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Amazon.com
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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First Sentence:
"On a balmy summer's afternoon, beneath a weeping willow beside a pond, a solitary flutist draws a deep breath and begins to play." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
rhythmic markers, perceptual present, pitch space, octave equivalence, harmonic transitions, musical savants, secondary auditory cortex, complex meter, auditory imagery, deepest relations, metrical complexity, simultaneous tones, absolute pitch, rhythmic skill, kinesthetic imagery, tonal center, musical objects, deep relations, underlying beat, melodic contour, primary auditory cortex, harmonic relations, scale tones, color hearing, music perception Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Blind Tom, Rosemary Brown, Franz Liszt, Little Lamb, Middle East, Oliver Sacks, Debussy's La Mer, Felix Mendelssohn, Glenn Gould,