Musicologia

In Musicologia—meaning "musical reasoning" as distinct from a mere love of music—author and composer Robin Maconie takes aim against the fashionable misconception that music is empty of meaning, or "auditory cheesecake." Fresh and penetrating insights draw attention to the influence of musical analogy in the history of science and philosophy from ancient Greece to modern times. Since music has always existed, it is an expression of human consciousness. The discoveries of Pythagoras, Zeno, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein would not have been possible without a tradition of musical acoustics. The story of Musicologia unfolds in thirty-one chapters from primordial considerations of silence, communication, selfhood, balance, and motion to focus on more recent and specific issues of chaos, order, relativity, and artificial intelligence, showing that even the most controversial aspects of modern art music form part of a wider endeavor to engage with universal propositions of science and philosophy.

Robin Maconie has done a brilliant job of building bridges between the musical experience – composing, performing, or listening – and a host of philosophical, scientific, religious, and literary contexts., Musicologia crackles with ideas. Maconie writes as a professional musician who sees the art as 'meaningful activity' and who at the same time is at home both with the history of philosophy and physics and with current developments in those fields., With verve, insight, and erudition, Robin Maconie charts exciting new territories revealing myriad connections between music and fundamental aspects of biology, mathematics, physics, and philosophy., Thank goodness for a book that makes one think.

Robin Maconie is a composer and musicologist. He is the author of The Way of Music: Aural Training for the Internet Generation (Scarecrow, 2006), Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Scarecrow, 2005), and The Second Sense: Language, Music, and Hearing (Scarecrow, 2002).