The Music of Our Lives

Rating:
Summary: A Guide to a Skill
Review: Music ought to be easy to learn, a nice way to channel feelings into a form of artistic expression. Possibly music preceded speech in the development of human civilization. I couldn't find anything on bees in the index, but I'll bet a bee that has discovered something communicates its findings when it gets back to the hive by doing some kind of dance. The index of this book has some entries for Bach, beauty, and Beethoven, but a modern consciousness of how these people with great skill have managed to achieve anything in this area gets translated into such technical jargon as chord changes, chord inversion, chord progression, picking a few terms in the index that I am capable of understanding. This book is written by a college professor who usually writes about philosophy, so the index is more inclined to provide information to those who wish to research the subjective character of aesthetic experience. I was more interested in the moral danger of music, which is examined as a "dilemma" on pages 6-8, 191-94, and 200. I would not expect this book to ruin your life, but I can't force you to read it. People who need to look up the favorite drinking song of Immanuel Kant ought to buy this book. Higgins makes much of the modern world seem less enlightened than Kant when she observes, "Kant's acceptance of instrumental music as legitimate music is thus a progressive view for his time." (p. 64) However, "while admitting that 'agreeable' music of minimal content exists, Kant judges it harshly." (p. 65) An aspect of books that I have not previously discussed in reviews is name-dropping. This book asks, "What about Scott Joplin ~ or Janis Joplin?" (p. 101)

Rating:
Summary: A Guide to a Skill
Review: Music ought to be easy to learn, a nice way to channel feelings into a form of artistic expression. Possibly music preceded speech in the development of human civilization. I couldn't find anything on bees in the index, but I'll bet a bee that has discovered something communicates its findings when it gets back to the hive by doing some kind of dance. The index of this book has some entries for Bach, beauty, and Beethoven, but a modern consciousness of how these people with great skill have managed to achieve anything in this area gets translated into such technical jargon as chord changes, chord inversion, chord progression, picking a few terms in the index that I am capable of understanding. This book is written by a college professor who usually writes about philosophy, so the index is more inclined to provide information to those who wish to research the subjective character of aesthetic experience. I was more interested in the moral danger of music, which is examined as a "dilemma" on pages 6-8, 191-94, and 200. I would not expect this book to ruin your life, but I can't force you to read it. People who need to look up the favorite drinking song of Immanuel Kant ought to buy this book. Higgins makes much of the modern world seem less enlightened than Kant when she observes, "Kant's acceptance of instrumental music as legitimate music is thus a progressive view for his time." (p. 64) However, "while admitting that 'agreeable' music of minimal content exists, Kant judges it harshly." (p. 65) An aspect of books that I have not previously discussed in reviews is name-dropping. This book asks, "What about Scott Joplin ~ or Janis Joplin?" (p. 101)