Music and Mind in Everyday Life

Music pervades everyday life - in homes, on trains and planes, in cars and shops, at births and deaths, at weddings and war, in concert halls, clubs, stadiums, and fields. In so many ways, music marks and orchestrates the ways in which people experience the world together. What is it that makes people want to live their lives to the sound of music, and why do so many of our most private experiences and most public spectacles incorporate - or even depend on - music? 'Music and Mind in Everyday Life' uses psychology to understand musical behaviour and experience in a range of circumstances, including composing and performing, listening and persuading, and teaching and learning. Starting from 'real world' examples of musical experiences, it critically examines the ways in which psychology can explain people's diverse experience of, and engagement with music, focusing on how music is used, acquired, and made in a range of familiar musical contexts. Using a framework of real and imagined musical scenarios, the book draws on a wide range of research in the psychology of music and music education. The book is organized into three central sections. In Making Music it tackles the psychology of playing, improvising, and composing music, understood as closely related and integrated activities. In Using Music the authors address the ways in which people listen to music, manage their emotions, moods, and identities with music, and use music for therapy, persuasion and social control. In Acquiring Music they consider music in human development, and in a range of more formal and informal educational contexts. The final chapter provides an overview of the history and preoccupations of music psychology as a discipline, and concludes with some remarks on the wider significance of music psychology for an understanding of human subjectivity. Drawing on a wide range of research in music psychology and music education, the book will make fascinating reading for musicians and music scholars, as well as those in the fields of music psychology and music education.

ISBN 0198525575   Pages 224 ISBN13 9780198525578 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 347 Publisher Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Imprint Oxford University Press   Height (mm) 232 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 155 Publication date 22 Oct 2009   Spine width (mm) 12 DEWEY 781.11   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

1		Music in people's lives		1
Pt. 1		Making music
2		Motivations and skills		17
3		Expression and communication in performance		33
4		Improvising and composing		49
Pt. 2		Using music
5		Hearing and listening		65
6		Individuals using music		79
7		Groups using music		101
Pt. 3		Acquiring music
8		Lifelong musical development		127
9		Contexts for learning		149
10		The psychology of music - an overview		169
		References		195
		Index		209

It covers considerable ground most elegantly and picks out key topics as sites of debate and future research this book will be invaluable to scholars working across a number of disciplines. The British Journal of Music Education

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