Alexander Waugh
Richer Sounds
Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation
By Roger Scruton
Continuum 256pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
‘Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, psychological mood, etc … If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality.’ These famous lines from Stravinsky’s An Autobiography (1936) caused a great fuss when they were first published. Only a few critics seemed to understand that Stravinsky was not attacking music for its shortcomings but challenging the boundaries of what can or cannot be said about it. A quarter of a century later, while standing by his original point, he sheepishly changed the wording to ‘music expresses itself’.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties
'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress