The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing

Rating:
Summary: The Nature of Music
Review: I'm allowing myself to read only a few pages a day. I don't want this book to end. Although it's a book I'll be going back to again and again. I love the section on Composing a Day to music, and I did it last week. What a difference it made to listen to 5 minutes with the music on the companion CDs at crucial times during the day, to center and focus my energy. The music Draper talks about is so beautiful, and most of it is on the CDs. I only wish all of it were. Truly an inspirational work!

Rating:
Summary: user-friendly and sophisticated
Review: If you know nothing or everything about music, read this book to open up a whole new world. Draper's simple, elegant writing and natural approach to her subject will inspire readers to pay attention and listen to music with a fresh approach. This is a great gift for yourself, your children, your parents, your new amour. Listening to the cds and reading the accompanying text with friends is a wonderful reason to have a series of dinner parties.
Thanks, M. Draper, for bring music back into my life through another door I didn't even know was there.

Rating:
Summary: Love and Inspiration in Music
Review: This book is full of love of music and inspiration for musicians of all ages and levels. For the historian, there are many lesser known, interesting facts. For the music student, there are words of wisdom about keeping the inspiration and love in daily practice. For the music lover just beginning to build a listening library, there are wonderful suggestions for starting a CD collection (not limited to classical music). This is a book to be read slowly, to be savored and contemplated. This book invites the reader to experience music in a very sensual way, not with ears alone, but with one's whole body, mind and spirit. It is an exploration of the possibilities of music as a mood setter, a mood enhancer, or a mood anti-dote. It is about music as a healer of physical and emotional disharmonies. It is an exploration of what is universal in music and what is highly individual.
There is something for everyone in this book. I highly recommend it as a gift to anyone interested in music.