The Mystery Of Music

Why do we like music? What does it do for us? How has it become part of our being? Questions about the origin and relevance of human musicality have fascinated many of the greatest thinkers in history, including Confucius, Plato, Rousseau, and Darwin. This book is a novel approach to the subject. The text is built around brief biographies, or 'profiles, ' of thirty musicians from the distant past. These musicians lived between approximately 2500 BCE and 1500 CE at locations that span half the globe. They came from a variety of social classes, and the group includes both men and women. The biographies provide a unique glimpse into the geographical spread and variety of ancient musical life. They form the basis for an exploration of the 'why, ' 'what, ' and 'how' of our attraction to music. As described in this book, ancient musical activities resembled those of the present: The Mesopotamian princess Enheduanna composed hymns to her gods. The Greek composer Pindar sold songs about athletes. The Roman emperor Nero got an ego boost by singing on stage. The Arabian songstress Jamila performed erotic music for her ecstatic fans. The European troubadour Marcabru used music to criticize upper-class immorality. The blind Japanese lutenist Akashi no Kakuichi composed a massive and influential musical war epic. Present-day musicians carry out a number of social, political, religious, entertainment, and other functions in society. Information from the profiles demonstrates that ancient musical practice involved carrying out the same musical functions as at present. To the author's knowledge, this is the first time that such a conclusion has been based on firm historical evidence. This evidence of constancy through different historical stages adds support to the view that human musicality is a genetically determined trait, rather than a characteristic that is acquired from the individual's cultural context. The text reviews and comments on evolutionary theories concerning the acquisition of musicality. 'Musical entrainment, ' which has recently received a great deal of attention from evolutionary scientists, is singled out for special attention. Examples taken from the profiles and elsewhere help to clarify this rather obscure concept. The book is introduced by an historical overview of the ideas expressed by philosophers, scientists, and others about music. Appendices to the text establish the relation of this study to traditional ethnomusicology and describe the anthropological framework that has been employed. More than 400 bibliographic references and a detailed index complete the presentation.

A chronology and analysis of albums, shows, and recordings by Pink Floyd and individual band members as solo artists.

The Song That I Am: On the Mystery of Music is a short but full-to-the-brim essay on the decisive role that great music (whether Bach, Tavener, or Gregorian chant) ought to play in the spiritual life. With admirable restraint Élisabeth-Paule Labat shares her interior experience of music and thus continually opens up fresh vistas through worlds of sound and spirit. With her uncanny gift of language, Labat precisely describes soundings and yearnings of the soul that many of us glimpse fleetingly. Because "only the lover sings" (St. Augustine), her final illumination is that the experience of profound music ought to transform us into the beauty that we hear.

Julian Kestrel, gentleman sleuth and dandy, becomes fascinated with the unsolved case of the murder of a Milanese aristocrat and the disappearance of his protégé, a brilliant young English opera singer. What has become of the singer’s fiancée and the aristocrat’s notoriously surly manservant? Could the murder be tied to Italy’s tumultuous politics? Furthermore, the murdered marquis left a widow whose beauty makes Kestrel’s heart skip faster.

Samba is Brazil's "national rhythm," the foremost symbol of its culture and nationhood. To the outsider, samba and the famous pre-Lenten carnival of which it is the centerpiece seem to showcase the country's African heritage. Within Brazil, however, samba symbolizes the racial and cultural mixture that, since the 1930s, most Brazilians have come to believe defines their unique national identity. But how did Brazil become "the Kingdom of Samba" only a few decades after abolishing slavery in 1888? Typically, samba is represented as having changed spontaneously, mysteriously, from a "repressed" music of the marginal and impoverished to a national symbol cherished by all Brazilians. Here, however, Hermano Vianna shows that the nationalization of samba actually rested on a long history of relations between different social groups--poor and rich, weak and powerful--often working at cross-purposes to one another. A fascinating exploration of the "invention of tradition," The Mystery of Samba is an excellent introduction to Brazil's ongoing conversation on race, popular culture, and national identity.

This books outlines the author's new and original scientific theory about music - that music is a super-stimulus for the perception of musicality, where musicality is a perceived aspect of speech that provides information about the speaker's internal mental state.

For use in schools and libraries only. The Alden children are thrilled when a famous orchestra comes to their town to perform, and when an original Mozart score turns up missing, they solve the mystery of its disappearance.