No Listening, No Music: Why Listening Matters

What does it mean to listen to music? How might concepts of 'listening' and 'music-making' have first emerged in the story of human development?

A lecture by Professor Tom Service, Gresham Professor of Music 8 October 2018

What does it mean to listen to music? How might the concepts and practices of 'listening' and 'music-making' have first emerged in the story of human development?

We journey back in time, to the origins of human society - in the company of research like Steven Mithin's book The Singing Neanderthals - and to the origins of our hearing, to the mechanisms of how our bodies and auditory systems are designed to receive and interpret sound waves. Our music and our listening have been in a symbiotic round-dance ever since.

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

[valentinbaranov]

Excellent speaker! I've listened to a number of his podcasts (Listening Service on the BBC) and I truly recommend all of them.

[johnries]

Active listening is what we do with our brains, not our ears.