Preface and Chapter one in Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
So far two pages into this book and I know it is going to be an interesting read. Sacks writes, “music has great power, whether or not we seek it out” (x). As I’m writing and reading, I’m listening to, in my mind, one of the most powerful songs that I’ve ever heard, Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up”. I first heard this song in 2003, and for me it was such a powerful song and being the official second song from him, it had a huge impact. Josh would eventually sing the song at the memorial for the Columbia Space shuttle disaster.
Sacks writes in the preface that the arts do not have any adaptive function (x and xi). I think they do. What I mean is that for me personally, I find someone more attractive who can sing and/or dance. Those are big parts of my life and so somebody who can do that is more attractive to me. What do you think? Do you think the arts are just a special offshoot of some other adaptive traits or are they adaptive traits?
Sacks writes about a man, after being struck by lightning starts to hear music (5) and it reminded me of the movie August Rush (if you haven’t seen it, go! It’s an excellent movie) and while August hasn’t been struck by lightning, he does hear music. It makes me wondering how amazing and frustrating that would be.
The rest of the first part of Sack’s book is about the musical ghosts that sometimes haunt people from tunes after seizures to full on musical hallucinations. It was a very interesting chapter. I have to be honest here and say that I’ve had musical hallucinations and up until reading this chapter tonight, I thought I was bonkers. They aren’t very loud and I don’t hear them all the time. It is mostly at night when I hear them and unlike most of the people in Sacks’s chapter, I don’t have hearing loss (to my knowledge).
Chapters 2 and 3 from A Manual for the Performance Library
Chapter two covers where items for the library comes from, do they come from donations, purchases, or other sources?
Chapter three covers cataloging music and how it is different from cataloging books. Having taken cataloging I can tell you that it is both easier and at times more complicated than books because of different performers, producers, etc. One thing in this chapter that I didn’t realize is that in a music library it is important to catalog instrumentation (30)! What a complicated job that seems and this is the one area I feel in a music library that you would truly need to know how to read music.
I am planning on reading This is your brain on music but will be putting it on my Nook as it’s just too hard to read on my laptop
Website Reviews
Interesting site, however, not really much to review except a bunch of questions that are asked in looking at musical cognition
Well laid and easy to navigate site, Just about the program at Ohio State
This first link I clicked on was broken, not a good sign for me. I am not a fan of the red writing; it is too harsh on the eyes. Examines the origins of music and looks to have good information.
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