The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth – A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week' Hardcover – April 13, 2021

1. “Mimesis is what music does with one foot in biology and another in religion.” (p. 124) What does this mean? Does it mean anything?2. “Reducing music to fractal self-similarity profiles a remainder, everything that is left out.” (p. 364) This seems to mean even less, though it seeks profundity via Mandelbrot sets.3. “Ornament, taste and colour represent paths not taken by Western music.” (p. 211) If this means anything, it seems patently wrong.4. “playing a very high note on a piano doesn’t require any more effort than playing a low one.” (p. 105) Actually, it requires less effort, something Spitzer, who is an accomplished pianist, certainly knows.5. “Winterreise (A Winter’s Journey)” (p. 108) The original poems by Wilhelm Müller were published under the title Die Winterreise, The Winter Journey. Schubert removed the article to make his song cycle more general. If he wanted it to be about a single winter journey, he would have changed the article to Eine. He didn’t, he omitted it entirely, the correct translation being Winter Journey. This is not a bit of trivia, there is a significant literature about it, and it is surprising that a professor of music writing about Schubert seems unaware of it.6. Then there is the ultimate howler: “The top A at the end of Nessun dorma.” (p. 111). This is the note which the author claims Pavarotti held longer than Puccini notated in order to thrill the audience. There are a couple of problems with this statement. For an operatic tenor, a “top A” is not a very high note and unlikely to thrill an audience out of its seats. In fact, the high note in Nessun dorma, the aria from Puccini’s Turandot with which Pavarotti, and other tenors, did and do indeed thrill their audiences, is a whole note higher; it’s a B. It must be the most famous note in all of opera, and Spitzer gets it wrong.So, here is my problem with this book. It contains a lot of material, in particular about obscure tribes and their music, with which I am unfamiliar. If the author gets things I know wrong, how can I be confident in the accuracy of what I know nothing about? As the king says in The King and I, is a puzzlement.So why 4 stars? Because there is an enormous amount of fascinating material in this book with copious notes for those who wish to explore topics further. Perhaps the real culprit is the copy editor, maybe he or she decided A was high enough and added the article to Winterreise. Surely the author deserves an A for effort.

Amazing synthesis of ideas from lots of different places.

Connecting rhythms and textures of bodily movement, vocal expression, and locations inhabited long enough for language and meaning to grow deep roots does stretch the reader's imagination. Lots of margin notes to make as the writer triggers thoughts in one's mind.

This book has in it so many contradictory idas and thoughts, that after some pages I gave it up. But the most ridiculous claim in this book is that there "in no such thing called the Mozart effect". This sentence comes only after some paragraphs where the author himself admits that the effects of music and classical music especially on the brain of us, humans, are great and even tremendous , including on those who suffer from various brain diseases and other afflictions.In addition, it is never clear what the author was trying to say. It looks like a collection of copy and paste ideas taken from some sources and put together, trying to show that this book is original in its thesis-a thing which is definitely NOT.Save your money for a serious book. My copy is in the trash bin.

Full of contradictions and ridiculous claims. skip in ASAP.

I'm still working my way through the book, but it has some interesting thoughts. Some of it sounds a bit speculative, but feasible.

Good read

Present.

Although a well written fairly clear examination of music history and it’s uses by humans from ancient times you do require some basic knowledge of musical notation and theory. I don’t know if it’s me but I find two pages of reading this book and I start to nod off. Now this in no way should reflect on the author it probably shows the amount of ideas on each page which my poor old brain needs time to compute.

I have tried really hard with this book. Fantastic information. Perhaps it’s just that it’s above my reading level or something but I found it jumped about a lot and is hard to follow. One minute you’re reading about Beethoven, then next your in modern day Africa then back to scientists Egypt the. Your reading about physics. Hundreds of names and dates. It just felt to me like a shotgun approach and wasn’t a steady read. Again it just could be that it’s above my level or it could be that it actually feels like reading a textbook.The author is obviously amazing and had created a monster volume of work (something I could never do) but I just couldn’t get into the groove with this book.Will try again with it another time