Of Mind and Music

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Of Mind and Music

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In this fascinating account of the way in which we understand music, Laird Addis builds on the idea, first articulated by Susanne Langer, that passages of music symbolize emotions and other conscious states. He maintains that the unique bond joining music and feelings is based on a previously unnoticed affinity between consciousness and sound. Addis combines a scholar's insight with a musician's sensibility to make an engaging and convincing statement that will help readers comprehend music's importance in human affairs.

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Of Mind and Music has real value for musicians. The challenges to familiar cliches make it important reading for anyone concerned with these issues.... It stresses the uniqueness of the emotional experience of great music; that it has represented unique forms of consciousness and will still do so. Indeed, it takes us out of familiar habits of mind in respect of the emotional associations of traditional music to suggest both how music could have been experienced in ancient societies and how it might be experienced in the future. A stimulating approach, and an often quietly humorous one too: that the prospect of writing 'sad' music might make a composer happy-if there were a commission in prospect

Music and Letters

Addis's proposal is an intriguing and refreshingly novel one. It is not for nothing that Peter Kivy has described it as 'the first philosophy book in several decades with something truly original to say about music and emotion

Addis writes as one who is himself engaged in the composition and performance of music (as an orchestral double bassist), and his telling points are those concerning the arguable status of any causal relationship between music and emotion

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