Gavin Kennedy wrote:
>Anthony Waterman could avoid “guessing” in 
>respect of Adam Smith’s views about music and 
>his alleged views of it as “un-Presbyterian 
>flummery”, by consulting what Adam Smith actually wrote about music.
>
>Smith wrote on the appreciation of music (he 
>mentions “Handel”) in his essay: “Of the Nature 
>of the Imitation which takes place in what are 
>called the Imitative Arts”, published 
>posthumously (on his instructions) in 1795 by 
>his friends and literary executors Joseph Black and James Hutton.


In the Wealth of Nations, he seems somewhat 
dismissive of the work of the musician.

"The labour of some of the most respectable 
orders in the society is, like that of menial 
servants, unproductive of any value, and does not 
fix or realize itself in any permanent subject; 
or vendible commodity, which endures after that 
labour is past, and for which an equal quantity 
of labour could afterwards be procured. The 
sovereign, for example, with all the officers 
both of justice and war who serve under him, the 
whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. 
They are the servants of the public, and are 
maintained by a part of the annual produce of the 
industry of other people. Their service, how 
honourable, how useful, 
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN8.html#d46>*46 
or how necessary soever, produces nothing for 
which an equal quantity of service can afterwards 
be procured. The protection, security, and 
defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their 
labour this year will not purchase its 
protection, security, and defence for the year to 
come. In the same class must be ranked, some both 
of the gravest and most important, and some of 
the most frivolous professions: churchmen, 
lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; 
players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, 
opera-dancers, &c. The labour of the meanest of 
these has a certain value, regulated by the very 
same principles which regulate that of every 
other sort of labour; and that of the n oblest 
and most useful, 50 produces nothing which could 
afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity 
of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the 
harangue of the orator, or the tune of the 
musician, the work of all of them perishes in the 
very instant of its production." (II.3.2)

"In ancient Rome the exercises of the Campus 
Martius answered the purpose as those of the 
Gymnazium in ancient Greece, 
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN20.html#j122>*122 
and they seem to have answered it equally well. 
But among the Romans there was nothing which 
corresponded to the musical education of the 
Greeks. The morals of the Romans, however, both 
in private and public life, seem to have been not 
only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal 
superior to those of the Greeks.... Music and 
dancing are the great amusements of almost all 
barbarous nations, and the great accomplishments 
which are supposed to fit any man for 
entertaining his society. It is so at this day 
among the negroes on the coast of Africa. It was 
so among the ancient Celtes, among the ancient 
Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, 
among the ancient Greeks in the times preceding the Trojan war." (V.1.168)

But then, Smith seems to have had doubts about 
the value of entertainments in general:

"The expence, besides, that is laid out in 
durable commodities gives maintenance, commonly, 
to a greater number of people than that which is 
employed in the most profuse hospitality. Of two 
or three hundredweight of provisions, which may 
sometimes be served up at a great festival, one 
half, perhaps, is thrown to the dunghill, and 
there is always a great deal wasted and abused. 
But if the expence of this entertainment had been 
employed in setting to work masons, carpenters, 
upholsterers, mechanics, &c., 
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN8.html#d62>*62 
a quantity of provisions, of equal value, would 
have been distributed among a still greater 
number of people who would have bought them in 
pennyworths and pound weights, and not have lost 
or thrown away a single ounce of them. In the one 
way, besides, this expence maintains productive, 
in the other unproductive hands. In the one way, 
therefore, it increases, in the other, it does 
not increase, the exchangeable value of the 
annual produce of the land and labour of the country." (II.3.41)

He may have been a deist in his mind, but he was 
a Calvinist in his bones, and a Scots Calvinist at that.


John C. Médaille