The science of SONG
As a music critic, I’m used to turning up to hear works that sometimes can be ear-tickling, sometimes ear-shredding. It’s all part of the fun. However, in 2020, with concerts cancelled in my part of the world, the music I have fallen back on is the equivalent of convenience food, microwaved on Spotify. For me, it is the clean lines of Mozart, the hypnotic soundscapes of American minimalists, and the rich, bittersweet harmonies of the late-romantic composer Richard Strauss. Oh, and repeated late-night plays of Carole King’s Tapestry, my perfect aural security blanket.
Increasingly, the neuroscience behind something that might seem a superficial pleasure is affirming in quite staggering ways how profound our connection to music is. It shows that when we listen to music, we’re returning to our core selves. If you were feeling poetic, you might even call it a soul. No art or aesthetic sense is as intrinsic to us as human beings as music.
“There is no culture now or at any time in the past that has lacked music,” says Daniel Levitin, a cognitive neuroscientist and the author of . He
