Music and the MindWhy does music have such a powerful effect on our minds and bodies? It is the most mysterious and most intangible of all forms of art. Yet, Anthony Storr believes, music today is a deeply significant experience for a greater number of people than ever before. In this challenging book, he explores why this should be so. Music is a succession of tones through time. How can a sequence of sounds both express emotion and evoke it in the listener? Drawing on a wide variety of opinions, Storr argues that the patterns of music make sense of our inner experience, giving both structure and coherence to our feelings and emotions. Dr. Storr was a practicing psychiatrist for nearly forty years and is a distinguished thinker about the sources of creativity. He is deeply concerned with the psychology of the creative process and with the healing power of the arts. Here he explains how, in a culture which requires us in our daily working lives to separate rational thought from feelings, music reunites the mind and body, restoring our sense of personal wholeness. It is because music possesses this capacity that many people, including the author, find it so life-enhancing that it justifies existence. Dr. Storr's investigation of music is also an exploration of the human psyche. That is why this book, like all his work, deepens our understanding of ourselves and the lives we lead. |
Contents
Music Brain and Body | 24 |
Basic Patterns | 49 |
Songs Without Words | 65 |
Copyright | |
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aesthetic appreciation arousal Arthur Schopenhauer artists auditory become Beethoven believe bird-song Birth of Tragedy brain C. G. Jung Cambridge chapter Charles Rosen claim composer composer's concerned creative culture Deryck Cooke edited emotional express external world Faber & Faber feelings Freud Friedrich Nietzsche G. H. Hardy harmonic series Haydn hear human Ibid idea Igor Stravinsky individual inner instrument John Blacking Kegan Paul language listening to music Malcolm Budd mathematics means melody mental mind movement Music London musicians nature Nietzsche's objective octave Oxford University Press patterns perceive perception performance philosopher physical piece of music pitch Plato play poetry psychoanalysts quartets R. J. Hollingdale reality referred religious rhythm Routledge & Kegan scale Schopenhauer's sense sexual significance singing sonata form song sounds speech Stravinsky structure Symphony thought tion tonal tones tragedy translated by Walter Vintage Books voice Volume Wagner Walter Kaufmann Western whilst words writes York