Why does the brain create music? In Beethoven's Anvil, cognitive scientist and jazz musician William Benzon finds the key to music's function in the very complexity of musical experience. Music demands that our symbol-processing capacities, motor skills, and emotional and communicative skills all work in close coordination--not only within our own heads but also with the heads (and bodies) of others. Music is at once deeply personal and highly social, highly disciplined yet open to emotional nuance and interpretation. It's precisely this coordination of different mental functions, Benzon argues, that underlies our deep need to create and participate in music. At once daring and scholarly, this remarkable book offers a sweeping vision of a vital, underappreciated force in our minds and our culture.
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Benzon, a horn player, is intensely interested in how music brings people together and gives us a fascinating, at times profound, and speculative book on it. Believing that speculation is necessary for intellectual and scientific progress, he writes for the future while proposing concepts to be tested in the present. He doesn't claim his ideas are true, only that they should be considered and tested. The book begins with stories of musical experience and proceeds to show how music can bring groups, not just pairs, together by means of their coordinated neurological systems; how music affects different sections of the brain; and how music has played a part in developing cultures throughout history. Although largely oriented to Africa and Europe, the book provides examples from the rest of the world, too; and Benzon often draws on personal experience to demonstrate how emotion and physiology combine in the music-making act. At times the text is heavy going, but Benzon's wide-ranging mind and striking analogies hold one's attention. William Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A provocative and persuasive treatise." -- Howard Gardner
"Beethoven's Anvil is learned, proficient...a profoundly provocative and creative synthesis. Reading it was a great experience for me." -- William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples and Keeping Together in Time
"Path-breaking...Sure to deepen our understanding of music and of ourselves." -- Charles Keil, author of Urban Blues
"Beethoven's Anvil is learned, proficient...a profoundly provocative and creative synthesis. Reading it was a great experience for me." -- William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples and Keeping Together in Time
"Path-breaking...Sure to deepen our understanding of music and of ourselves." -- Charles Keil, author of Urban Blues
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
It took a cognitive scientist who is also a musician to notice an obvious but scientifically ignored linkage: making music together is something that enables humans to improvise cooperation on the fly. Benzon uses his own experiences as a musician to tie the extensive citations in biology, psychology, sociology, and economics into a sense-making narrative. Benzon believes that when people make music together they create a kind of shared brain-state that exists in no single head, but emerges from the synchronized communications of a group. and uses an impressive body of knowledge to back up his case. Benzon might be proved right and he might be proved wrong, but he uses solid science and creative conjecture to make a highly readable as well as reasonable case.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Music and culture are discussed, not with the usual artistic focus, but with a healthy blend of science and sociology added to the mix. Is music a luxury, an art, or a biological need? William Benzon's Beethoven's Anvil explores links between music and brain functioning, using the history of music and its evolution to draw some important arguments about music's importance to brain functioning as a whole.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Christmas present for my husband. I actually bought a used copy. it was in great condition for a great price. Husband has not read it yet, but is looking forward to it. He is a teacher and now principal and loves to read books about how our minds and thoughts are effected by different things.
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- Africanisms in American Culture, Second Edition (Blacks in the Diaspora) by Joseph E. Holloway in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- The Future of Time: Man's Temporal Environment (Hogarth psychology & psychiatry) by Henri Yaker in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author by Richard Dawkins on page 46, and Back Matter
- Brain, Culture, and the Human Spirit by James B. Ashbrook in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map by John O'Keefe on page 138, and Back Matter
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