Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks

Knopf Canada, Feb 5, 2010 - Psychology

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

What people are saying

Review: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

User Review  - Bjorn - Goodreads

Music, as Sacks points out in this book, is a peculiar thing. It's the only human art form that is (almost) completely abstract and yet resounds emotionally with most people; sure you can set words to ...

Review: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

User Review  - Jennifer - Goodreads

Oliver Sacks is a well-known author and neurologist. One of his books, Awakenings was made into a movie that starred Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. In this book, Musicophilia, Sacks writes about ...

About the author

Oliver Sacks is the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other books, for which he has received numerous awards, including the Hawthornden Prize, a Polk Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in New York City, where he is a practising neurologist.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
• Author: Oliver Sacks
• Publisher: Knopf Canada, 2010
• ISBN: 0307373495, 9780307373496
• Subjects: Psychology / General