The Music Instinct
How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
$41.51
- Paperback
464 pages
- Release Date
1 April 2011
Summary
Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible guide to how music works and why it is indispensable to humanity.
Why have all human cultures - today and throughout history - made music? Why does music excite such rich emotion? How do we make sense of musical sound?
These are questions that have, until recently, remained mysterious. Now The Music Instinct explores how the latest research in music psychology and brain science is piecing together the puzzle of …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780099535447 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0099535440 |
| Author: | Philip Ball |
| Publisher: | Vintage Publishing |
| Imprint: | Vintage |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 464 |
| Release Date: | 1 April 2011 |
| Weight: | 400g |
| Dimensions: | 197mm x 130mm x 35mm |
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Critics Review
Wonderful account of why music matters… one of the finest and most versatile of current non-fiction writers
Wonderful account of why music matters… one of the finest and most versatile of current non-fiction writers * Sunday Times *Exemplary… In contemplating the mysteries of music we are also contemplating the mystery of ourselves… Ball, thankfully, doesn’t try to provide any easy answers, but rather sends the reader back to the music a better listener * Observer *This is a truly fascinating and eye-opening account of a phenomenon so commonplace we barely think about it, yet one which is also mind-bogglingly complicated. Once you’ve read The Music Instinct, you’ll never listed to music the same way again * Independent *A musical experience in itself…his love of the subject is abundantly evident.. His mastery of many scientific disciplines is a delight * Daily Telegraph *Impressively engaging…it will be the rare music lover that does not come away without having learned many interesting things * Guardian *Ball….proves as comfortable discussing the science of music as its cultural and artistic dimensions… This thought-provoking book answers many questions, and leaves a few hanging tantalisingly behind as well * Financial Times *Remarkable capacity to use words to open our ears * Sunday Telegraph *This book surveys current thinking and tells you why music rocks – Iain Finlayson * The Times *Bestriding with equal ease the very different disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, history and neurology, the author answers com amore the questions posed in the subtitle of this important book. A remarkable achievement. * Classic FM Magazine *The author breaks new (to me) ground * Sunday Telegraph *
About The Author
Philip Ball
Philip Ball writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences at Nature. His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and include Critical Mass- How One Thing Leads To Another (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books), The Music Instinct, Curiosity- How Science Became Interested in Everything, Serving The Reich- The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under Hitler and Invisible- The history of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics.
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