Publisher's Synopsis
This book aims to answer various basic questions about music, such as: How does music work? Does music communicate ideas about the real world, and, if so what are they and how do we understand them? Is music a science? What can it teach us? Why have different styles of music grown up in different parts of the world?;The book collates information from a wide area in trying to answer these questions. The problem is that the answers are scattered abroad in a wide range of different areas of study and research, and those who specialize in music history, acoustics, composition, audio engineering, the philosophy and psychology of perception, the anatomy of the ear and the brain, or the design of musical instruments, seem to have difficulty in communicating with one another.;The book addresses the task of recovering the connection between the way ancient and oral cultures understood the world and the conventions of music which are the residue of forgotten acoustical perceptions which have come down to us from the Greeks and Romans as expressions of fundamental concepts of justice, social order and individual virtue.
