EP/70: MUSICAL HUMAN
Music is What Makes Us Human: The Musical Human with Michael Spitzer
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The connection between music and human beings runs deeper than you might think. Humans are innately musical beings - and our relationship with music has been deeply intertwined since the homo sapiens first emerged. Our guest today is Michael Spitzer, who boldly makes the case that music is the most important thing we ever did; and is in fact a fundamental part of what makes us human.
Michael is a British musicologist and professor of Music at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of four books including his most recent, The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth. The book is the first 'Big History' of music, a colossal history spanning cultures, time, and space to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. He joins us from Liverpool, England.
Learn more about Michael at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/music/staff/michael-spitzer/ where you’ll find links to his research and publications. Look for his book The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth from Bloomsbury wherever you buy your books, and listen to the serialised version on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, read by Simon McBurney.
PHOTO: Ed Alexander
About MICHAEL
Michael Spitzer is a Professor of Music, interested in how music intersects with other disciplines, from philosophy and psychology to biology and religion. His published writings range over Western music from chant to pop, as well as music of the world from a global and deep-historical perspective.
As well as about 50 articles and chapters, he has written four monographs, each of which presents an overview of music from a different angle: 1. Metaphor and Musical Thought (Chicago, 2004) explores how we conceptualise music through cognitive and historical theories of metaphor; 2. Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven's Late Style (Indiana, 2006) uses Beethoven's music as a case-study of how to philosophise about musical style and structure; 3. A History of Emotion in Western Music: A Thousand Years From Chant to Pop (Oxford, 2020) is the first book-length history of musical emotion published in any language; and, 4. The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first 'Big History' of music, blending global history, evolution, and comparative anthropology. It was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, read by Simon McBurney.
After 20 years teaching at Durham University, he moved to the University of Liverpool in 2010.
Learn more about Michael at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/music/staff/michael-spitzer/ where you’ll find links to his research and publications. Look for his book The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth from Bloomsbury wherever you buy your books, and listen to the serialised version on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, read by Simon McBurney.