A Point of View...Roger Scruton

[Beef Oven!]

Answer the question. Where does he reason his assertion that John Cage composed 4'33" "with no prior evidence of musical competence"?

It's a factual error. Why would he reason it? He got it wrong. Simple. There's not much to it - you're chewing more than you've bitten off.

[Richard Barrett]

This article "The Music of the Future" happens to be the one I know best, and I answered to it on the site where it's posted so I don't think I need to bother to go through any more of the errors and assumptions that I did at the time (although those I pointed out hardly scratched the surface):

https://www.futuresymphony.org/the-music-of-the-future/

I honestly don't think he qualifies as an expert on music at all - he cherrypicks from the philosophical tradition to support his arguments (just as he does when pontificating on other subjects), and displays an extremely patchy and superficial knowledge of the music of his own time (although no doubt enough to convince some people who know even less), while resting much of his diatribe on the completely unwarranted assertion of the "prominence in our musical culture of the experimental avant-garde", which as anyone who exists in the real world will be aware is a nonsense.

As for "odious and bigoted", I think his views on Muslims, Jews, homosexuality and rape, not to mention the promotion of smoking, clearly come under one or both categories in different ways. Here's a paragraph from his article "Modern Manhood" https://www.city-journal.org/html/mo...ood-11823.html that would be an obvious piece of satire if it hadn't come from the hand of this singularly humourless character:

"My grandfather's gesture, as he laid down his wage packet on the kitchen table, was imbued with a peculiar grace: it was a recognition of my grandmother's importance as a woman, of her right to his consideration and of her value as the mother of his children. Likewise, her waiting outside the pub until closing time, when he would be too unconscious to suffer the humiliation of it, before transporting him home in a wheelbarrow, was a gesture replete with feminine considerateness. It was her way of recognizing his inviolable sovereignty as a wage earner and a man."

These are the values he counterposes to the evils of feminism ("an inevitable response to the breakdown of the traditional sexual morality"). His views do I suppose deserve to be countered, rather than dismissed out of hand as crank notions like those of someone like David Icke, since they represent the pseudointellectual side of today's extreme conservatism (Mogg, Farage etc.) which has been inflated by a sensationalist media into something like respectability, but it beats me why any thinking person would wish to defend them.

[MrGongGong]

His views do I suppose deserve to be countered, rather than dismissed out of hand as crank notions like those of someone like David Icke, since they represent the pseudointellectual side of today's extreme conservatism (Mogg, Farage etc.) which has been inflated by a sensationalist media into something like respectability, but it beats me why any thinking person would wish to defend them.

Absolutely
The pseudo-intellectual nonsense that he spouts DOES need to be "called out" as, sadly, it really has gained traction in the world in sometimes alarming ways.
And, I don't think any "thinking" person really defends them. Some, like to play games with pretending to support them without having the faintest idea of what they are.

As for looking for "dirt on the guy" it's not hard when he appears like this (sure, he is wearing a suit so must be squeaky clean)

[Richard Barrett]

looking for "dirt on the guy"

The thing is there's practically nothing but "dirt on the guy". What is there to defend actually?

[Beef Oven!]

I for one would not agree with his views on gender etc, but they are hardly bigoted or odious. For example, compared to the position taken by Islam and Islamic influenced governments on such matters as gender, LGBT, rape, etc he is quite benign. But you, MrGG and fellow politically correct travellers won't be interested in that; you wouldn't dare accept the comparison - it's politically incorrect. Which neatly brings back to what the OP was about, after almost 80 posts of hysteria.

This article "The Music of the Future" happens to be the one I know best, and I answered to it on the site where it's posted so I don't think I need to bother to go through any more of the errors and assumptions that I did at the time (although those I pointed out hardly scratched the surface):

https://www.futuresymphony.org/the-music-of-the-future/

I honestly don't think he qualifies as an expert on music at all - he cherrypicks from the philosophical tradition to support his arguments (just as he does when pontificating on other subjects), and displays an extremely patchy and superficial knowledge of the music of his own time (although no doubt enough to convince some people who know even less), while resting much of his diatribe on the completely unwarranted assertion of the "prominence in our musical culture of the experimental avant-garde", which as anyone who exists in the real world will be aware is a nonsense.

As for "odious and bigoted", I think his views on Muslims, Jews, homosexuality and rape, not to mention the promotion of smoking, clearly come under one or both categories in different ways. Here's a paragraph from his article "Modern Manhood" https://www.city-journal.org/html/mo...ood-11823.html that would be an obvious piece of satire if it hadn't come from the hand of this singularly humourless character:

"My grandfather's gesture, as he laid down his wage packet on the kitchen table, was imbued with a peculiar grace: it was a recognition of my grandmother's importance as a woman, of her right to his consideration and of her value as the mother of his children. Likewise, her waiting outside the pub until closing time, when he would be too unconscious to suffer the humiliation of it, before transporting him home in a wheelbarrow, was a gesture replete with feminine considerateness. It was her way of recognizing his inviolable sovereignty as a wage earner and a man."

These are the values he counterposes to the evils of feminism ("an inevitable response to the breakdown of the traditional sexual morality"). His views do I suppose deserve to be countered, rather than dismissed out of hand as crank notions like those of someone like David Icke, since they represent the pseudointellectual side of today's extreme conservatism (Mogg, Farage etc.) which has been inflated by a sensationalist media into something like respectability, but it beats me why any thinking person would wish to defend them.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He is very clear in his opinions and does not present them as facts. ... He is not presenting his arguments as a musicologist, he does so as a listener.

But he frequently presents his statements as if he were a legitimate Musicolgist, presenting his opinions as if they were facts. In addition to his factually inaccurate description of Cage's work before 4mins 33", there was also:

he problem for modern music arose, however, from the way in which, thanks in part to Schoenberg, in part to Adorno and his followers, and in part to the Darmstadt school, ideas came to displace feelings as the source of musical creation. The twelve-tone serial technique gave a new theory of music, and a new way of learning to arrange pitched sounds in sequence without reference to melody or harmony. Adorno’s critical attack on the “regression in listening,” and on the exhausted nature of the old tonal sequences, made composers afraid to write tunes, for fear that the result would be merely “banal.” And then came Boulez and Stockhausen, clever charlatans who were able to intimidate the world of music lovers into believing that there could be no future for music if Boulez and Stockhausen were not put in charge of it. The fact that the resulting music was entirely without appeal was put out of mind as irrelevant. The point was the charm of the theory, not the sound of the result. A concert-hall from which the audience has fled is not a cultural disaster if a group of state-subsidized zombies is making noises at one end of it.

We have lived through all that, and the whole thing was founded on a mistake. Music is not an arrangement of “pitched sounds” in mathematical permutations. It is a dynamic process in virtual space, a form of movement in which static sounds become goal-directed tones, and simultaneous pitches are magically blended into chords. The whole enterprise of acoustical research, which for Boulez and Stockhausen spelled the way forward into the music of the future, was based on a false conception of the musical ear. It was precisely by building on theory rather than intuitive understanding that the music of the future ceased to be music, and became instead a dance of spectres in a mausoleum of sounds.

"Twelve-note serial technique [sic] gave ... a new way of learning to arrange pitched sounds in sequence without reference to melody or harmony."
"Composers afraid to write tunes"
"Boulez and Stockhausen, clever charlatans who were able to intimidate the world of Music lovers"
"a group of state-subsidized zombies ... making noises"
"The whole enterprise of acoustical research ... was based on a false conception of the Musical ear"

This isn't erudition, nor is it an "I like chocolate"-type objective statementDaily Mail-type ranting, and If any one of these statements had been made by someone on this Forum, you would have been the first to respond as vociferously as you have have against those who have expressed opposition to Scruton on this Thread.

I do not understand your support of the man's writings when he produces such shoddy material as this, nor when he so often makes comments that suggest that his remedy for all the ills that he regards as plaguing the contemporary world is a "let's go back to how it used to be in the good old days" attitude that you have also (quite rightly) often attacked on the Forum as misguided.

[JimD]

I have a disturbing sense at times reading this thread that Roger Scruton and his arguments are not entitled to any defense, and that those who attempt such a defense are themselves 'suspect'.

[Beef Oven!]

I think we know that he's not a musicologist. He never said he was. But he has articulated some very interesting observations. Observations that many forum members subscribe to, whether they would admit to it or not. All those threads about who's your favourite dead violinist, and posts about 'how I've just heard the 1949 Moisha Zimmerman performance of LvB's vc" etc. Again, I will say that I don't want to listen to music in the way that would meet Roger's approval, but he has a point and I don't see why people jump up and down about it.

But he frequently presents his statements as if he were a legitimate Musicolgist, presenting his opinions as if they were facts. In addition to his factually inaccurate description of Cage's work before 4mins 33", there was also:



"Twelve-note serial technique [sic] gave ... a new way of learning to arrange pitched sounds in sequence without reference to melody or harmony."
"Composers afraid to write tunes"
"Boulez and Stockhausen, clever charlatans who were able to intimidate the world of Music lovers"
"a group of state-subsidized zombies ... making noises"
"The whole enterprise of acoustical research ... was based on a false conception of the Musical ear"

This isn't erudition, nor is it an "I like chocolate"-type objective statementDaily Mail-type ranting, and If any one of these statements had been made by someone on this Forum, you would have been the first to respond as vociferously as you have have against those who have expressed opposition to Scruton on this Thread.

I do not understand your support of the man's writings when he produces such shoddy material as this, nor when he so often makes comments that suggest that his remedy for all the ills that he regards as plaguing the contemporary world is a "let's go back to how it used to be in the good old days" attitude that you have also (quite rightly) often attacked on the Forum as misguided.

[Beef Oven!]

I have a disturbing sense at times reading this thread that Roger Scruton and his arguments are not entitled to any defense, and that those who attempt such a defense are themselves 'suspect'.

Good heavens.

What a lovely example of how political correctness goes hand in hand with mob-tyranny.

The worrying thing is that I think you might believe what you wrote and actually think there is something 'suspect' about me.

We live in a scary world where people have lost their ability to use their brains and think.

[french frank]

I have a disturbing sense at times reading this thread that Roger Scruton and his arguments are not entitled to any defense, and that those who attempt such a defense are themselves 'suspect'.

It may be that some people's arguments are 'suspect' for other reasons. But the arguments in defence of RS are allowed. Where are they, beyond 'disagreeing' with the criticisms and rejecting them?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have a disturbing sense at times reading this thread that Roger Scruton and his arguments are not entitled to any defense, and that those who attempt such a defense are themselves 'suspect'.

I don't know where you get that "disturbing sense" from, JimD - there have been posts defending RS, and if the posts disputing RS's opinions are in the majority, that merely shows the strongly-held disagreement with them held by the Forumistas who have posted.

Perhaps I should make it clear that all Forumistas are very welcome both to present examples of Scruton's writing that they find admirable and which they believe outweigh (or, at least, counterbalance) those that have been criticised on this Thread. BeefO has mentioned his writings on DSCH, which I do not know - perhaps that might be a good source of examples of work that has inspired his admirers?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Good heavens.
What a lovely example of how political correctness goes hand in hand with mob-tyranny.
The worrying thing is that I think you might believe what you wrote and actually think there is something 'suspect' about me.
We live in a scary world where people have lost their ability to use their brains and think.

I think he was trying to support you, BeefO - expressing concern that the majority of posts seem to suggest that "RS and his arguments are not entitled to any defense" etc.

[Beef Oven!]

But the arguments in defence of RS are allowed.

Not in the Radio 3 Forum for Radio 3 listeners they aren't.

[Joseph K]

Not in the Radio 3 Forum for Radio 3 listeners they aren't.

Sounding a bit fragile? It's not like you've been censored.

[Beef Oven!]

I think he was trying to support you, BeefO.

I have re-read JimD's post and it could be taken that way. But I have not had the sense that anyone is accusing me of being 'suspect'. That is why I have interpreted JimD's post in the way I did.