An exploration of music and its capacity to heal. The author draws on philosophical, anthropological, psychiatric and musical perspectives to propose that music has a rolse in balancing the natural polarities within the self. The book examines different musical traditions, using thees polarities as themes to connect them. It includes the history of music as high culture as developed in Western philosophy, the concept of the music of the spheres as evolved by Greeks and Renaissance thinkers, the work of 19th century music theorists such as Hanslick, and contemporary ideas by musicologists such as Nicholas Cook.
