7 quotes
Listening to music engages the previously acquired personal knowledge of the listener.
Looking back in vision is like recapitulation in music; both give us time, at certain points, to reconfirm or change our conceptions of the whole.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
The way the mathematics game is played, most variations lie outside the rules, while music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a casual accompaniment.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Music makes things in our minds, but afterward most of them fade away. What remains? ...perhaps what we learn is not the music itself but a way of hearing it.
Hearing music is like viewing scenery and... when we hear good music our minds react in very much the same way they do when we see things.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Music... immerses us in seemingly stable worlds! How can this be, when there is so little of it present at each moment?
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
We must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption.