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Donald A Hodges, David C. Sebald, Music in the Human Experience: An Introduction to Music Psychology. New York and Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011, 439 pp. ISBN 13: 978-0-415-88185-2 (hbk) $ 85.00; 978-0-415-88186-9 (pbk); 978-0-203-83497- 8 (ebk)
Music Psychology, over the years, has become established and is now recognized an important branch of knowledge. It is not simply an offshoot of the main discipline of psychology, but has acquired the status of a distinct multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary entity focusing on the study of music in the human experience.
The Hodges and Sebald book, Music in the Human Experience: An Introduction to Music Psychology, is an introductory book on music psychology. The authors have organized this publication in three sections: I Introducing Music Psychology, II Perceiving, Understanding, and Responding to Music, and III Being Musical. The opening section of this book provides an orientation to music psychology and presents a broad overview of the field. This section contains four chapters. The first chapter, 'What is Music Psychology,' outlines a model of music psychology in the historical context of its current status. The second chapter, 'Philosophical Issues in Music Psychology,' discusses the relationship of music psychology and music philosophy. The third chapter, 'How We Came to be Musical?,' highlights the evolutionary basis for musicality and raises an important question whether music provided survival benefits? Other interesting questions raised and discussed in this chapter are: Whether animals make music? Whether bird songs and whale songs really music? The last chapter in this section, 'Music Around the World and Across Time,' presents evidence including archeological evidence regarding human participation in musical activities in all places and at all times in diverse ethnic and cultural groups around the world. In fact, musical behaviors are a human invariant. All human groups engage in some type of religious worship (Ember &...