On music: the science of human obsession with sound. Levitin D.

The rocker, which has become a neurobiologist, Daniel Levitin explores the connection between music - its performance, composition, the way we listen to it, what we like in it - and the human brain. Entering a dialogue with outstanding thinkers who claim that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin states that it is a fundamental property of our species. Throughout most of human history, it was as natural to compose and fulfill the music throughout the world as to breathe and walk, and everyone participated in this. Based on research and musical examples from Mozart to Duke Ellington and Eddie Van Halen, the author says: how composers, using knowledge of how our brain perceives the world, achieve incredibly pleasant sensations from listening to music; Why are we so emotionally attached to music that we listened in adolescence; Why practical exercises are even more important to achieve musical skills than talent; How insidious obsessive melodies get stuck in our heads. This book is a story about how the brain and music evolved together, that music can tell us about the brain, and the brain about music, and that with their help we learn about ourselves.