PrefaceSpeculative Engineering
Acknowledgments
1: Some Varieties of Musical Experience
Collective Dynamics
1: Music and Coupling
2: Fireflies: Dynamics and Brain States
3: Musical Consciousness and Pleasure
Music and the Mind
1: Blues in the Night: Emotion in Music
2: Rhythm Methods: Patterns of Construction
3: Bright Moments
The Evolution of Musical Culture
1: The Protohuman Rhythm Band
2: Musiking the World
3: Music and Civilization
4: Through Jazz and Beyond
Notes
Bibliography
Index
William L. Benzon, a cognitive scientist, is Senior Scientist with Metalogics Incorporated and an associate editor of The Journal of Social and Evolutionary System. He is also co-founder of the musical ensemble AfroEurasian Connection. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.
`Review from previous edition Bill Benzon brings a remarkable range
of information to bear on musical issues...and produces a
provocative and creative synthesis. This is pathbreaking work and
is sure to deepen our understanding of music and ourselves.'
Charles Keil, author of Urban Blues
`This is a book which deserves to be read widely, and it
undoubtably will be. Its style is accessible and complex ideas are
put across fluently and easily. Indeed if Benzon writes like this
I'd very much like to hear him play.'
Cerebrum
`A provocative and persuasive treatise. Unlike most who write about
this greatest of all mental mysteries, William Benzon is equally
comfortable with the science and art of music.'
Howard Gardner, Professor in Cognition and Eduction, Harvard
University
`The cutting edge rarely cuts deep. For decades we have been
tantalizingly exposed to scraps of research on the brain and the
origins of language and culture. But there was no synthesis. Then
suddenly this suitably ambitious project appears. Beethoven's Anvil
is surely destined to orchestrate an exciting debate for everyone
interested in the evolution of mind.'
Mary Douglas, Anthropologist and author of Natural Symbols
`...this truly remarkable book...Everyone who enjoys music will
find this new understanding of the basics of both eye- and
ear-opening.'
Norman N. Holland, Editor of Psyart
`This is original work of the highest importance.'
Walter Freeman, author of How Brains Make up their Minds
`I admire Benzon's mastery of so many diverse idea-worlds and
congratulate him as a virtuoso both of thought and of performannce.
Beethoven's Anvil is a rare combination; learned, proficient, and
profoundly provocative. Reading it was a great experience for
me.'
William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples and Keeping
Together in Time
`'This is a remarkable book; both daring and scholarly, it offers a
sweeping vision of the vital, under appreciated force of music in
our minds and culture''
Lincolnshire Today
`intriguing [...] Benzon has a pleasing range of musical
reference'
The Guardian
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