Download or read book The Musical Brain And Other Stories written by César Aira and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of micro-fiction. A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, César Aira–the author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely one hundred pages long–The Musical Brain & Other Stories comprises twenty tales about oddballs, freaks, and loonies. Aira, with his fuga hacia adelante or "flight forward" into the unknown, gives us imponderables to ponder and bizarre and seemingly out-of-context plot lines, as well as thoughtful and passionate takes on everyday reality. The title story, first published in the New Yorker, is the creme de la creme of this exhilarating collection.
Download or read book This is Your Brain on Music written by Daniel Levitin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review
Download or read book Musicophilia written by Oliver Sacks and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-02-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions. In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.
Download or read book The World in Six Songs written by Daniel J. Levitin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music’s role in the evolution of human culture in this thought-provoking book that “will leave you awestruck” (The New York Times). Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history. Here he identifies six fundamental song functions or types—friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love—then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these “six songs” work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species. Dr. Levitin combines cutting-edge scientific research from his music cognition lab at McGill University and work in an array of related fields; his own sometimes hilarious experiences in the music business; and illuminating interviews with musicians such as Sting and David Byrne, as well as conductors, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The World in Six Songs is, ultimately, a revolution in our understanding of how human nature evolved—right up to the iPod.
Download or read book MUSIC AND THE MIND written by Anthony Storr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does music have such a powerful effect on our minds and bodies? It is the most mysterious and most tangible of all forms of art. Yet, Anthony Storr believes, music today is a deeply significant experience for a greater number of people than ever before. In this book, he explores why this should be so. Drawing on a wide variety of opinions, Storr argues that the patterns of music make sense of our inner experience, giving both structure and coherence to our feelings and emotions. It is because music possesses this capacity to restore our sense of personal wholeness in a culture which requires us to separate rational thought from feelings that many people find it so life-enhancing that it justifies existence.
Download or read book The Woman Who Changed Her Brain written by Barbara Arrowsmith-Young and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published in hardcover: New York: Free Press, 2012.
Download or read book Artforum written by César Aira and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One man's obsession with Artforum magazine takes us on a hilarious journey to the ultimate meaning of the very creation of art
Download or read book Varamo written by César Aira and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising, magnificent story of a Panamanian government employee who, one day, after a series of troubles, writes the celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry. Unmistakably the work of César Aira, Varamo is about the day in the life of a hapless government employee who, after wandering around all night after being paid by the Ministry in counterfeit money, eventually writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that, at fifty years old, Varamo “hadn’t previously written one sole verse, nor had it ever occurred to him to write one.” Among other things, this novella is an ironic allegory of the poet’s vocation and inspiration, the subtlety of artistic genius, and our need to give literature an historic, national, psychological, and aesthetic context. But Aira goes further still — converting the ironic allegory into a formidable parody of the expectations that all narrative texts generate — by laying out the pathos of a man who between one night and the following morning is touched by genius. Once again Aira surprises us with his unclassifiable fiction: original and enjoyable, worthy of many a thoughtful chuckle, Varamo invites the reader to become an accomplice in the author’s irresistible game.
Download or read book The Power of Music written by Elena Mannes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning creator of the documentary The Music Instinct traces the efforts of visionary researchers and musicians to understand the biological foundations of music and its relationship to the brain and the physical world. 35,000 first printing.
Download or read book Music and the Aging Brain written by Lola Cuddy and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and the Aging Brain describes brain functioning in aging and addresses the power of music to protect the brain from loss of function and how to cope with the ravages of brain diseases that accompany aging. By studying the power of music in aging through the lens of neuroscience, behavioral, and clinical science, the book explains brain organization and function. Written for those researching the brain and aging, the book provides solid examples of research fundamentals, including rigorous standards for sample selection, control groups, description of intervention activities, measures of health outcomes, statistical methods, and logically stated conclusions. - Summarizes brain structures supporting music perception and cognition - Examines and explains music as neuroprotective in normal aging - Addresses the association of hearing loss to dementia - Promotes a neurological approach for research in music as therapy - Proposes questions for future research in music and aging
Download or read book The Greatest Music Stories Never Told written by Rick Beyer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the highly successful History Channel series The Greatest Stories Never Told returns with new historic tales, this time focusing on amazing music stories that aren’t taught in the average classroom Rick Beyer plums the vast archives of the History Channel to deliver a treasure trove of obscure and fascinating stories to delight and entertain. The Greatest Music Stories Never Told continues the series tradition with short, fascinating tales accompanied by an array of stunning and diverse photographs from around the globe. The Greatest Music Stories Never Told illuminates the origins of a fascinating range of music topics, from instruments and styles to composers and technological advances—all which show us how little we really know. Guaranteed to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy, this all new volume will appeal not only to history buffs but to pop culture audiences and music fans of all ages and stripes.
Download or read book The Divorce written by Cesar Aira and published by . This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Divorce tells about a man who takes a vacation from Providence, R.I. in early December to avoid conflicts with his newly divorced wife and small daughter. He travels to Buenos Aires and there, one afternoon, he encounters a series of the most magical coincidences. While sitting at an outdoor café, absorbed in conversation with a talented video artist, a young man with a bicycle is thoroughly drenched by a downpour of water seemingly from rain caught the night before in the overhead awning. The video artist knows the cyclist, who knew a mad hermetic sculptor, whose family used to take the Hindu God Krishna for walks in the neighborhood. More meetings, more whimsical and clever stories continue to weave reality with the absurd until the final, brilliant, wonderful, cataclysmic ending.
Download or read book Potted Meat written by Steven Dunn and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in a decaying town in southern West Virginia, Potted Meat follows a young Aftican-American boy into adolescence as he struggles with abusive parents, poverty, alcohol addiction, and racial tensions.
Download or read book Shantytown written by César Aira and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A middle-class, directionless ox of a young man who helps the trash pickers of Buenos Aires's shantytown attracts the attention of a corrupt policeman who would use anyone including innocent kids to break a drug ring he believes is operating in the slum. By the author of An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter.
Download or read book The Linden Tree written by César Aira and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightful fictional account of the small town César Aira grew up in—not so long ago A delightful fictional memoir about César Aira's small hometown. The narrator, born the same year and now living in the same great city (Buenos Aires) as César Aira, could be the author himself. Beginning with his parents—an enigmatic handsome black father who gathered linden flowers for his sleep-inducing tea and an irrational, crippled mother of European descent—the narrator catalogs memories of his childhood: his friends, his peculiar first job, his many gossiping neighbors, and the landscape and architecture of the provinces. The Linden Tree beautifully brings back to life that period in Argentina when the poor, under the guiding hand of Eva Perón, aspired to a newly created middle class. As it moves from anecdote to anecdote, this charming short novella—touching, funny, and sometimes surreal—invites the reader to visit the source of Aira's extraordinary imagination.
Download or read book Shaping Time written by David Epstein and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 1995 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epstein investigates the relationship between the ineffable art of music and the hard science of neurobiology. He integrates philosophic and scientific inquiry to formulate a theory of the fundamental yet elusive quality in music time. Derived from an analytical study of motion, tempo and emotion, Shaping Time offers a theory of the way we percieve, perform and interpret music. Epstein suggests that audience satisfaction with a musical performance results from timing trajectories established by the performer at the beginning of the piece. When the timing of a performance conflicts with audience anticipation, listeners experience physical and affective discomfort. Epstein applies his thesis to a wide range of examples for the repertoire.
Download or read book The Literary Conference New Directions Pearls written by César Aira and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New in the New Directions Pearls series: an extremely rich mad scientist attempts to clone a leading genius in a bid to take over the world. César is a translator who’s fallen on very hard times due to the global economic downturn; he is also an author, and a mad scientist hell-bent on world domination. On a visit to the beach he intuitively solves an ancient riddle, finds a pirate’s treasure, and becomes a very wealthy man. Even so, César’s bid for world domination comes first and so he attends a literary conference to be near the man whose clone he hopes will lead an army to victory: the world-renowned Mexican author, Carlos Fuentes. A comic science fiction fantasy of the first order, The Literary Conference is the perfect vehicle for César Aira’s take over of literature in the 21st century.
