Levitin, Outwater & Goodyear – Our Brain and Music

Daniel Levitin and Edwin Outwater, with Stewart Goodyear on the piano, offer a fascinating look at the physical, neurological aspect of music and our intuitive understanding of it, regardless of the extent of our knowledge, training or even awareness. In a lively talk about what happens in the brain when we listen to music, they use excerpts from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to illustrate the versatility of the master composer as he deploys the symphony’s famous four-note motif in a myriad of ways. They tell us that the brain is an amazing “giant prediction device” that takes each note in and tries to figure out what is going to come next. “Beethoven’s playing with your powers of prediction.”