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Posting here because I thought others on the forum might find this book as illuminating as I did.
For those who don't know him, Oliver Sacks was a renowned neurologist who wrote extensively on some of the rarest and most fascinating neurological conditions of the past half-century (he died in 2015). His best known works were Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Musicophilia is one of his last works, and in it he explores the neurology of music, mostly via a series of eloquent, laconic and gently affectionate case studies. Through the stories of the people he has treated, he covers a huge range of topics; just a handful here: amusia (inability to perceive music), musical hallucinations, the auditory system, the possible evolutionary origins of music in our species, etc. He does this with an emphasis much more on the human than the technical or scientific.
I'd call it a must-read for audiophiles and music lovers.
For those who don't know him, Oliver Sacks was a renowned neurologist who wrote extensively on some of the rarest and most fascinating neurological conditions of the past half-century (he died in 2015). His best known works were Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Musicophilia is one of his last works, and in it he explores the neurology of music, mostly via a series of eloquent, laconic and gently affectionate case studies. Through the stories of the people he has treated, he covers a huge range of topics; just a handful here: amusia (inability to perceive music), musical hallucinations, the auditory system, the possible evolutionary origins of music in our species, etc. He does this with an emphasis much more on the human than the technical or scientific.
I'd call it a must-read for audiophiles and music lovers.