14 quotes
If explaining minds seems harder than explaining songs, we should remember that sometimes enlarging problems makes them simpler!
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Just knowing that such states exist, that is, having symbols for them, is half the battle.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
A thing or idea seems meaningful only when we have several different ways to represent it — different perspectives and different associations.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
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)
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Most adults have some childlike fascination for making and arranging larger structures out of smaller ones.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
When no idea seems right, the right one must seem wrong.
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)
Only the surface of reason is rational. I don't mean that understanding emotion is easy, only that understanding reason is probably harder.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Theorems often tell us complex truths about the simple things, but only rarely tell us simple truths about the complex ones. To believe otherwise is wishful thinking or "mathematics envy."
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Perhaps the music that some call 'background' music can tranquilize by turning under-thoughts from bad to neutral, leaving the surface thoughts free of affect by diverting the unconscious.
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
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)
Clearly, the child is learning about space! ...how on earth does one learn about time? Can one time fit inside another? Can two of them go side by side? In music, we find out!
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)