released 2/10/2023

“Music is irreducibly highly personal and subjective but also more than that — related to something that confronts us objectively, as the totality in which we live.” So writes Julian Johnson in Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value (Oxford University Press, 2002). He talked about that book on Volume 65 of Journal. Today’s Feature presents an expanded version of that interview.

33 minutes

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Political philosopher Carson Holloway has studied how and why premodern political philosophers took music very seriously. They believed that “music can foster in the soul an inclination to take pleasure in, and thus to seek out, the rationally discernible order of nature.” The right kind of music could thus form the souls of citizens to encourage their pursuit of a well-ordered society. In this interview from 2001, Holloway discusses his book All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics, which summarizes the dramatic chasm between the classical and modern views of political ends and of musical means.

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