The Musical Human

Reviews

Michael Spitzer has pulled off the impossible: a Guns, Germs and Steel for music. Spitzer emphasizes the universality of music; everyone, for example, can associate an emotional experience with music. Touching on culture, history, science, anthropology, and philosophy, Spitzer discusses music from ancient times to the courts of medieval and Renaissance Europe to the modern era and everything in between, employing voluminous examples . . . sublimely readable. Whether [Spitzer] is meditating on the utility of metaphor in capturing music’s intrinsic abstraction or discussing emotion theory across a sweep of genres, his writing is broad, deep, and layered . . . Weaving through history, philosophy, archaeology, and biology, he demonstrates how music was not serendipitously invented by human beings but rather is innate to this world. With humorous and concise prose, Spitzer makes a convincing case for the irreducible musical properties of human beings. A thrilling exploration of what music has meant and means to humankind. A hugely ambitious work, but never daunting, and there’s something thought-provoking on every page … With scholarship, wit and passion, this book demonstrates that there truly is a soundtrack to human lives. This book has connected me to not only the language of love but the language of life. A revelation. Extraordinary . . . ranging from the Geissenklösterle caves to K-Pop, from the lost music of the Aztecs to the role of song in hunter-gatherer societies, and drawing on a vast array of specialisations, from archaeoacoustics to ornithology, Spitzer utilises a breath-taking variety of sources... Spitzer’s [book] will make you think differently about music, about its place in your life and about its importance to human life tout court. Full of delightful nuggets and sends the reader back to a world of musical examples time and time again. This is a history book like no other…in this impressive new work Michael Spitzer argues that music is fundamental to humanity . . . entertaining, informative and philosophical . . . an essential read. Think of all the music you have ever listened to, and then all that’s been heard by your friends and your ancestors, and then throw in the clicking of insects and the humming of whales, and the story of an Australian lyre bird which in 1969 was recorded whistling a Scottish folksong its ancestors had learnt from a farmer, and add almost everything you could stream on Spotify, you still won’t come close to the extraordinary range of Michael Spitzer’s book. Spitzer's writing style is light and allusively connective, bouncing from David Bowie to K-Pop to Guido d'Arezzo, the 11th-century Italian monk who invented staff notation. He folds in philosophy, archaeology and biology. He's funny and sharp and fired by passion. A fascinating, far-reaching, up-to-date survey of multiple dimensions of the human musical experience--I know of nothing comparable. I learned something on nearly every page. Expand reviews