Reaction to "This is Your Brain on Music"

Daniel Levitan's "This is Your Brain on Music" has shed remarkable light on the way we experience music, as performers and listeners, introducing the lay music lover to the latest discoveries in the neuroscience of music cognition. The book is far reaching, answering with compelling explanations such questions as what is a musician, and how to we like what we like? The work has great strengths, most valuable of which is the authoritative account of cutting edge research in the field by a knowledgeable and sensitive musician. There are indeed few people in the world with such expertise, and fewer still who would write such an interesting and accessible book.

There are some weaknesses to this book, though. In so far as Mr. Levitan answers those historically philosophical questions with the hard, empirical discoveries, the work is extremely important and successful. However, two aspects of the book bother me. One is how the actual musical examples are largely glossed over, and the author offers little more than name dropping, and avoids to a fault (literally) any technical description of the music. This is tedious to a trained musician (many of whom I'm sure would be reading this book) since technical descriptions of the music are the most concise and accurate means of articulating the contents of a given piece. The result is that as we are introduced to many truly interesting concepts in how the brain works on music, there is a lack of follow-through in explaining how these processes would work in an actual example (diagrams, experimental data, etc. would help).

The other aspect of the book that I find problematic is in the final chapter, where Levitan goes off in a series of conjectures related to his conclusions (the final chapter also deals largely with evolutionary psychology, which while interesting and important, is softer science than the stronger part of his work). While classic philosophy may have indeed exhausted itself and given way to a new empirical philosophy concerning the mind, the social sciences are much murkier territory, and huge amounts of information must be considered.

Specifically, what bothered me in the last chapter was Levitan's assertion that modern classical music in the 20th century fell flat because it ignored the human connection (as in with rhythm, meter and pitch material) that is so prevalent in music of the "common practice." He goes further in saying that the final widely popular (and he seems to imply valid as well) composers of the century were Bernstein and Copeland, and that the dominant and most successful music of the present (and heir to the future) is rock.

There is really so much wrong with both of these conclusions. First of all, popular music and classical music have had separate histories and evolutions since at least as early as the mid-19th century. Popular music repertoire also largely consists of songs, and it would be comparing apples and oranges to make any meaningful comparison of rock and popular song with symphonic or open form instrumental music, contemporary or historic. Even ignoring the historical pedigree, Billy Joel could possibly be the heir to Schubert (as songwriter) and the rival of Ned Rorem, but could not possibly be considered the heir to Tchaikovsky and a rival of Ligeti.

Second, there are enough social, political and structural (with respect to arts management) issues involved in the so-called "rift" widely assumed to lie between contemporary classical audiences and newly composed music to render a neurological argument as to why certain music fails to attract audiences (fails to move could be argued, and even less convincingly) a weakly supported conjecture. And there is certainly a case to be made for the sheer confusion and disorientation for audiences surrounding a century of stylistic diversity, rapidly changing cultures, and plethora of "isms"? Following Levitan's own explanation of our human need for familiarity and novelty, wouldn't the cerebral excesses of some contemporary music be a natural and neccessary experiment?

In terms of my own research, however, I find the weaknesses in the conclusion of "This is Your Brain on Music" to be an indication of room for growth in the field of understanding the nature of music rather than something that would undermine the value of the work. Indeed, every aspect of the field of knowledge surrounding music will be affected by the new discoveries of cognitive neuroscience, and the reactions and adjustments made by all these various disciplines are likely to be interesting.