Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination
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Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Written By: Robert Jourdain
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.11
EAN: 9780380782093
ISBN: 038078209X
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 1998-03-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Reviews for Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination
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What makes a distant oboe's wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding--and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdian's narrative to vivid life: "idiots savants" who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music--and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.What makes a distant oboes wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding--and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdians narrative to vivid life: idiots savants who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music--and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Positively Shaken
Comment: This is a good book! An informative page-turner. I recommend it to anyone who needs to research this topic. I am a composer, performer, theorist, multi-approach science and religion enthusiast. Several times I was positively shaken by some of the music/brain knowledge revealed. And despite the high level of detail (for a "layperson"), essentials of the topic are stressed clearly. This book seems to be influenced in part by two of my favorite works, COSMOS by Carl Sagan, and WHAT TO LISTEN FOR IN MUSIC by Aaron Copland.
Go buy it, then come back to read the following criticisms:)
It is difficult to write so fluidly about such a complicated subject, and this book carries some such difficulties. Even though the author is adept in considering and distinguishing the validities of multiple possibilities, several times after reading a passage, I said to myself, "well, maybe..." thinking of alternative explanations.
Two more criticisms:
Yes, like Copland in his earlier work, while respecting other cultures this author is very Euro-Ameri-centric in his perspective.
The author really likes to use examples, perhaps too extensively. He generally picks a very specific one out of very multiple possibilities. Nearly every time he makes a point, he follows it with a "far-out" example. Not to knock the importance of examples, but I'll bet if you took all of them out of this book, it would be about half its original weight.
Here's an example demonstrating a combination of the two above criticisms:
"Nor does the right brain show any particular talent for melody when it encounters an unfamiliar harmonic system, such as Indian sitar music" (p. 282).
Keep these comments in mind, and read this book!
Jeremy Jarvis
www.myspace.com/jwjarvislisten
Customer Rating:
Summary: For the technically inquisitive
Comment: This work is older than the presently popular Musicophilia, and from a different venue. Sacks' book is basically a compendium of anecdotes from a very observant guy with an opportune position and a great memory. Jordain's is more objective, looking for the physics of the responses to frequencies, resonances and meter. Its kind of a look at the brain as a "machine". In my view, it has less sizzle and more steak. Jordain's work is much more influential in how I think about my own pleasure from and addiction to music, and explains part of my joy in the symmetries and patterns of ballet and in the visual arts, even suggesting what makes me like modern sculpture. The insights from this book increased my wonderment at the magic in our bodies and the great, great beauty in nature. Its on my list of important books: I bought it for my library.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy
Comment: Music, as an experience of the human mind, is a complex sequence of sound first sensed by the auditory and somatic systems of the human body and then processed and interpreted by the human brain. Music, as a human construct involving both the experience of music and its creation, is a configuration and arrangement of sound towards aesthetic or pragmatic goals. This book [Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy] looks at music as a phenomenon of the human brain in its relation to the physical world. The author proceeds analytically from sound to tone to melody to harmony to rhythm to composition to performance to listening to understanding to ecstasy, devoting a chapter to each.
Sound: sound, ears, the inner ear, hearing loss, localizing sound, primitive hearing.
Tone: tones, resonance, loudness, the evolution of instruments, concert halls, how a brain hears tones.
Melody: how children hear music, categorizing tones, cutting up pitch space, building scales, non-western scales, what makes melodies work?, melody and the brain, the ideal melody.
Harmony: the birth of harmony, dissonance, tonality, relative pitch and absolute pitch, what more can harmony be?
Rhythm: chunking, meter, phrasing, the perceptual present, temporal resolution, tempo, origins of rhythm, left brain dominance for rhythm, rhythm wars.
Composition: child prodigies, auditory imagery, musical memory, inspiration, improvisation, composing at the piano, working methods, sketches, the score, musical creativity, composers' brains, composer IQ, the composer's personality.
Performance: musical savants, musicianship, hands, making hands move, planning movements, sensation, reading music, virtuosity, memorization, talent.
Listening: concerts, changing technology, hearing and listening, attending to music, cognitive preference, musical preference, expert listening.
Understanding: meaning, parallels between music and language, mapping music in the brain, watching music in the brain, amusia, musical meaning.
Ecstasy: the origins of music, emotion, pleasure, music and the body, ecstasy, what might music yet become?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Surprize
Comment: I purchased this book for my 14 year old son who wants to be a musician. I read it and found so many interesting facts and it truly increased my knowledge base significantly. Besides I enjoyed it so much I could not and did not want to put it down. I am not that interested in music myself, but after reading this book, I feel that I can understand Classical as well as all music so much better. It is like a fundamentals of music 101 in paperback. I think I will read it again because I am sure I will get more the second time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination by Robert Jourdain (Paperback - Mar 1, 1998)
Comment: The first page and a half of this book combined with the curious use of the word ecstasy in the title nearly made me put his book down for good but I'm incredibly glad that I didn't because the writer quickly drops his attempt to be evocative and the book becomes interesting and very readable. Even the use of the word ecstasy is normal and informative when it is finally described.
In this book Robert Jourdain covers a lot of ground on all aspects of sound, music, the brain and how they all interact and he does it well. The book is ten years old at the time of this review and it remains quite current, detailed but not overburdened, enjoyable to read, and a valuable resource for anyone with an interest in the mind, the brain, music, music theory, musical instruments, sound or noise (acousticians should however note that words are used with their psychology meanings rather than their accoustics meanings).
Robert Jourdain spends rather more time describing the effect of music on the brain than he does effect of music on the mind. This isn't the problem that it might seem and is easily turned to advantage by reading it in conjunction with a book that favours the mind over the brain such as David Levitin's "This Is Your Brain on Music" which also has the advantage of describing the most interesting experiments that have done since the publication of this book.
If you want one book to explain what music is and why we like it then this is that book. If you want an introduction to the subject then this is an excellent place to start and nine pages of bibliography offer plenty of suggestions for further reading. I heartily recommend this book for pleasure, knowledge or study - once you get past the first page and half that is.
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Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination by Robert Jourdain, explores the way the brain processes and perceives music.
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