Recent Reading: Music: A Very Short Introduction

One of the benefits of using public transport intensely is the opportunity to read copiously. I do not own an iPod or similar device, and therefore cannot descend into that form of solipsism while navigating the Bay. I bought Music: A Very Short Introduction, by Nicholas Cook, in Berkeley on Saturday at University Press Books after much debate between it and its fellow books in the same series. All of them possessed the advantage of convenient portability (which is one of the flaws of newspapers I have never understood). I decided that I would read up later on Kantian philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Cook's writing is clear and concise, but I doubt anyone who has never learned or forgotten how to read for information could quickly absorb much of it. The Introduction was more oriented towards an understanding the underlying philosophies of musical practice and language rather than musical history, which has its own formidable challenges. Cook seems to be trying to educate the reader how to think about music without allowing the very same reader to fall squarely and finally into orthodox thinking about music. This is a difficult task, and Cook succeeds at the price of some cognitive dissonance. Music: A Very Short Introduction is a dense, thought-provoking libellum, and well worth the time of the intellectual who is not a music major.