Roger Scruton, Culture Counts (Brief Encounters). If you’re concerned that the bad in culture is driving out the good, 
this little book by the British philosopher and polymath may make you feel better. Scruton writes not only about music, but about architecture, painting, literature and the high-water marks of Western culture. He offers hope that lowlife pop culture will not overwhelm a society seemingly bent on dumbing itself down. He proposes that music can play a positive role in moral education. He attacks “nihilistic intellectuals” and he has a lovely little section on laughter as a “society-building response.”