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The Music Instinct

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

Philip Ball

$32.99

Paperback

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English
Vintage
01 April 2011
Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible guide to how music works and why it is indispensible 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 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.

'You'll never listen to music the same way again' - Independent
By:  
Imprint:   Vintage
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 199mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 35mm
Weight:   402g
ISBN:   9780099535447
ISBN 10:   0099535440
Pages:   464
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  ELT Advanced ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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 The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature, H2O: A Biography of Water, The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, and Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another, which won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. His latest books are The Sun and Moon Corrupted, a novel, Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind, and Nature's Patterns. Philip obtained a PhD in physics from the University of Bristol - where he also played a lot of music.

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

<br> Ball is to be applauded for the range and aptness of the musical examples he does choose - from Albinoni to Led Zeppelin, Bach to The Sound of Music - as well as for his attention to musics outside western traditions. ... the book is impressively engaging for one so dense with detail and argument....fascinating. --The Guardian<br> Using plentiful examples drawn from a refreshingly wide range of different kinds of music, from Bach to the Beatles, and from nursery rhymes to jazz. If you can read music, you will find yourself humming aloud to see what he means. If you can't....Mr Ball's facility for conveying complex facts in simple language comes to the rescue. <br> --The Economist<br> One the finest and most versatile of current nonfiction writers.... I defy anyone to read this book without coming away better informed about why music affects us in such a profound way...His passion for music is evident on every page, and his enthusiasms (whether for gamelan or Glenn Gould) are inf


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