From : Time on Line
Photo : www.guardian.co.uk/
Roger Scruton's new book tries to explain how we understand music and its vital role in our lives.
Although music has always stood comparison with the other arts, its oddness is something we rediscover each time we try to describe it. When we speak of interpreting works of art, for example, we refer to the practice of deciphering their single or several meanings. But to interpret music, in the classical tradition at least, has come to refer simply to playing it; that is to executing a set of more or less clear instructions left by the composer. Similarly, in eighteenth-century France, when the concept of mimesis harboured the images of excellence in all the arts, and no one troubled to discuss the arts without discussing their success in imitating "la belle nature", the sole entry on musical imitation listed in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie discussed only the purely technical matter of one part imitating another in polyphonic music.
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