Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination (1997)

Music is often considered the most powerful and mysterious of art forms, and if you could watch someone's brain processing a Mozart sonata or Ellington tune, you'd see why: Music deeply engages both hemispheres, including the areas where language, spatial math, and emotions originate. This elegant, mesmerizing tome, Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Out Imagination, explores the science and psychology behind musical experience and answers long-elusive questions: Why do some melodies stick in the mind? Is there a biological basis for a love of certain harmonies and rhythms that transcends taste? Why are composers the rarest of artistic geniuses? But by sticking to a coolly scientific angle, musician Robert Jourdain never quite provides a satisfying explanation for music's ecstasy-producing abilities. B+