Books like The Tristan chord by Bryan Magee

In *Musicophilia* Oliver Sacks explores how music shapes our brains, drawing on case studies of patients with neurological disorders and everyday listeners to reveal the science and magic behind our love of sound.

David Byrne explores how time, place, and recording technology shape music, tracing evolutionary patterns and cultural responses that culminated in the transformative practices of the 20th century.

Exploring the connection between music and the human brain.

Philip Ball explores why music, like eating and sleeping, is essential to humanity, reviewing current knowledge and lingering questions about its psychological impact and scientific foundation.

The first (1970) and second (1989) editions of this book played a significant role in establishing the philosophy of aesthetic education as a widely accepted basis for the field of music education in the United States and around the world. Few if any alternative philosophies were offered during those times, allowing the field to establish a strong, common bond of values and aspirations, powerfully fueled by the widespread adoption of this book. In the 1990s and to the present, professional philosophical work in music education grew dramatically, leading to a higher degree of sophistication and the emergence of more varied alternatives than ever before in its history. Confusion about basic values began to be felt, with concomitant loss of security and of a broadly shared vision. Fragmentation and disunity became a real possibility. This edition offers a synergistic solution to problems of professional philosophical uncertainty. It argues that what seem to be alternative value positions are better viewed as varied approaches to goals most music educators share, goals now encompassing a wider diversity of values than had previously been recognized. A key addition is the author's new theory of intelligence, based on roles rather than frames of mind. By demonstrating how each of various musical roles constitutes a particular manifestation of intelligence, he liberates the concept of intelligence from its traditional and continuing narrowness. The challenging implications of the philosophy are spelled out both as the conclusion of each chapter and as the culminating chapters of the book. - Back cover.

Alex Ross’s 2007 nonfiction work surveys twentieth‑century music, blending history, criticism and rich listening narratives to reveal how composers shaped and were shaped by the era’s cultural shifts.

Explore how music shapes the body, mind, and cosmos through science, psychology, and inspiring stories of musicians and researchers.

Anyone who has ever seen a two-year-old start bouncing to a beat knows that music speaks to us on a very deep level. But it took celebrated teacher and music visionary Don Campbell to show us just how deep, with his landmark book The Mozart Effect.Stimulating, authoritative, and often lyrical, The Mozart Effect has a simple but life-changing message: music is medicine for the body, the mind, and the soul. Campbell shows how modern science has begun to confirm this ancient wisdom, finding evidence that listening to certain types of music can improve the quality of life in almost every respect. Here are dramatic accounts of how music is used to deal with everything from anxiety to cancer, high blood pressure, chronic pain, dyslexia, and even mental illness.Always clear and compelling, Campbell recommends more than two dozen specific, easy-to-follow exercises to raise your spatial IQ, "sound away" pain, boost creativity, and make the spirit sing!

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues--which grew out of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks--are an exchange between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: Daniel Barenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, and Edward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentator on the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said a Palestinian-American; they are also close friends.As they range across music, literature, and society, they open up many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place; music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozart and Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner's anti-Semitism; and the need for "artistic solutions" to the predicament of the Middle East--something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab and Israeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful and spontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosic collaboration.From the Trade Paperback edition.