Böcker av Daniel K. L. Chua

From Confucius to Saint Augustine and Beethoven to the blues, a rediscovery of the joy that is music

"In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft contains world music and sounds of the Earth with which humanity represents itself to any extraterrestrial civilizations. This book asks the big questions that the Golden Record raises. Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years?"--

This book examines the intellectual history of instrumental music, particularly the idea of absolute music. It shows how certain ideas in philosophy, theology and the sciences affect the meaning of instrumental music, and how instrumental music in turn permeates human discourse and helps construct meaning.