Music in the Human Experience: An Introduction to Music Psychology, Second Edition, is geared toward music students yet incorporates other disciplines to provide an explanation for why and how we make sense of music and respond to it—cognitively, physically, and emotionally. All human societies in every corner of the globe engage in music. Taken collectively, these musical experiences are widely varied and hugely complex affairs. How did human beings come to be musical creatures? How and why do our bodies respond to music? Why do people have emotional responses to music? Music in the Human Experience seeks to understand and explain these phenomena at the core of what it means to be a human being. New to this edition: Expanded references and examples of non-Western musical styles Updated literature on philosophical and spiritual issues Brief sections on tuning systems and the acoustics of musical instruments A section on creativity and improvisation in the discussion of musical performance New studies in musical genetics Greatly increased usage of explanatory figures

Music: A Social Experience offers a topical approach for a music appreciation course. Through a series of subjects–from Music and Worship to Music and War and Music and Gender–the authors present active listening experiences for students to experience music's social and cultural impact. The book offers an introduction to the standard concert repertoire, but also gives equal treatment to world music, rock and popular music, and jazz, to give students a thorough introduction to today's rich musical world. Through lively narratives and innovative activities, the student is given the tools to form a personal appreciation and understanding of the power of music. The book is paired with an audio compilation featuring listening guides with streaming audio, short texts on special topics, and sample recordings and notation to illustrate basic concepts in music. There is not a CD-set, but the companion website with streaming audio is provided at no additional charge.

A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online 'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History 'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here' Evening Standard 165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. 66 million years ago came the first melody. 40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet it is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages – from Bach to BTS and back – to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, from global history to our everyday lives, from insects to apes, humans to artificial intelligence. 'Michael Spitzer has pulled off the impossible: a Guns, Germs and Steel for music' Daniel Levitin 'A thrilling exploration of what music has meant and means to humankind' Ian Bostridge

One of the most important ethnomusicologists of the century, John Blacking achieved international recognition for his book, How Musical Is Man? Known for his interest in the relationship of music to biology, psychology, dance, and politics, Blacking was deeply committed to the idea that music-making is a fundamental and universal attribute of the human species. He attempted to document the ways in which music-making expresses the human condition, how it transcends social divisions, and how it can be used to improve the quality of human life. This volume brings together in one convenient source eight of Blacking's most important theoretical papers along with an extensive introduction by the editor. Drawing heavily on his fieldwork among the Venda people of South Africa, these essays reveal his most important theoretical themes such as the innateness of musical ability, the properties of music as a symbolic or quasi-linguistic system, the complex relation between music and social institutions, and the relation between scientific musical analysis and cultural understanding.

What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions. In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.

'You are the music / While the music lasts' T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets Do babies remember music from the womb? Can classical music increase your child's IQ? Is music good for productivity? Can it aid recovery from illness and injury? And what is going on in your brain when Ultravox's 'Vienna', Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht or Dizzee Rascal's 'Bonkers' transports you back to teenage years? In a brilliant new work that will delight music lovers of every persuasion, music psychologist Victoria Williamson examines our relationship with music across the whole of a lifetime. Along the way she reveals the amazing ways in which music can physically reshape our brains, explores how 'smart music listening' can improve cognitive performance, and considers the perennial puzzle of what causes 'earworms'. Requiring no specialist musical or scientific knowledge, this upbeat, eye-opening book reveals as never before the extent of the universal language of music that lives deep inside us all.

Musical understanding has evolved dramatically in recent years, principally through a heightened appreciation of musical meaning in its social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions. This collection of essays by leading scholars addresses an aspect of meaning that has not yet received its due: the relation of meaning in this broad humanistic sense to the shaping of fundamental values. The volume examines the open and active circle between the values and valuations placed on music by both individuals and societies, and the discovery, through music, of what and how to value. With a combination of cultural criticism and close readings of musical works, the contributors demonstrate repeatedly that to make music is also to make value, in every sense. They give particular attention to values that have historically enabled music to assume a formative role in human societies: to foster practices of contemplation, fantasy, and irony; to explore sexuality, subjectivity, and the uncanny; and to articulate longings for unity with nature and for moral certainty. Each essay in the collection shows, in its own way, how music may provoke transformative reflection in its listeners and thus help guide humanity to its own essential embodiment in the world. The range of topics is broad and developed with an eye both to the historical specificity of values and to the variety of their possible incarnations. The music is both canonical and noncanonical, old and new. Although all of it is "classical," the contributors' treatment of it yields conclusions that apply well beyond the classical sphere. The composers discussed include Gabrieli, Marenzio, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner, Puccini, Hindemith, Schreker, and Henze. Anyone interested in music as it is studied today will find this volume essential reading.