Preface
Sir Roger Scruton, one of my heroes, died in January 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic struck. His funeral took place just in time to be the huge gathering of people which befitted his intellectual pre-eminence. Although he had reached the age of 75, the occasion was marked by a deep sense of sadness that a figure of such authority, and one held in such wide affection, should have been gathered so soon. This piece is a tribute to him, and it addresses a difficult subject on which he wrote, as on so much else, with great clarity: what is music, and how and of what it is expressive.