The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It

Philip Ball

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Published by Vintage Digital, part of Vintage Publishing

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Format: ebook

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EAN: 9781448114542
Published: 3 Feb 2013

About the book

Synopsis

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 how our minds understand and respond to music. Ranging from Bach fugues to nursery rhymes to heavy rock, Philip Ball interweaves philosophy, mathematics, history and neurology to reveal why music moves us in so many ways.

Without requiring any specialist knowledge, The Music Instinct will both deepen your appreciation of the music you love, and open doors to music that once seemed alien, dull or daunting, offering a passionate plea for the importance of music in education and in everyday life.

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What the critics say

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

Remarkable capacity to use words to open our ears
- Sunday Telegraph

As prolific as he is profound, Philip Ball weaves science into culture with a dexterity and virtuosity that avoid any sense of overstretch... Ball can truly make scholarship sing.
- Independent

By this author

About the Author

Philip Ball is a freelance writer and a consultant editor for Nature, where he previously worked as an editor for physical sciences. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media, and his many books on scientific subjects include Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another, which won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. His latest books include The Music Instinct, Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind, Unnatural: The Heretical Idea of Making People and Curiosity. Philip obtained a PhD in physics from the University of Bristol, where he also played a lot of music.

Philip Ball