It is not clear what makes Nick Clegg cry. His office declined to elaborate on his aside in his New Statesman interview with Jemima Khan. The eight pieces he chose for Desert Island Discs recently offered a typical politician’s balanced ticket to imply the widest electoral appeal. Presumably the Chopin Waltz in A Minor, which his wife played when she was pregnant with their first son, is a more obvious candidate than his selections from Prince, Radiohead and David Bowie. But there is always the chance that Johnny Cash’s grim hominy homily “Sunday Morning Coming Down” could tweak the tear ducts in a self-pitying way.
Does it matter? Plato would say so. Music for the father of philosophy is not a neutral amusement but a vehicle for nobility, dignity, temperance, chastity. It has a moral character, and its style can influence those who embrace it. Scruton is interesting on this too. In a culture where pop stars are first among celebrities, idolised by the young and courted by politicians, something of their message will rub off on the laws passed by the politicians who admire them. “If the message is sensual, self-centred, and materialistic… then we should not expect to find that our laws address us from any higher realm,” he says.