Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
http://pom.sagepub.com/
Book review: Phillip Ball. The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't
Do Without It. London: The Bodley Head, 2010. 452 pp. 20.00 ISBN 9781847920881
John Sloboda
Psychology of Music 2010 38: 506
DOI: 10.1177/03057356100380040802
On behalf of:
Additional services and information for Psychology of Music can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://pom.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://pom.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://pom.sagepub.com/content/38/4/506.refs.html
Downloaded from pom.sagepub.com at SWETS WISE ONLINE CONTENT on December 14, 2010
506
Tiija Rinta
Westminster Local Authority, UK
Phillip Ball. The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Cant Do Without It. London: The Bodley Head,
2010. 452 pp. 20.00 ISBN 9781847920881
What goes on in our heads when we listen to tonal music? How and why does it engage our
emotions? Why does music seems to make such sense to us, and what does this tell us about the
origins and biological purpose of music? These are the main questions addressed in this wellconstructed book by the respected British science journalist Philip Ball.
The Music Instinct is a contribution to a small but growing group of books about psychological
aspects of music that are aimed not at researchers, professional musicians, or students, but at
interested lay people (e.g. Levitin, 2006, 2009; Sacks, 2008). Such books have a number of
shared characteristics. Most important among them is a strong narrative, held together by a
sense of personal excitement and discovery conveyed by the author. It really is possible to read a
book such as this from beginning to end (say on a long train journey) in a way that would be
both taxing and possibly counterproductive when applied to a scholarly text. To assist this, the
style is informal, veering towards journalistic; referencing is light; and there is a minimum of
footnotes or technical details of research studies, although sufficient to point the reader to major
scholarly studies should they be interested. Researchers are introduced by first and last name,
suggesting personal acquaintance, which in this authors case has some genuine underpinning
he has indeed met and interviewed several of the psychologists whose work he discusses.
This book shares another feature of the best examples of this genre, which is the conveying
of a sense of intellectual discovery, as the author engages with, grapples with, and occasionally argues with, the scholarly material, to produce something that is neither an uncritical or
effusive summary nor a tetchy and nit-picking demolition, but a thoughtful and stimulating
invitation for a reader to engage in mental debate with the author and those scholars whose
work he lays before the reader. Conclusions are suggested rather than nailed down and closure
on a thorny issue is not imposed where no such closure is possible.
A very striking feature of this enterprise is the highly detailed treatment of musical materials, at a level that would be more common in a book on music theory or music analysis. This
author is highly musically literate and knowledgeable, and is very capable of rolling his sleeves
Downloaded from pom.sagepub.com at SWETS WISE ONLINE CONTENT on December 14, 2010
507
Book reviews
up and digging right down into the technical details of the use of scales, melodies, chords,
rhythms and other musical elements, operating in their musical context (which is predominantly the context of 18th- to 20th-century classical music). There are more than 100 musical
examples, and most are available for free as open-access soundfiles on the publishers website
(http://www.bodleyhead.co.uk/musicinstinct/index.asp). This website also contains very
useful summaries of each chapter of the 13 chapters, which means that a potential reader
can get a very good sense of both style and content prior to deciding whether to obtain a
copy to read. This is exemplary practice, which one hopes is spreading more generally in the
publishing world.
In reviewing the book, I had two questions in mind. The first and, for this journal, more
important question is: could this book be useful for scholars, researchers or classroom teachers,
despite these not being its primary intended audience? The second question is: does it represent
current scientific knowledge fairly to a lay reader. Would I recommend this to a musically interested friend as an introduction to the field? The answer to both questions is a qualified yes.
Let me deal firstly with possible scholarly uses. There is not much in here for the serious
postgraduate or postdoctoral researcher. Scholarly sources cited and discussed are generally
well known in the literature (e.g. Krumhansl, Meyer, Peretz, Patel) and although the author
views the material through a thoughtfully critical lens, there is nothing sufficiently new to
cause one to imagine that future scholars would cite this book as an original source in its own
right. However, I could imagine this book being very useful to a teacher, either in a psychology
department, or in a music faculty, particularly in conjunction with some of the primary
sources cited. What students quite often need (and sometimes fail to get from designed teaching
texts) is a sense of excitement and discovery and the sense that these issues matter intensely
to someone. What they also need is the opportunity to interact with and discuss real musical
examples, of the sort that are provided here in profusion. There is sufficient musical and
scientific sophistication here for students from both sides of this divide to learn something
from across the divide. Finally, students need an integrating source to hold together a set of
specific topics that might be covered week by week. I could imagine this book being the integrative backbone of a 12-week course on music perception and cognition. The main topics
would be, in chapter order as they appear:
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
!"
Now to the lay person. My sense is that the book provides a very sound and accurate portrayal
of some of the main themes that have emerged from the cognitive sciences of music over the
last few decades. In particular, it shows how the act of listening to music is a complex process
where memory and anticipation operate on sound materials unfolding over time to deliver a
Downloaded from pom.sagepub.com at SWETS WISE ONLINE CONTENT on December 14, 2010
508
John Sloboda
Keele University, UK
Downloaded from pom.sagepub.com at SWETS WISE ONLINE CONTENT on December 14, 2010