Author: Daniel Levitin
This Is Your Brain On Music looks at the psychology of music. The book talks a lot about our relationship between music, our brain, and the social constructs that influence our interpretation. An interesting passage points to the absurdity of medieval church and the power of music on emotion.
The Catholic Church banned music that contained polyphony
(more than one musical part playing at a time), fearing that it would cause
people to doubt the unity of God. The church also banned the musical interval
of an augmented fourth, the distance between C and F-sharp and also known as a
tritone (the interval in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story when Tony sings
the name “Maria”). This interval was considered so dissonant that it must have
been the work of Lucifer, and so the church named it Diabolus in musica. It was
pitch that had the medieval church in an uproar.
Thanks for posting this.This is awesome!!
ReplyDelete