlier.

In the same way, I'm not sure about his Siegfried analogy.  Seems to me like the old order was corrupt and breaking anyway.  I know we're talking in symbols here, but would Wotan's spear have been smashed so easily by Siegfried's sword if his treaties and authority (the old social contract) were not already weakened?  And wasn't Wotan, knowing all this, giving way to his heir?

Seems to me that this stuff (music) moves along with history.  Individualism, and a lack of belief in authority and the old order, goes hand in hand with the breakdown of the basis of music, its democratisation.  I don't think Scruton will get this new music unless society too changes in a fairly drastic way or music is created in accord with some new social foundation or institution.