This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel J. Levitin
Subtitle: The Science of a Human Obsession
It is to Levitin's credit that he manages to wait until 100 pages have gone by before he even mentions Steven Pinker, and not until the last chapter before he recounts the now infamous story of Pinker's 1997 keynote address to the conference at MIT where scientists who study music and the mind had gathered to share what they had learned.
Pinker, who studies language rather than music, told those gathered there that music was a "spandrel", a term invented by Stephen Jay Gould for something which evolves not because it is useful, but rather as a byproduct of something else. Language, said Pinker, evolved because it is useful (Pinker studies language and the mind). Music has a lot in common with language, including pattern recognition, prosody, rhythm, recursion, and so on. It is also processed in parts of the brain which are more or less the mirror image of the parts on the other side which process language. Forget about trying to decide why humans evolved an appreciation for music, said Pinker. Music is "auditory cheesecake", and our appreciation of it is just a side effect of our use of language.
Needless to say, those who devote their professional lives to studying music and the mind, don't generally agree that their topic is a spandrel. Also, it should be said, the years since 1997 have not been kind to Pinker's thesis, as evidence has piled up that humans had music before they had language, can lose the ability to comprehend language without losing the ability to appreciate music and vice versa, and study of other species' use of music shows that it shares more with ours than just the name. Still, Pinker's remark stung a little to those in the field, I think.
Fortunately, Levitin doesn't spend most of the book bashing Pinker, but rather taking us on a tour of the (quite sizeable) amount that we've learned about music and the brain in the last twenty or thirty years. Some of it he has had a hand in discovering himself, as a professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. He also had a previous career as a sound engineer, session musician, etc. for groups like Stevie Wonder and Blue Oyster Cult (if there is anything those two have in common besides being successful). He has a wide range of musical information and examples at his fingertips, and to illustrate a point (in a text format) he can give the reader examples from the Beatles, children's songs, classical music, jazz, and much else. Levitin clearly knows his subject, and knows how to teach it.
One question worth asking, of course, is whether or not we need to understand the 'why' of music. On one level, of course, we do not; one can appreciate music perfectly well without understanding anything about it intellectually. I read dutifully the chapter where he tried to explain to me the difference between timbre, texture, contour, pitch, and so forth, but I cannot claim to remember anything of the difference between them now. However, apparently other (non-intellectual) parts of my brain DO know about these things, if not the words for them, and this is one of the points Levitin makes repeatedly: you are an expert at music, whether you know anything about playing it or not. We can recognize the same tune played in a different speed, with different instruments, different words, and done in a different key so that literally none of the notes are the same. We can also do so without any particular effort. It is as if a short story were understood by us whether it were told to us in English, German, Chinese, or Arabic. There are few things which we are as expert at as listening to music (probably because we do it so much).
So, if for no reason other than that, it is a topic worth investigating as to how the brain processes music. It is also probably cause for concern that something virtually all humans used to do (make music) is now something we only pay others to do, and rarely or never do ourselves. One more reason to pay for the kid's music lessons (or your own). Probably also one more reason that school districts' picking on the music program when cutting costs, is an unwise decision.
But whether you ever intend to play music or not, anything which your own brain spends that much of its time doing (listening to music) should be something you have some curiousity about. Thirty years ago, there wouldn't be much to tell you about how your brain processes all that music throws at it. Thanks to Levitin and others like him, we now know quite a bit, and this book is an enjoyable introduction to it.
It is to Levitin's credit that he manages to wait until 100 pages have gone by before he even mentions Steven Pinker, and not until the last chapter before he recounts the now infamous story of Pinker's 1997 keynote address to the conference at MIT where scientists who study music and the mind had gathered to share what they had learned.
Pinker, who studies language rather than music, told those gathered there that music was a "spandrel", a term invented by Stephen Jay Gould for something which evolves not because it is useful, but rather as a byproduct of something else. Language, said Pinker, evolved because it is useful (Pinker studies language and the mind). Music has a lot in common with language, including pattern recognition, prosody, rhythm, recursion, and so on. It is also processed in parts of the brain which are more or less the mirror image of the parts on the other side which process language. Forget about trying to decide why humans evolved an appreciation for music, said Pinker. Music is "auditory cheesecake", and our appreciation of it is just a side effect of our use of language.
Needless to say, those who devote their professional lives to studying music and the mind, don't generally agree that their topic is a spandrel. Also, it should be said, the years since 1997 have not been kind to Pinker's thesis, as evidence has piled up that humans had music before they had language, can lose the ability to comprehend language without losing the ability to appreciate music and vice versa, and study of other species' use of music shows that it shares more with ours than just the name. Still, Pinker's remark stung a little to those in the field, I think.
Fortunately, Levitin doesn't spend most of the book bashing Pinker, but rather taking us on a tour of the (quite sizeable) amount that we've learned about music and the brain in the last twenty or thirty years. Some of it he has had a hand in discovering himself, as a professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. He also had a previous career as a sound engineer, session musician, etc. for groups like Stevie Wonder and Blue Oyster Cult (if there is anything those two have in common besides being successful). He has a wide range of musical information and examples at his fingertips, and to illustrate a point (in a text format) he can give the reader examples from the Beatles, children's songs, classical music, jazz, and much else. Levitin clearly knows his subject, and knows how to teach it.
One question worth asking, of course, is whether or not we need to understand the 'why' of music. On one level, of course, we do not; one can appreciate music perfectly well without understanding anything about it intellectually. I read dutifully the chapter where he tried to explain to me the difference between timbre, texture, contour, pitch, and so forth, but I cannot claim to remember anything of the difference between them now. However, apparently other (non-intellectual) parts of my brain DO know about these things, if not the words for them, and this is one of the points Levitin makes repeatedly: you are an expert at music, whether you know anything about playing it or not. We can recognize the same tune played in a different speed, with different instruments, different words, and done in a different key so that literally none of the notes are the same. We can also do so without any particular effort. It is as if a short story were understood by us whether it were told to us in English, German, Chinese, or Arabic. There are few things which we are as expert at as listening to music (probably because we do it so much).
So, if for no reason other than that, it is a topic worth investigating as to how the brain processes music. It is also probably cause for concern that something virtually all humans used to do (make music) is now something we only pay others to do, and rarely or never do ourselves. One more reason to pay for the kid's music lessons (or your own). Probably also one more reason that school districts' picking on the music program when cutting costs, is an unwise decision.
But whether you ever intend to play music or not, anything which your own brain spends that much of its time doing (listening to music) should be something you have some curiousity about. Thirty years ago, there wouldn't be much to tell you about how your brain processes all that music throws at it. Thanks to Levitin and others like him, we now know quite a bit, and this book is an enjoyable introduction to it.