What is music? How and why does it affect us? What is the nature of musical genius? Author/composer Robert Jourdain explores these and other questions, from the essential nature of sound through composition, performance, and, finally, the nature of ecstasy. His prose is eminently readable, offering a very accessible account of a difficult subject to the general reader as well as to the musical sophisticate. This is a fascinating and intriguing book, written by someone who clearly knows his subject.


From Publishers Weekly
Synthesizing recent research from the burgeoning science of musical psychoacoustics, Jourdain, a California musician, provides a richly informative, exuberant, wonderfully accessible introduction to how we perceive and experience music. Choosing examples eclectically, from Henry Mancini's "The Pink Panther" to Mozart, Stravinsky and Duke Ellington, he explores how, when we compose, perform or listen to music, the brain assembles musical devices, patterns and harmonies into vast, meaningful hierarchies of sound. He also offers tantalizing if inevitably unsatisfying answers to such age-old enigmas as what makes a great melody or how music elicits emotions and gives pleasure. Requiring no prior musical or scientific knowledge, this survey is sprinkled with interesting historical anecdotes (Beethoven was an early victim of metronome mania; Aaron Copland hit upon the title Appalachian Spring only after he had finished composing his tone poem) as well as seldom-appreciated facts. We learn, for instance, that musical dissonance and consonance have a neurological basis, in the inner ear's structure. Jourdain writes with verve, infectious enthusiasm and rare insight into music's emotive power. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Jourdain, a pianist, composer, and researcher on artificial intelligence, investigates music from its most fundamental biological basis to the psychology of composing and performing, ending with speculation on music's future possibilities. While trained musicians will be especially fascinated with the chapters on musical education, the virtuoso, and the amateur, Jourdain succeeds in making this work understandable for those without specialized knowledge. Though written music surfaces in the form of Henry Mancini's sprightly theme from The Pink Panther as an illustration of various concepts, readers who don't read music will probably still follow the examples without difficulty. The author's presentation combines the thoughts of many previous writers in a wide variety of fields with the results of recent research, enriched with his own insights on popular, classical, and non-Western music. A thought-provoking work for music teachers, serious music students, and others with an interest in what music is and where it might be going.?James E. Ross, WLN, SeattleCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
When we listen to music, it appeals on many levels. Jourdain guides avid listeners, composers, and performers alike through the auditory pathways of the brain on a quest to understand how music affects the emotions. The journey winds from the basic physics of sound and the neurophysiology of the brain, through tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, and understanding, and finally to the pleasure music gives. Always linking the physical sounds to their interpretations in the various areas of the brain, Jourdain also speculates on why people enjoy some types of music and not others (partly this is a matter of acculturation) and comments on the content of music that challenges logic and appeals to emotions. Moreover, he relates all the elements of music by reference to a single, continuing (very familiar) example--the theme from The Pink Panther. Students of music appreciation, composers, performers, and teachers all should consult this book for insight into why music is enjoyed. Alan Hirsch


From Kirkus Reviews
A layman's primer on the psychology and history of the human response to music. Jourdain, a California composer and pianist, goes at his subject with the zeal of an impresario, approaching music from as many different angles as he can think of: the anthropological, the biological, the aesthetic, the moral, and the physical. The book that results from his discoveries swarms with information. We learn that ``all in all, it took some 500 million years--well over a hundred million generations of animals--to evolve from the first hint of sound to an ear that can fathom Don Giovanni.'' Readers also benefit from detailed explanations of the mechanics of hearing for crickets (whose `` `ears' consist of thinnings on [their] front knees that vibrate only at certain frequencies made by rasping cricket legs''), various birds, dinosaurs, whales, as well as Jourdain's main focus, homo sapiens. He divides the book into chapters on the basics of sound and aspects of music (e.g., harmony and rhythm) and the ways we perceive them, then goes on to consider the neurological and emotional adaptations of composers and musicians to the demands of music, noting that there is no proof that any ``particular brand of emotionality is tied to musical greatness.'' Although the title implies that ecstasy is central to Jourdain's musical interest, this isn't addressed until the last chapter, which looks at music as a means of psychic healing and regeneration (``it lifts us from our frozen mental habits and makes our minds move in ways they ordinarily cannot''). Jourdain is an able guide in matters scientific. His comments on music as an art are less sophisticated. When discussing musical understanding, he remarks, `` `Meaning' is one of those fuzzy concepts that keep philosophers in business. It has no simple explanation.'' A know-it-all he isn't. But Jourdain knows enough to keep us listening. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.



"Jourdian's deep love for serious music...gives his book a moral force and passon rare in science writing."


Book Description
What makes a distant oboe's wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding--and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdian's narrative to vivid life: "idiots savants" who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music--and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.What makes a distant oboes wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it.

In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding--and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdians narrative to vivid life: idiots savants who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music--and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

What makes a distant oboe's wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding—and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdian's narrative to vivid life: "idiots savants" who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music—and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.What makes a distant oboes wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it.

In clear, understandablelanguage, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding—and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdians narrative to vivid life: idiots savants who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music—and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.

Author Biography: When not writing about science and technology, Robert Jourdian plays the piano and composes. MUSIC, THE BRAIN, AND ECSTASY is his sixth book. He livesin Mendocino, California.

FROM THE CRITICS

Boston Phoenix