The Head and Heart in Music

This summer I’ve made rapid progress on my book “The Head and Heart in Music.” I’ve drafted about half of the book so far.

“The Head and Heart in Music” upholds an ideal of the marriage in music of intelligence and passion. It presents a comprehensive theory of music built around the basic duality of cognition and feeling, of reason and emotion. It begins with a new theory of the survival value of music, continues with a theory of emotion as motion of consciousness, and culminates by connecting music to man’s moral nature. The latter part of the book draws on some Greek ideas including “ethos” and the Apollo versus Dionysus distinction. The book is against both prudishness and destructive rebellion; it is based not on religion but on the morality of the pursuit of one's own happiness and fulfillment in life on earth. Music is viewed as a part of the process of learning and growing throughout life, and as a part of the life course of the noble and heroic man.