Photography Music And Memory

This book explores how photography and recorded music act as vehicles or catalysts in processes of remembering, and how they are regarded, treated, valued and drawn upon as resources connecting past and present in everyday life. It does so via two key concepts: vernacular memory and the mnemonic imagination.

This book explores how photography and recorded music act as vehicles or catalysts in processes of remembering, and how they are regarded, treated, valued and drawn upon as resources connecting past and present in everyday life. It does so via two key concepts: vernacular memory and the mnemonic imagination.

Divided into two parts, this book shows how human memory influences the organization of music. The first part presents ideas about memory and perception from cognitive psychology and the second part of the book shows how these concepts are exemplified in music.

This book explores how photography and recorded music act as vehicles or catalysts in processes of remembering, and how they are regarded, treated, valued and drawn upon as resources connecting past and present in everyday life. It does so via two key concepts: vernacular memory and the mnemonic imagination.

Presenting research findings from recent studies, including pilot projects led by the authors in the UK and Brazil, this book provides an accessible, timely, practically relevant and jargon-free overview of how music and films are currently used in nursing homes, dementia wards and day care centres for the older population.

Dementia is the most significant health issue facing our aging population. With no cure to date, there is an urgent need for the development of interventions that can alleviate symptoms of dementia and ensure optimal well-being for people with dementia and their caregivers. There is accumulating evidence that music is a highly effective, non-pharmacological treatment for various symptoms of dementia at all stages of disease progression. In its various forms, music (as a medium for formal therapy or an informal activity) engages widespread brain regions, and in doing so, can promote numerous benefits, including triggering memories, enhancing relationships, affirming a sense of self, facilitating communication, reducing agitation, and alleviating depression and anxiety. This book outlines the current research and understanding of the use of music for people with dementia, from internationally renowned experts in music therapy, music psychology, and clinical neuropsychology.

In this evocative and moving book, composer and broadcaster Andrew Ford shares the vivid musical experiences – good, bad and occasionally hilarious – that have shaped his life. Ford’s musical journey has traversed genres and continents, and his loves are broad and deep. The Memory of Music takes us from his childhood obsession with the Beatles to his passion for Beethoven, Brahms, Vaughan Williams, Stockhausen and Birtwistle, and to his work as a composer, choral conductor, concert promoter, critic, university teacher and radio presenter. The Memory of Music is more than a wonderful memoir – it also explores the nature and purpose of music: what it is, why it means so much to us and how it shapes our worlds. The result is a captivating work that will appeal to music lovers everywhere. ‘Andrew Ford’s wide-ranging musical autobiography is a pleasure to read. Accessible, informative and packed with anecdotes, it’s an excellent guide to the life of a composer: what it entails, what matters, and how and why it happened in the first place.’ —Steven Isserlis ‘I love discovering how people become who they are. Andrew Ford’s book took me into a new world: composition. His insight into how we talk about music and what it brings up for people is fascinating.’ —Julia Zemiro ‘Andrew Ford is one of the greatest music broadcasters around – and not just in Australia – yet The Memory of Music shows that he is much more than that. What is most striking is the extraordinary honesty in the way that he opens up how a composer really works and thinks, and the detail of a composer’s everyday concerns – the ways that real life impinges on the artistic process. Having spent a lifetime in music myself, this book rings more true than anything else I have read. It’s beautifully written, the prose flows effortlessly, and it’s from the heart.’ —Gavin Bryars

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.