Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

With thanks to netgalley and the author

Sadly I didn't download this title in time.

So can't really give a review

I couldn’t read the ARC of this as it just would not download. But it intrigued me and so I bought a copy which I really enjoyed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book.

An incredibly interesting, and well-written book. I'm glad I didn't notice it was only readable on my computer until i'd requested it, because that would have put me off and I would have missed out. I think this is a book i'll keep going back to!

I have to be honest and say that I haven't read this book. I initially requested it as I thought it might be something my stepdaughter would be interested in. I'm sure it's fascinating, but I just haven't had the time to get around to reading it properly.

Fascinating subject, we are all just vibrating energy and each have our own frequency. I enjoyed dipping in and out of this book. Heavy reading for me at times but overall excellent writing

This book is a crafted masterpiece. It absolutely sings the song of life and helps the reader to understand why music is such an important element in our lives.
I would thoroughly recommend this as a book everyone could read and gain something from.

What could be more human than music? From babies to football crowds to concern performers and Spotify listeners, almost all of us participate or partake in music in some way. And few animals have anything remotely comparable. And yet, music has been overlooked as part of human evolution, dismissed by some as “auditory cheesecake”, “a delightful dessert” in contrast to the “main dish” of language. This fascinating book sets that record straight - piling up layer upon layer of compelling evidence that music is in fact fundamental to humanity.

We're given three timelines - the human life, from infancy to old age; the history of music from the earliest humans to the present day; and an evolutionary scale, from animals to AI. Each on its own is fascinating, and could easy have formed three separate books. But the combination of all three together makes this stand out as a remarkable achievement - the culmination of many years of study as one of the world's leading musicologists.

Beyond the broad sweep of history, the book is also endlessly rich in the detail. The nature of whale song and bird song, the musical story of Liverpool of a city, and the description of non-western contrapuntal music stood out for me, though I'm sure other readers will find their own favourites in this vast and rich pool.

As a keen amateur musician with a passable prior knowledge of music history, I found the book (mostly) accessible and clear. A few times, however, the author's academic background showed through in dense and obtuse prose that pushed the limits of what can be demanded of the "intelligent general reader". As a result, I was sometimes left in doubt as to whether a particular leap of logic was truly justified by the evidence.

Nevertheless, even the challenging passages leave me wanting to know more. I will surely be coming back to this book for years to come.

Early on, the author invites us to ask Beethoven, Duke Ellington and Nusrat Ali Khan where their music came from. "Their answers would not be as far apart as you might think," we're told. "It doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't swing, says Ellington. From the heart, may it go to the heart, answers Beethoven. According to Khan, One must be willing to release one's mind and soul from one's body to achieve ecstasy through music. They are saying that music is about life, emotion and the spirit. That what pours out of music can't be pinned down to the notes. That music is essentially human, and that it makes us human."

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Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance review copy provided in return for an honest review.

We all love music, whether it's a Beethoven symphony or the latest album by Ed Sheeran, but where does music come from and what makes music 'music'? Michael Spitzer presents a fascinating and multi-layered approach to understanding how music has evolved and its ties to cultures, beliefs, and evolution.

Music is far more than just a group of notes - it provokes strong feelings, can make us happy or sad, and awakens memories long-buried. We are all born as musicians but the majority of us lose our ability to participate as we grow older, in other words we become passive. Yet, music never loses its ability to move us.

I found out that music has evolved over time in surprising ways. Sometimes it depended on living conditions or what raw materials were to hand, the level of communication existing between people within a society - spoken, sung, visual, gestural. The language of animals helps us to understand this evolution.

What is particularly interesting is the way in which the book divides into three sections - a human lifespan, music in world history and, finally, evolution itself. This helped separate the various strands of the narrative and open the focus gradually outwards, from a specific period in time to the broadest span.

This is a rewarding book but not one to be rushed, and whilst fairly academic in its writing style, you don't have to be a trained musician to appreciate it.

I was sent an advance review copy of this book by Bloomsbury Publishing, in return for an honest appraisal.

Was a bit (s0metimes a lot!) confused where the author was trying to go with this. It reads well-researched at first...but then you reckon much of it is 'thought to be' rather than really 'being', and this then makes you wonder what you're really reading and then why... There is merit to the book, but it was tough for me to find the true gems throughout amid all the 'thought to be' aspects

The Musical Human is a wonderful read full of facts about music and how it's evolved and how we as humans listen and consume it. It looks at how it evolved over time and has adapted to our needs.

It was really interesting and informative, I appreciated how well written and researched it is.
It's the first time I read about the history of music and learned a lot.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Interesting take on music and history. Thought provoking and original book sure to appeal to music and history fans

Thanks to Netgalley for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review :)

Firstly I have to mention that I am just your normal person that loves listening to music, I know very little about the theory behind creating music. With this in mind, I have been reading this book for the past couple of months. I had to read a little bit at a time and do some extra research on the side.

This is a fascinating read, it made me think about humans, music and society differently. It beautifully explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. I found myself searching for more information and discussing the aspects presented in the book with friends and family. A lot of parts of the book fascinated me and I really want to read more on the same subjects. My favorite part was music in world history: how music has changed and influenced our society, but also how it changed considering our technological and psychological evolution.

The only thing that stopped me giving it 5 stars is related to some of the vocabulary used. As I said above, I am not a professional or even amateur musician. Due to this, I have found some bits hard to understand and I had to do a lot of extra research to understand a basic concept.

I totally recommend this book to anyone and I think it will spark some very interesting conversations. I really want to read more similar books :)

Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to finish this but am looking forward to getting my hands on a print copy. A fascinating look at music and, as so many have discovered over the past year, the role it plays in life.

A comprehensive, wide-ranging and meticulously researched global history of music and its centrality to human experience. It’s an ambitious book and an academic one, and on occasion I did feel a bit bogged down with all the information being thrown at me, but this must surely be the definitive text about music and humankind.

“It is not going too far to define music as a space in which we negotiate interactions between all these aspects of ourselves: the human, the animal, the machine. Music is a playground in all senses” - ‘The Musical Human, Chapter 12.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing U.K. for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Musical Human’ by Michael Spitzer in exchange for an honest review. I also took part in a group read hosted by The Pigeonhole. The author joined us and provided background as well as responded to questions.

This fascinating work of nonfiction by world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer takes his readers on a fascinating journey across the ages to explore the relationship between the human species and music.

It is a global history of music that examines music not only in our daily lives but in world history as well as how it manifests in nature from insects to birds, and on to mammals including whales, apes, and humans. He also explores the relationship between music and AI.

As might be expected given Michael Spitzer’s academic background this is quite a scholarly work with plenty of notes with sources. The book also contains a number of illustrations.

I have to admit that I am not very musically inclined though for the most part I found this quite accessible. I certainly felt that reading it increased my knowledge and my appreciation of music.

Throughout the book Michael Spitzer referred to a wide range of music and I was grateful for my Alexa Echo that allowed me to call up various musical selections to complement my reading experience.

This is such a fascinating book exploring the connections between music and human beings. It is divided into three parts: Life, History, and Evolution. All three parts are packed with detail and I found it all an interesting read. I particularly enjoyed learning about the development of music in babies, the misalignment of music and musical education, the whole of the history section, and the 'Eleven Lessons on Musical Nature' at the end. Thank you to Michael Spitzer, Net Galley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent book. Plenty of factual and interesting information is woven mong the language used. It is worth persevering through the more difficult passages to obtain the rich story inside. Well worth reading.

In ‘The Musical Human’, Michael Spitzer attempts nothing less than a universal history of music on our planet. As he observes at the outset, this has to be a ‘big and bold account, a “big” history’.

Spitzer takes a deep breath, and continues: ‘It would be a party to which all are invited: King David with his lyre . . . Lucy the australopithecine hominin; singing apes and dancing parrots . . . It would take in the protomusical languages of early Homo sapiens, and ask what marks them apart from birdsong or the calls of gibbons . . . It would focus on how and why Western music splintered off as a law unto itself, not as an inevitable triumph, but more like an accident with consequences both good and bad.’

But no sooner has he surveyed the mountain he intends to climb than he admits his history ‘hits one roadblock after another’.

First, there is no recorded music before 1877, when Edison invented the phonograph. Greek music notation dates from 500 BC. ‘Before then, nothing and silence.’

Spitzer looks with envy at archeologists working with their relics and fossils. All music has to offer is the odd bone flute in ancient caves. Scores of musical works pre-date Edison, but can we be sure that their performance in Mozart’s day sounded as they do to a modern concert audience?

As Spitzer goes further back in musical history, more doubts emerge. Liturgical chants heard in the first Gothic cathedrals 800 years ago had no harmony, no rhythm, no tempo, just pitch. Saint Augustine, a champion of music in AD 400, bid his flock to ‘sing in jubilation’, but we have no idea what music they sang. Leap back 40,000 years to the first cave paintings. One theory is that these paintings were clustered at points of maximum resonance in the caves. The discovery of shards of bone flutes nearby suggests music was played there.

So, Spitzer argues, we are obliged to extrapolate from the present. He structures his history along three timelines: first, a human lifespan, exploring the ways music is interwoven with life from the sounds in the womb to old age; second, music in world history; and finally, the broadest timeline, evolutionary.

One capacity of humankind that sets us apart from animals is our ability to follow a rhythm, clap or dance in time, remember a melody or identify an emotion associated with a particular piece of music. Yet though Western children are exposed to many more types of music than those in the rest of the world, Spitzer argues that there is a trajectory in the West from active musical participation in school to passive listening, a theme he develops throughout the book.

When he turns to world history, Spitzer considers how musical development may reflect the three stages of human civilization: hunting and gathering, farming and town life. And musical evolution took its biggest leap forward when man began to walk on two legs, which triggered a process through which the vocal tract gradually expanded, allowing man to speak and sing.

At times, the book becomes somewhat lost (for this reader) in musical technicalities, but the scope of Spitzer’s ambition deserves nothing but praise. It is the closest we may come to a definitive history of the musical human.