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In Reply to: RE: Favorite books on music posted by TGR on May 29, 2015 at 09:47:23
Anything by Dan Levitin:
This is Your Brain on Music (PBS did a documentary based on the book with Sting)
The World in Six Songs
Levitin attempts to answer the need for music in all cultures and how it affects human nature. Obviously a musical enthusiast, he casts an analytic eye on the nature of music using he latest medical gear, namely the functional fMRI
Oliver Sachs:
Musicophilia.
Another great book by a Psychologist: fascinating stories and insights into the need for music.
Follow Ups:
All-
excellent suggestions.
which I reread frequently:
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Thad Cathart.
An American writer recounts his experiences in trying to recapture the piano playing experience of his youth while living in Paris and meets with an eccentric tuner/restorer. It is a fascinating look at pianos of the past and the present, and the dedication of some devotees of the instrument. You will learn a lot about the instrument, and not simply for concert use, but for your own home enjoyment.
Thad, in attempting to capture the feelings that playing created in himself as a youth, evokes the feelings that most student players have for their music and instrument poignantly and does more than most of us to rebuild that emotion.
Cathart is an amusingly modest fellow, always reminding the reader he is an enthusiastic but talent-free amateur pianist listening in wonder to the great music floating out of random apartment windows of the professional musicians of Paris (he obviously lived in the right neighborhood for that).
But he is a great virtuoso of another art.
and another similar book I read at the same time called Grand Obsession. It's about the author's quest to find just the right piano. Very enjoyable; in no small part because it makes us audiofiends seem a bit more normal.
I hadn't heard about the Cathart: thanks!
As the reader follows the author's search in "Grand Obsession," he/she is exposed to so much about the construction and care and feeding of a fine piano. Just excellent! And you don't need to be a piano enthusiast whatsoever to appreciate it all.
-=- Charlie F.
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