Overview

From our first social bonding as infants to the funeral rites that mark our passing, music plays an important role in our lives, bringing us closer to one another. In The Music between Us, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins investigates this role, examining the features of human perception that enable music’s uncanny ability to provoke, despite its myriad forms across continents and throughout centuries, the sense of a shared human experience.                Drawing on disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, musicology, linguistics, and anthropology, Higgins’s richly researched study showcases the ways music is used in rituals, education, work, healing, and as a source of security and—perhaps most importantly—joy. By participating so integrally in such meaningful facets of society, Higgins argues, music situates itself as one of the most fundamental bridges between people, a truly cross-cultural form of communication that can create solidarity across political divides. Moving beyond the well-worn takes on music’s universality, The Music between Us provides a new understanding of what it means to be musical and, in turn, human. 

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Higgins has written a wonderfully comprehensive book about nothing less than to what extent music is a universal phenomenon.... The author contends that though there appears to be dramatic variation across cultures, music universally reflects humans' common ways of behaving-for instance, in connection with longing and mourning-and serves to physically instruct one on how to comport oneself in society.... A welcome contribution to cross-cultural (and cross-species) philosophy of music.... Highly recommended. (Choice)

"""Higgins has written a wonderfully comprehensive book about nothing less than to what extent music is a universal phenomenon.... The author contends that though there appears to be dramatic variation across cultures, music universally reflects humans' common ways of behaving-for instance, in connection with longing and mourning-and serves to physically instruct one on how to comport oneself in society.... A welcome contribution to cross-cultural (and cross-species) philosophy of music.... Highly recommended."" (Choice)"""

Author Information

"Kathleen Marie Higgins is professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Music of Our Lives and Nietzsche's ""Zarathustra."""

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