The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing [Hardcover]

Maureen McCarthy Draper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2001

Nature of Music is both a primer on how, when, and why to listen to music, and an exploration of how music mirrors the natural impulses of our minds, psyches, bodies, and souls-our physical and emotional rhythms. Maureen McCarthy Draper, a classical pianist, writes about the ways in which the great works of the classical canon can help us cope with grief, give dimension to the mysteries of beauty and faith, aid us in recovery from illness, inspire us to create, help us know ourselves better, or just give us a boost of energy.

Draper has also amassed an invaluable musical bibliography of more than 170 works to help us integrate music into everyday life. From it we can create our own listening list for work, play, sex, or meditation. Using music as both a metaphor and a medium, Draper illuminates the living, breathing dimensions of the masterpieces that have endured for centuries, and celebrates the countless gifts that music has to offer when we listen with imagination and engaged hearts.

"The Nature of Music opens the heart and the ears to new ways of listening, weaving the wisdom of the musical past with the potential of the future. A book truly to be listened to."-Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A pianist offers a classical music lesson with New Age overtones in this look at the healing power of music. The first half of the book contains a concise explanation of how to listen to music and defines musical terms like pitch and dissonance. But when Draper sounds off on music's power to "balance the emotions, restore equilibrium and positively affect our well being" (she recommends an "emotional shower of music"), some readers may want to tune out. In her attempt to maintain a breezy tone, Draper is a bit too fast and loose with the science behind her assertions. She makes unsupported statements like "numerous studies have shown that... we learn better when thinking is linked to feeling" and tells the unsubstantiated story of a teacher who recovered her eyesight through daily doses of Debussy. Still, Draper's love for music is contagious. She provides a useful set of listening exercises, or music breaks, at the end of each chapter, as well as an extensive "listening bibliography" for enhancing every aspect of life, from work to sex. Asterisks throughout the text mark pieces that are on the book's companion CDs, available separately from Spring Hill Music. (Feb. 1) Forecast: Don Campbell popularized the idea that music has discernible, positive effects on learning and development in The Mozart Effect (1998), a sleeper that has attracted legions of fans. Though Campbell's blurb on this book has a generic ring, it should help guide his readers to Draper's effort to extend his ideas on the benefits of music into the realm of emotional health.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Music both expresses moods and emotions and evokes them from listeners. The right music at the right time can change one's emotional state from, say, depression to elation, from sadness to joy. Employing her own life experiences and those of others with whom she works as a music teacher, pianist, and presenter of music therapy techniques, Draper describes how music relates to nature, the psyche, and the expression of mood. Citing numerous musical examples, many of which are on two CDs that may be separately ordered, she discusses musical form, tonality, and harmony, and shows how they were used by composers of the last three centuries. She then considers how to listen to music and to let it change one's mood, and suggests various listening exercises to facilitate the experiences she discusses. Easy to read, the book thus neatly introduces the ways in which music is constructed and how music can help restore order and happiness in one's life. Recommended especially for those who want to cope better with frenetic present-day society. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (January 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573221708
• ISBN-13: 978-1573221702
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,542,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing, July 25, 2001

By 

"jhwsfo" (BURLINGAME, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing (Hardcover)

Maureen McCarthy Draper's book is an invitation to return to the joy of listening to music in a way to set moods, to mark days of the week or to simply relax and be transported by musical experiences. This invitation includes examples via the carefully selected selections of music on the accompanying CD's which depict each of the examples of how music can soothe the soul within, or elevate the awareness of beauty in a way that no other medium can. This book reminds those of us that love music of its importance, but invites us to consider it at another level of perception and gives us the suggested methods to add to our perception.

It also makes a lovely gift to anyone who loves, and loves to share the joy of music....

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Jewel from One Heart to Another, July 20, 2001

By 

Aglika Angelova (san francisco, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing (Hardcover)

Maureen Draper`s book is a jewel! In today`s time of high technology and speed, she slowed me down, called the voice of my heart and reminded me to listen to my body and to my soul. She did it all with classical music - speaking of it with great simplicity, and although i am a professional classical musician, i felt like i was entering an unknown field and wanted to know EVERYTHING about it! On the two cd`s that she recommends buying together with the book, she has chosen less known pieces, which allowed me to discover my own feelings and sense of the music, undisturbed by the familiarity of more famous pieces. She guided me through the many different landscapes of music and patiently showed me, with great knowledge and passion and tenderness, all their beauty, encouraging me, at last, to be alone in them, to observe and to fully sink in the emotions they elicited in me.

This book is an unusual, unique look into the depths of music and it makes a wonderful gift. Thank you, Maureen!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, the book I have been waiting for., February 17, 2001

By 

Judith A. Staples (Portola Valley, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing (Hardcover)

Music can expand us beyond the limits of who we think we are, and this book will do just that. It explores and offers answers to such questions as: Why music affects us as it does and Why great music can tell the larger stories of our lives. Now I understand why healing music may be stimulating and cathartic as well as meditative and transcendent. And why, as the most direct path to the emotions, music helps us listen to our secret selves. The book gives us a language for talking about these things. Plus it has lists of specific music by category: sensual music, music for studying and centering, meditative music, and music for each of the four elements.

There is even a chapter on making your own music, from using your voice to express and release strong feeling to creating black note bliss on the piano, even if you've never been taught.

This is a humanistic approach for musicians and non-musicians alike.